Review: 40793 Tom & Jerry
Posted by TheBrickPal,
Tom & Jerry debuted in February 1940 and has delighted generations, with countless iterations since. The pair celebrated their eighty-fifth anniversary this year, and to commemorate it, LEGO released 40793 Tom & Jerry in January.
Now, to celebrate the recent International Animation Day and National Cat Day, let's finally take a closer look at this bickering duo!
Summary
40793 Tom & Jerry, 212 pieces.
£13.49 / $14.99 / €14.99 | 6.4p / 7.1c / 7.1c per piece.
Buy at LEGO.com »
The cat and mouse translate brilliantly to bricks
- Instantly recognizable
- Great detailing
- Fun accessories
- Good parts pack
- The only LEGO Tom & Jerry set so far
The Completed Model
The two BrickHeadz come together quickly and look marvellous. The contrasting colours correspond with their animated counterparts and offer a visually interesting display when together.
Tom is probably the more 'boring' model of the two, but that doesn't mean he isn't great! The combination of dark and light grey, with some white, is accurate, and looks good to me.
The pink ears and yellow eyes add a nice dash of color, and I love the small details such as the tuft of fur on Tom's head, and the black eyebrows using 1x1 corner tiles.
The detail continues on the side, with common slope pieces used for the fur.
Tom and Jerry are known for their rivalry and often use objects and traps to fight each other, with hilarious results! Tom is equipped with a simple hammer, but the flame on the tip of his tail hints that someone may already have the upper hand...
That someone is Jerry, the mouse who time and time again avoids capture by Tom, usually with violent solutions like the match he is wielding here. He looks fantastic, with plenty of dark orange pieces used to great effect. Several of the dark orange pieces are uncommon, and the dishes used for ears are exclusive.
Like Tom, the fur details on his head are nice and the aforementioned dishes make for good ears, bringing to mind the various Mickey Mouse BrickHeadz.
I especially love the curved 1x1s used for puffy cheeks!
The back is relatively bland, but I do like the little tail.
Even with limited poseability, these BrickHeadz can get into some crazy situations regardless...
Overall
This is an exemplary BrickHeadz set. The best ones often strike a perfect balance; they have unique shaping or hair and are instantly recognisable as the character, while still adhering to the classic BrickHeadz template. These figures do that well, and I applaud the designer.
That being said, this big anniversary was an amazing opportunity to produce a greater variety of sets, such as a vignette or even large-scale sculptures of Tom and Jerry. I would adore minifigures, and I am not confident that there will be another chance for them to happen, unless we were to get a general Warner Bros. Animation or Hanna-Barbera Collectable Minifigures series.
Despite my worries, this set on its own is wonderful, and I have no doubt that any Tom & Jerry fan would enjoy it.
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17 comments on this article
Not a big fan of Brickheadz, but these look pretty cool. Maybe because cartoons are closer to looking like Brickheadz to begin with?
Yeah even if Brickheadz wasn't a thing this would be a solid way to design a Tom and Jerry set. Natural fit
It's a fun IP for LEGO to expand into, but something about Jerry wasn't sitting right with me. I wonder if he might look better with white eye versions of Tom's light yellow eye 'surrounds'?
Has Tom been chasing Jerry in a Lego factory again?
Smashing looking BrickHeadz that I got in January, but I still hate meeces to pieces...
Despite not having seen one of the classic Tom and Jerry shorts in years, the theme music from those shorts was running through my head as I was reading this review. I don't really plan to get this, but I like the touch of Tom's tail being on fire.
@ALegoFan said:
"Has Tom been chasing Jerry in a Lego factory again?"
Yeah, they both fell into a molding machine, and this was the result.
I remember when the BBC schedule was running a few minutes early, so they'd slot in a Tom & Jerry cartoon to fill the gap... happy days indeed.
As for this set, even though I'm not into BrickHeadz, I'll definitely be picking it up.
As a fan of theme, I don’t buy nearly enough of them. This one hasn’t been among my most desired but I may still consider it if it goes on sale or there are 2x points, before it retires.
Yeah it retires next month, so those who want it better keep it in mind!
Quite cool, though I do have some issues with both of them.
I do think Tom is the better of the two, but those pink ears are weird. I don't see how this could have been done better with just bricks, and considering Lego can't print all teh way to the edges that wouldn't work either. So not ideal, but it is what it is.
With Jerry I have two issues: The eyes and his belly. The eyes are lacking some white , now it looks like beady eyes. Just like they did with Tom I think it would look much better had these been white tiles with black print. As for the belly....at first glace it looks like some giant teeth. Maybe a more rounded print could have solved that. And maybe more of a nitpick, but couldn't they have printed the inside of those dishes used for the ears?
Still, I do like them, and might pick them up if I ever find myself in a Lego Store.
@8lackmagic said:
"I remember when the BBC schedule was running a few minutes early, so they'd slot in a Tom & Jerry cartoon to fill the gap... happy days indeed.
As for this set, even though I'm not into BrickHeadz, I'll definitely be picking it up."
What a great call. That would be a leap out of your chair exciting bonus as a kid!
My partner ended up feeling they were a little too far over on the Itchy & Scratchy end of violence, so I took these off the “would be fun to build together” list. I don’t personally think either the mallet or the match are outside the realm of the cartoons, but I also would’ve been fine with less explicitly violent props so I didn’t especially feel the need to argue the point. We’re not short on kits we both really like to take its place.
I do think the execution is generally pretty decent although the colour mismatch on Jerry’s tail bothers me, and I also would’ve liked Jerry to have whites to his eyes, I think.
"Vielen Dank, für die Blumen..."
:-)
https://youtu.be/drpKa2BTGmE?si=P_0ZBr05bm97G71S
Happy memories indeed.
I dunno, I feel like Jerry’s ears are a bit far down, makes him look a bit more bear-like than I think was intended. Then again the two have had some fairly varied looks over their 80 years of animation so maybe that suits a specific style
Cute set, got it months ago already. Couldn't resist getting it, because Tom & Jerry is still, by far, the best animated series ever produced.
Whisker prints would have helped with both, I think.
"Hey. What's cooking?"
"You are... stupid."
- The Mouse Comes to Dinner, 1945
While I definitely appreciate that this exists (I love a good classic Tom & Jerry cartoon, although the original Hanna-Barbera era are really the only ones for me), I'm not sure it would be my chosen format for the characters. I'm also not sure what else would be an option - since the size difference between them is so integral to their dynamic, having them both be minifigures wouldn't be ideal either - but I feel the static Brickheadz format doesn't quite lend itself to characters who are all about action and movement.
Still, it's very neat to see them get the Lego treatment all the same, and on the whole they do look good! Thanks for the closer look at them :D
I'd not call these 'instantly recognisable'. I'm part of the generation that grew up with the cartoons on TV, and it took me a while to realise that these were Tom and Jerry as I'd skipped over the text. I thought it was some kind of hamster and dog duo from some new kids thing I'd never heard of until I bothered to read the title.