Appa the Sky Bison

This product idea is based on the TV series “Avatar: The Last Airbender“ from 2005. As it is celebrating its 20 year anniversary in 2025 I decided to come up with a product idea based on this iconic series.

First of all, I want to make clear that this series is my favourite series of all time since I first watched it back in my childhood. In my opinion, the relationship between Aang and his sky bison Appa throughout the series is outstanding because of their strong bond and the deep understanding of each other without using words. In addition, this relationship demonstrates the selflessness and the duty to stand up for others Aang has to fulfill as the avatar.

This relationship and the upcoming anniversary have inspired me creating this product idea.

It consists of Appa the sky bison and Aang the avatar with his glider. Additionaly there is a stand included to showcase Appa flying above the ground. I decided to only choose Aang as a minifigure instead of the whole team avatar because in this particular project I want to highlight the relationship between Appa and Aang. If I am lucky enough and LEGO chooses this idea as a future product there is obviously the possibility to add other characters from the series like Katara or Sokka as well.

The main built consists obviously of Appa himself. I tried to build Appa as detailed and as near to the original from the series as possible. This means he should be pretty close to minifigure scale and the proportions should be right depending on the footage from the series I used as a blue print.

I would guess, Appa himself consists of about 2000 pieces as I used many little parts for details and built the interior solidly to make him more stable. In terms of dimensions he is pretty close to DIN A4 and about 20 cm high.

Appa is built to be in his flying pose with the toes angled downwards, the legs slightly angled backwards and the head tilted down a little bit. As a function you can move the legs individually in a slight angle to be either perfectly vertical or slightly angled.

The drawback of my built is that Appa can‘t be displayed without the stand because of the angled toes and the weight of Appa. I sacrificed this possibility to showcase Appa in his iconic flying pose making this more of a display piece than a play set.

Personally I had a lot uf fun building Appa as he is so iconic for me and especially I enjoyed building the head section of him struggling to find the right techniques for the curved tip of the arrow and the curved face.

As mentioned earlier I chose Aang as the only minifigure for this product idea. As the one LEGO made years ago is not affordable for me, I tried to make a custom minifigure. I think a minifigure like I came up with should be well integrated in such a set. This means dual molded legs, a cloth piece in orange and the printed head with the blue arrow. Furthermore, I added the blue arrows on the hands, which could be the next step in minifigure printing for LEGO. In addition, I built the glider Aang uses to fly on himself, bending air. So you can choose to display Aang either sitting on Appa or in the saddle or flying with his glider next to Appa.

The black stand makes a great contrast to the mostly white Appa showing no studs to make it more elegant. In the centre of the stand I added the symbol of airbending because both Aang and Appa can bend air. Moreover, the corners of the stand show the four elements in the order of the intro of the TV series. The four elements are designed to imitate the four bending styles regarding to the intro. The stand consists of roughly 200 bricks making a total of about 2200 pieces.

In my opinion, this is the perfect display set for LEGO because it shows the most iconic characters Appa the sky bison and Avatar Aang of an even more iconic TV series being worthy to watch not only for children but also for adults. In addition there is the 20th anniversary of the TV series in 2025 and everyone loves anniversaries. If this project gathers enough support and if LEGO wants it to become a real LEGO set than they obviously have the freedom to vary the number of included minifigures and try to make Appa more playable.