Short lived seasonal sets are a mainstay of the LEGO Group’s product offering and Halloween is no different. Each year LEGO releases a range of Autumnal / Halloween themed sets, including a small budget option. 2025 is no different seeing the release of 40822 Jack-O-Lantern Pickup Truck!
Having reviewed the equivalent set from last year, it only felt right, to grab this year’s release to see how it stands up.
#40822 – Jack-O’-Lantern Pickup Truck – Details
| Set Number | 40822 |
| Name | Jack-O’-Lantern Pickup Truck |
| Theme | Seasonal (Halloween) |
| Released Date | August 2025 |
| Retired Date | Est 2026 |
| Pieces | 177 |
| Minifigures | 1 |
| Retail Price | £12.99 / $14.99 / €14,99 |
| PPP | 7.3p / 8.5c |
The set comes in a fairly small box sporting a spooky purple and yellow aesthetic. You might notice that there’s no theme logo and that’s because the seasonal theme is part of LEGO’s miscellaneous/other category.
Cracking open the box yields a small instruction booklet, a loose 4×12 dark tan plate, and four piece bags.
Bag 1
The first bag gets right down to it – building the set’s one minifigure, and starting on the pickup truck. There isn’t much to say about the truck so far. If you’ve built small LEGO vehicles before, you’ll be aware of the process. The modified clip / bar plates do add much needed texture to the side of the build and are a nice addition.
The minifigure feels at home in the set despite not being obviously Halloween themed. His farmer crossed with adventurer vibe goes well with the Halloween pumpkin theme. As expected for a budget set, all the minifigure parts have been seen before. Although, the torso is a fairly new element, first being used in 2024 in 21353 The Botanical Garden.
It would have been nice to see a more spooky minifigure. With a different head piece the minifigure could easily have been a zombie or a ghoul.
Bag 2
Bag two is when the spooky Halloween elements really start to show. Dumping out the bag, my eyes were immediately drawn to several pieces including a bone, a spider, and some great trans-bright green pieces.
Adding on the pieces from bag two actually completes the pickup truck. You could quite easily reuse the pickup truck for MOCs or other builds.
The truck is replete with a flat-bed, vines, and a hitch-hiking spider who seems to have startled the minifigure so much his hat has gone wonky.
Jokes aside, the completed truck looks less like a pickup truck and more like the lowrider cars of the 40s and 50s. The overall brown colour of the truck lets all the other pieces pop. The trans-green elements appear to almost glow, and the silver wheels add a cool contrast to the build’s warm tones.
Bag 3
With the truck completed, Bag three starts on building the oversized pumpkin. The build uses Brickheadz style SNOT (Studs Not On Top) techniques by attaching curved orange panels to a square center.
Overall this bag was fairly repetitive with both the sides being the same. The highlight was dropping the skeleton minifigure head and mini-pumpkin into the pumpkin build. If that doesn’t sound very riveting – you’d be right.
On a side note I’m not sure why the designers decided on using an orange minifigure head to stand-in as a pumpkin when there is an actual LEGO pumpkin piece?
Bag 4
Last but not least is bag four. This final bag finishes off the pumpkin build and attaches it to the back of the pickup truck. The face is created with black angled pieces and you could definitely re-arrange them to create different expressions.
Overall the set comes together easily and is fun and quick to build. Whilst the colour-scheme and general vibe of the build is spooky – it really requires the huge pumpkin to make it a Halloween build. This is really both a positive and a negative as whilst the seasonal aesthetic relies too heavily on one part, the build could easily be reused for other creations.
Comparing this year’s Halloween build to last year’s (See last year’s review here) really puts the set in perspective. Both sets retailed for the same price of £12.99 / $14.99 / €14,99. Whilst maintaining the price is commendable, the number of pieces shrank from 205 in 2024’s Halloween Barn to only 177 in the Pickup Truck. It’s quite easy to see this when looking at the sizes of the builds.
However, despite the piece reduction, the set is still overall good value and you’re unlikely to find many set cheaper these days. As said earlier, it would have been nice to see a more spooky minifigure. The designers could easily have gone for a zombie look by changing the head piece. Pinching the new head piece from the Frankenstein’s Monster minifigure from the new 31167 Haunted Mansion set would’ve worked great.
With these small grumbles in mind, the set still achieves what it sets out to do – namely being a cheap, seasonal, Halloween set. It’s not quite as good as last year’s but still worth picking up!
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What do you think of the LEGO Group’s latest Halloween set? Are you going to grab this spooky set? Let us know in the comments below!
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