Spring 1993 Bricks n Pieces Magazines

[TalonCard]

Hey all,

For those of you who enjoy retro LEGO magazines, I have sought out and scanned this Ice Planet themed issue of the UK club magazine Bricks 'n Pieces from Spring 1993. I haven't seen this elsewhere online, but if it's already up somewhere, let me know. 

I'm looking to track down any of the remaining LEGO magazines from around the world that haven't already been archived somewhere, and would like to encourage others to do so too to preserve a little bit of LEGO history! Let me know if you have a lead. Big thank you to anyone who's taken the time to do this over the years.

[Aanchir]

Thank you again for putting in the time and effort to obtain, scan, and share these!
 

The planet itself being called "Ice Planet 2002" is a bit surprising since other British publications identified it as "Krysto-2002", but we saw a similar trend in US publications which referred to it either as "Ice Planet 2002" or "Ice Planet Krysto". But rather than a contradiction, I think it's safe to say that these are just alternate ways of referring to the same planet, sort of like how in real life a lot of newly discovered celestial bodies receive informal designations before they are assigned formal names by the IAU (like 14 Andromedae b, later formally named "Spe").

The Ice Planet article also strangely makes it sound like "Commander Bear" is the name of the VEHICLE rather than its pilot, but this is probably just poor phrasing due to identifying each major vehicle with the name of the set it comes in — other British set names like 6705 Commander Bear and the Spyrians make it clear that Commander Bear is the name of the character.

I definitely find it neat that British publications like this actually have a clear title for the lower-ranking Ice Planet explorers ("Ice Ranger" or "Ice Planet Ranger"), as opposed to just referring to them generically as astronauts or scientists like American publications do. Of course, I still actually kind of prefer the UK's shared job title for lower-ranking Ice Planet officers compared to the German catalogs' approach, which gave the figures a wide variety of job titles that were perhaps needlessly specific, and often varied between sets even if the figures in the sets were identical. Some of these included Transgalaktonaut, Nachrichtenspezialist, Countdown Spezialist, Wissenschaftler, Klimatologe, and Galaktologe (in English, "Trans-Galactonaut", "Communications Specialist", "Countdown Specialist", "Scientist", "Climatologist", and "Galactologist").

And certainly none of these character names or titles are as weird as this French magazine ad in which the Ice Planet commander introduces himself as Le sage immortel de la planete glacée "Ice-Planet" ("The Immortal Sage of the Frozen Planet 'Ice-Planet'"). I'm… not sure where that idea came from or what it was meant to imply, because it's a wild tonal shift from the sort of conventional sci-fi technobabble typical of other countries' space theme marketing, and feels more like something out of Dune or John Carter of Mars than, say, Star Wars or Star Trek.

That said, I also find it interesting that like the British catalogs, this magazine only really describes the characters settling this newly discovered planet to use it as a launch base for satellites and rockets, unlike blurbs and publications from countries like the US and Germany that go a step further by describing them as scientists conducting research on the planet. For all we know, these astronauts as portrayed in the British media may have just chosen this planet as a communications hub because it's conveniently located, and the frozen environment may be just an inconvenience for them rather than a reason that they chose this newly discovered planet for their operations.
 

On another note, the Pirates article on page 8 also caught me a little off guard by identifying 6268 The Sea Vulture as one of Captain Roger's ships, even though other British marketing materials identify its captain as Captain Ironhook. But upon reflection, the Summer 1992 issue had identified Captain Ironhook as an "old friend" and ally of Captain Roger, and the Spring 1994 issue actually used a picture of Ironhook to accompany a story about Captain Roger. So this could have been either an error/oversight, a retcon, or just a sign that at this point British promotional media simply considered Ironhook and his ships a part of Captain Roger's fleet.

US-based promotional media simply treated the two pirate captains as the same character in two different outfits, just as it had with Governor Broadside and Admiral Woodhouse. I don't care for this approach myself, especially since Captain Roger clearly has a peg leg while Captain Ironhook usually does not. But I suspect that was a pragmatic choice, since a lot of the more story-driven LEGO Pirates media that served to flesh out these characters and their relationships to one another never made it to the United States.

By contrast, as we learned in this thread's transcriptions of German audio dramas, some non-English-speaking countries drew a GREATER distinction between the two characters — identifying them as leaders of two rival pirate bands, and portraying Ironhook as an outright villain compared to Roger's portrayal as an avaricious antihero. This is honestly the presentation I'm most fond of since it gives the characters and factions the most complexity.

[Celloguy]

 

This page mentions a hologram - would love to get one of these! I found it on another thread here, but sadly the photos are no longer available.

[EamonnMR]

I was going to scan my collection of magazines, but this person has already scanned most if not all of them:

https://emilyinternet.zone/realm/scans.html

I'll check this out later!