Captain Iron Hook vs Captain Red Beard - The Case Finally Solved After almost 40 Years: Heads, Legs and Names Oh My!

[kelceycoe]

I tried to delete my other posts so I could redo newer posts that were shorter and conclusive, so here goes....

After reviewing commercials, catalogs, and club magazines across Europe and the United States (and limited Japanese media), I have finally been able to resolve this issue.

Understand, growing up here in America, we were not exposed to much Pirates lore as other regions so this is more in respect to Americans than anyone else.

First, the name "Captain Iron Hook" is NOT recognized by ANY official American Lego media (some of you may say But wait, what about The Lego Book... and remember, that is published by DK out of the UK).

Captain Red Beard, in America, was always promoted as the sole Pirate captain. Both mini figures were rarely seen together in America (I only recall the 1993 commercial and even then the guy we call Captain Iron Hook was cowering behind Red Beard on Rock Island Refuge). Not to mention throughout many American catalog diaramas Captain Red Beard can be seen many times throughout various scenes ("Captain Iron Hook" was usually hiding in the distance or not as easy to find).

Second, wherever a minifigure appeared from 1992-1996 with a red, tattered shirt, SO DID the "dark red / brown face resembling Captain Red Beard." This can also be verified on Bricklink by searching for all instances of this torso - you will notice it always matches the "Dark Red" version. Note that usually, but not always, this head appeared Brown when the lighting was angled a certain way and Dark Red in other ways (to see this, stack all of your heads with Dark Red and lay them besides a stack of Captain Red Beard heads; I verified all of my heads, most this way, but counted the number of heads I had and verified this was accurate - this brown/dark red face only appeared in 7 original sets and 2 reissues, so if you even collected the reissues you would have a maximum of 9, assuming you never repeated a set). This doesn't exactly rule out the fact we Americans were MISLED to believe he was Captain Red Beard - the blame on that goes to the Lego Club Mania magazines for 1994-1995 where they stated Captain Red Beard led the Renegade Runner - a ship with the "Captain Iron Hook" minifigure.

Third, many of us confused ourselves about his legs. If we laid out the sets BY THE YEAR RELEASED as I have done so below, it all makes sense: He started out with legs but during the Islanders sets he now had a pegleg. I go on to argue, as no evidence suggests this (and TLG was NOT a company that left fans the "open possibility" to make our own inferences about lore) that the "variation" of "Captain Iron Hook" that appeared in the 1996 set WAS NOT, AT ALL, THE SAME MINIFIGURE and that TLG basically did the same thing they did in The Black Seas Barracuda by just repeating faces/torsos and mashing them with different legs hats / legs (see Will, First Mate Rummy and Flashfork for examples). UPDATE: Thanks to TalonCard (see post below), he provided evidence that names the Ironhook-lookalike in the 1996 set, Red Beard Runner, as Jake "the Snake" Blake - completely proving Bricklink's reference to him as Iron Hook as another falsehood on Bricklink.

1992 Raft Raiders - legs

1993 Renegade Runner - legs

1994 Barnacle Bay - NA only set - legs

1994 Forbidden Cove - pegleg

1994 Enchanted Island - pegleg

1995 1788 Treasure Chest - pegleg

 

So in summary:

• In AMERICA: The "second Pirate Captain" has no official name, from an American perspective.
• His facial hair is either dark red or brown, dependent upon the lighting and angles and always with the tattered red shirt torso.
• He started with legs but ended with a legleg.
• He is NOT the same minifigure seen in the 1996 ship set as Bricklink claims. His real name is Jake "the Snake" Blake.
• Therefore, as it relates to an official cannon for those of us here in America, his backstory has no factual meaning to us, i.e. friends in Europe or enemies in Japan.
• To each his own. If an American fan wants to adopt the name "Captain Iron Hook," honestly it's probably better for us that we do since he began with legs and his set reign ended with a pegleg.

Edited September 9 by kelceycoe

[Admiral Bejaune]

My take on the Redbeard/ Iron hook topic, is that they are the same person.  Iron Hook sounds like a name a native islander might call someone with a hook for a hand. And I think the first wave of Islanders came out when Iron Hook was introduced.  At least thats what my mind, as a kid, thought.  To be honests I havent thought about the Redbeard/ Iron Hook thing since I was a kid.  To me Iron Hook is Redbeard either having a hard time with the Islanders, or was in his battle and his clothes show it.  An interesting read! Thanks!

[Brick Bandit]

Hey there! 

[TalonCard]

For what it's worth, Ironhook was originally a proposed name for the Pirate Captain character that became Roger/Redbeard, and the Ironhook-lookalike-with-tricorne from the Redbeard Runner was given a name in the US Mania Magazine, Jake "the Snake" Blake.

[kelceycoe]

37 minutes ago, TalonCard said:

For what it's worth, Ironhook was originally a proposed name for the Pirate Captain character that became Roger/Redbeard, and the Ironhook-lookalike-with-tricorne from the Redbeard Runner was given a name in the US Mania Magazine, Jake "the Snake" Blake.

Oh thank god! I can see why I missed it but I knew - without having proof - he really wasn't Captain Iron Hook despite Bricklink having him listed as so. I really wish someone would begin correcting all the errors there.

1 hour ago, Admiral Bejaune said:

My take on the Redbeard/ Iron hook topic, is that they are the same person.  Iron Hook sounds like a name a native islander might call someone with a hook for a hand. And I think the first wave of Islanders came out when Iron Hook was introduced.  At least thats what my mind, as a kid, thought.  To be honests I havent thought about the Redbeard/ Iron Hook thing since I was a kid.  To me Iron Hook is Redbeard either having a hard time with the Islanders, or was in his battle and his clothes show it.  An interesting read! Thanks!

As a kid, thanks to the Lego Club Mania magazines from 1994-1995, I too always thought he was a shipwrecked/castaway version of Captain Red Beard that was more rugged and down on his luck and happened upon the Islanders. I always thought they were cannibals too and I probably got that assumption after watching National Geographic documentaries as a kid. After watching the film, "Cannibal Holocaust," I most definitely feel like the premise of the film loosely inspired the Islanders, even though the Club Magazine from Winter 1994 wrote an article about islanders from Fiji and related the Kahuka statue as similar to the ones on Easter Island. (In case you're what what connection I am seeing with the cannibals from Cannibal Holocaust and Lego Islanders - in the film the cannibals were peaceful until they were threatened; much like the Islanders here, if you watch the commercials and notice the dioramas the Islanders are literally some of the more earlier brutally violent groups to come to Lego - they feed their enemies to crocodiles and many fans believe they were also headshrinkers so yea some serious tribal stuff).

[Brick Bandit]

Hey there! I’m brick bandit on YouTube and have really been trying to put together lore videos and stuff for these Lego characters. Although I am not an expert on this stuff if any of you guys could help me I’d really appreciate it. I’m not sure if there’s a way to DM on here or what not because I just had to create an account on here and have never posted here before. If you have Instagram and are really good at this red beard lore and story please reach out to me on Instagram or however through here with any information you have regarding red beards complete history! 

[TalonCard]

8 hours ago, kelceycoe said:

Oh thank god! I can see why I missed it but I knew - without having proof - he really wasn't Captain Iron Hook despite Bricklink having him listed as so. I really wish someone would begin correcting all the errors there.

I don't think Bricklink does have the Redbeard Runner minifigure listed as Ironhook, at least not currently? Seems to be  "Pirate Shirt with Knife, Black Legs, Brown Pirate Triangle Hat"
That being said though, I think there's still a case to be made that he is the same character. The exact quote from The LEGO Book New Edition (2018) you mentioned is: "The second LEGO Pirates captain was Captain Ironhook, introduced in 1992 and shown in command of the Renegade Runner in 1993 (6268). Not as stylishly dressed as Captains Redbeard or Brickbeard, the tattered Ironhook battled the Royal Guards and Islanders and occasionally gained or lost a peg-leg. He was last seen aboard 1996's Red Beard Runner (6289)." I think some folks discount the DK books as sources since they tend to be light on research and proofreading, and true, they are from the UK, but for me I like to use them since there are relatively few LEGO lore nuggets out there and I welcome all sources. I'm a fan of interpreting apparently contradictory information as a character arc; I like the idea that Jake Blake took on the moniker Ironhook as a fearsome pirate captain, but was eventually reduced to working as a deckhand on the Redbeard Runnner for his longtime frenemy Captain Redbeard.

If one interprets the lore only from an American perspective, while Ironhook's name wasn't used back when the sets were released, it's been referenced in recent years in the Pirates of Barracuda Bay instructions and the Pirate Captain collectable minifigure biography, for whatever that's worth.

 

7 hours ago, Brick Bandit said:

Hey there! I’m brick bandit on YouTube and have really been trying to put together lore videos and stuff for these Lego characters. Although I am not an expert on this stuff if any of you guys could help me I’d really appreciate it. I’m not sure if there’s a way to DM on here or what not because I just had to create an account on here and have never posted here before. If you have Instagram and are really good at this red beard lore and story please reach out to me on Instagram or however through here with any information you have regarding red beards complete history! 

Hey Brick Bandit! You can DM here; I'll reach out. I'm doing a video series on Redbeard myself right now.

Edited September 9 by TalonCard

[kelceycoe]

5 hours ago, TalonCard said:

If one interprets the lore only from an American perspective, while Ironhook's name wasn't used back when the sets were released, it's been referenced in recent years in the Pirates of Barracuda Bay instructions and the Pirate Captain collectable minifigure biography, for whatever that's worth.

I was only giving the American perspective because most of the other sites have ignored the perspective. Which I do understand because Lego is ultimately an European toy and with anything else, American kids aren't known for their interest in lore or the like, especially back then, and I remember the story why we don't have the real Kinder eggs - because American kids aren't very bright and wouldn't understand there is a toy within that chocolate hollow kid. If anything, the American perspective of not naming the pirate from 1992-1995 as Iron Hook when the rest of the world did honestly would have made everything in this country make more sense, especially when our comic in our country claimed Red Beard commanded the Renegade Runner despite that figure having legs. To us in the US, maybe we thought they pulled a Gold Medallion and gave us some weird younger, origin version to Red Beard as they had done in the Gold Medallion set.

[kelceycoe]

Also, looking at both Bricklink and Brickopedia, I am unsure what caused me to write this. I think it's because of something I read on this forum or there could be older information on those sites not yet updated because after looking they definitely make it clear who Captain Roger Red Beard (Bricklink, bless them, also differentiates between the older Red Beard and newer Redbeard - and yes there is a difference in name and appearance even though one refers to the vintage original and the other refers to the remake from far back into the early 2000s).

But I do feel, at least, this was needed because, obviously as kids growing up, some of us may not have had the Club magazines so could easily be even more confused. Once I put the sets in order of appearance (only assuming Barnacle Bay - which technically isn't an "official set" in the sense and tied only to North America) did it actually make sense as the Captain Iron Hook figure started with legs and then with a legleg. I only wish American media would have honestly just adopted the name Iron Hook here to make it less confusing for us overall and I didn't have to wait 30 some years and for the Internet to have some better clarification.

[Ammiraglio_Artic]

It’s a very interesting topic! I don’t know if you’re aware, but between 1995 and 1996 in Germany and France (and maybe also in other European countries, though I’m not sure) the magazine LEGO Klick was published, featuring a serialized comic story where the main character experienced various adventures across the LEGO worlds. In the episode dedicated to LEGO Pirates, he meets Captains Roger-Redbeard and Ironhook, who are presented as two separate and distinct characters. Ironhook clearly looks like himself, but he is called Schwarzbart, meaning Blackbeard (which doesn’t make much sense since he doesn’t have a black beard), and he is drawn with both legs.

https://archive.org/search?query=lego+klick

[url=https://postimg.cc/G45q7BdW][img]https://i.postimg.cc/pd24d87L/klick-as-1995-05-0011.jpg[/img][/url]

Edited September 9 by Ammiraglio_Artic

[kelceycoe]

I wasn't aware of the comic but I was aware he was also called Blackbeard in some countries due to translation issues from what I can only guess. No it doesn't make sense. The comic is even more confusing since he has a pegleg in the Islander sets, unless he loses his leg after he was captured by the Islanders in that same comic, but I also noticed this magazine was May 1995 a year after the Islanders dropped so definitely an idea.

Needless to say I feel now this is a resolved topic. Factually, Captain Iron Hook was unnamed in America but was either Iron Hook or Black Beard depending where you were from. No matter his name, he is definitely a distance character from both Captain Red Beard AND Jake the Snake who appears in the 1996 ship known as Red Beard Runner and The Marauder. But ultimately, each to their own and there's nothing that really forces anyone to derive from the facts and make up their own versions.

[TalonCard]

I also tried to track Ironhook's peg leg from appearance to appearance, in hopes of some consistency. Mixed results there. But since even the reference book points out that he seemed to gain and loose his peg leg from appearance to appearance, I figure he just sometimes wears a more convincing wooden leg that allows him to wear shoes; which wasn't unheard of at the time. (And of course, however often they interprete the characters as human, as minifigures they can swap whatever body parts they want, lol.)

[kelceycoe]

9 hours ago, TalonCard said:

I also tried to track Ironhook's peg leg from appearance to appearance, in hopes of some consistency. Mixed results there. But since even the reference book points out that he seemed to gain and loose his peg leg from appearance to appearance, I figure he just sometimes wears a more convincing wooden leg that allows him to wear shoes; which wasn't unheard of at the time. (And of course, however often they interprete the characters as human, as minifigures they can swap whatever body parts they want, lol.)

This is why I posted the American perspective and tried to do so with the same thought process I had as a kid with the limited resources I had to do so (I did have a family member living in Europe at the time but she never bought me a Lego set from Europe that I remember so I wasn't exposed to the Captain Iron Hook lore). We weren't exposed to these inconsistencies but we were also misled to believe he and Red Beard were the same person. If you ignore all the literature and treat the set order I listed above it all makes sense.

Also, I found out what caused me to bring up this subject - Youtube influencers. One went so far to say - and used the European article on the "Indigos" claiming Red Beard and Iron Hook were the same person (see Bricks 'n Pieces – Spring 1994) - the influencer was really young and kind of just went with the flow about things) yet many of the European catalogs thankfully separated them.

Edited September 10 by kelceycoe

[Mister Phes]

This is what happened to Ironhook's leg...

[kelceycoe]

6 hours ago, Mister Phes said:

This is what happened to Ironhook's leg...

That's funny and I can stand behind that lol