Lego 1989 Treasure Hunt - Toy Fair Dealer Catalog "Scans" Available

[kelceycoe]

Thanks to a recent E-bay seller, we now have very good phone photos of this highly in demand catalog. I was able to save them from Ebay and uploaded them for everyone to enjoy. A bit of disappointment but neat nevertheless.

View and download these "scans" here:

https://archive.org/details/lego1989toyfaircatalog

What do you think the other Pirates commercial was? I know about the Pirates / Castle Lego Maniac commercial (it aired fourth quarter and you can find some recordings of it along with many program airings, such as a December airing of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1989) but I don't think I have seen another Lego Pirates USA commercial.

[Mister Phes]

13 hours ago, kelceycoe said:

Thanks to a recent E-bay seller, we now have very good phone photos of this highly in demand catalog.

You mean you didn't win the auction?

13 hours ago, kelceycoe said:

I was able to save them from Ebay and uploaded them for everyone to enjoy. A bit of disappointment but neat nevertheless.

Thank you for sharing! That's the first time I've seen page 28 and the cover, although I've seen page 29 somewhere before...

 

13 hours ago, kelceycoe said:

I know about the Pirates / Castle Lego Maniac commercial

Is this the LEGO Maniac commercial?

 

And there were a couple of other commercials:

 

 

 

 

 

[kelceycoe]

13 hours ago, Mister Phes said:

You mean you didn't win the auction?

Is this the LEGO Maniac commercial?

 

My sincerest apologies as I quickly skimmed pages 28-29.

In the 1989 Toy Fair Dealer Catalog for he United States of America, the Lego Pirates line was only introduced but not actually featured. If you look on the table of contents on page 3, you'll notice you do not see Pirates anywhere yet at least 4 sets appear on pages 28-29. Why?

Because I overlooked what page 28 says - Advertising and Promotion. This was a subchapter for the LEGOLAND chapter. The text on Page 28, while the page itself displays some Pirates info, reflects the promotional marketing plan for December 1988-December 1989, in that the ENTIRE yer would only see TWO commercials promoting Legoland sets - ONE in FIRST QUARTER (I am guessing January-March) and ONE in the FOURTH quarter (October-December). What we know now about the commercials thanks to archivists is that this was referring to these 2 Lego Maniac commercials:

Town/Space Lego Maniac USA Commercial : 

Castle/Pirates Lego Maniac USA Commercial:

 

It should also be noted that I have found December 1989 airings of the Castle/Pirates commercial during the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer airing here in the USA:

https://archive.org/details/capture-a-4544

There were also commercials for the 1989 Lego McDonalds Happy Meal toys released here in the United States. The Lego Motion campaign ran from July 28 through August 24 in 1989. I have found 2, one featuring Dick Christie who played the boy's dad in the weirdly-hit 80s sitcom, Small Wonder. I am sharing them below.

The Happy Meal toys weren't anything fancy and honestly too reminiscent of Lego era prior to 1978 with its blocky bricks construction and more of a major advertising win for Lego (despite having success in 1986 with McDonalds already):

 

Better quality:

McDonalds even used their own mascot - Ronald McDonald - to promote these sets:

And just for the fun of it, because unlike Europe which released all of the original Pirates sets in 1989, here in the United States the Big Four were available to retailers with the 1990 SAH catalog claiming they were making four smaller sets available to catalog customers August 1989 (no confirmation this ever happened - also, every box I have ever found for these sets had a 1989, 1990 copyright date; only the Big Four had a sole 1989 date. ALL of the 1989 sets in Europe had a 1989 date but I have not seen of 1990 was ever added to any in Europe). 1990 is really when the Pirates line took off here in the United States and was officially launched here in the United States, so the 1990 US Toy Fair Dealer Catalog is now heavily sought after for scans/photos of every page.

So for the fun of it, this was the commercial for the Pirates line here in the United States:

 

UPDATE: 9/16/2025 : I have found further evidence that Lego did reuse commercials in later years. This 1990 commercial was reused towards the end of 1991 with new voice-over naming the actual 3 sets:

https://archive.org/details/capture-a-1370

I did NOT remember Lego doing this but they re-released a 1987 commercial for 1989; in this case they used the Thomas Edison commercial (for the record they did at least one ore like this homaging the Wright Brothers):

https://archive.org/details/capture-a-3992

 

ADDED BONUS:

The Pirates line, as you have seen above, was co-promoted with the Castle theme in 1989. This was done in the above commercial and again in the small leaflet/poster/mini-sheet/one-sheet found in small Lego sets in America :

https://archive.org/details/1989-lego-mini-pirates-castle-us-catalog/mode/2up

They each had their own mini-catalogs in 1990:

https://archive.org/details/1990-lego-mini-pirates-catalog/page/n1/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/1993-lego-mini-castle-catalog

They also each had their own sheets in 1989 Europe:

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?C=m89eupi#T=S&O={"iconly":0}

 

Note: I *may* update the first post of this thread later with this new information to make it all clearer.

Edited September 16 by kelceycoe

[Mister Phes]

On 9/16/2025 at 2:53 PM, kelceycoe said:

Castle/Pirates Lego Maniac USA Commercial:

 

Ok, so that's the same LEGO Maniac commercial as I posted above.

 

On 9/16/2025 at 2:53 PM, kelceycoe said:

Note: I *may* update the first post of this thread later with this new information to make it all clearer.

Thank you for this comprehensive summary! 

This is very valuable archival retrieval for the history of LEGO Pirates!

 

[kelceycoe]

9 hours ago, Mister Phes said:

Ok, so that's the same LEGO Maniac commercial as I posted above.

You're welcome but I wanted to help clarify there were only two Maniac commercials, period, that year and not just for the Pirates line.

I think the 1990 Dealer catalog will be even more insightful since that's the year we got the all of the 1989 Pirate sets a once here in the USA but I only found 4 hard to read pages and nothing about Pirates.

[R0Sch]

@kelceycoe Thanks for the photos, but could you please photograph each page individually without your finger and hand covering everything? Saving the pics to pdf would also be helpful.

[kelceycoe]

Those weren't mine and photos I took off of Ebay. Best we have until someone else with that book scans them.

[Mister Phes]

On 9/19/2025 at 6:03 PM, kelceycoe said:

Those weren't mine and photos I took off of Ebay. Best we have until someone else with that book scans them.

Out of curiosity... is there a link to the auction webpage?

[kelceycoe]

18 hours ago, Mister Phes said:

Out of curiosity... is there a link to the auction webpage?

Yes here

[Mister Phes]

2 hours ago, kelceycoe said:

Yes here

Thank ye!

It fetched a decent price as well: