kelceycoe

Official Pirate Names (1989-1990 line)

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10 hours ago, kelceycoe said:

Because the mags of the Islanders issue are at a secret section on my site.

If you want to reference content on your site please provide a direct link to the correct webpage.

We don't all have time to go searching for hidden content we don't even know is hidden.

So if you want people to use your website, make it as easy as possible for them.

 

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On 6/5/2019 at 2:07 AM, kelceycoe said:

Oh... and why do people think Captain Ironhook and Captain Roger/Red Beard are two different captains? If you look at Bricks N pieces, Spring 1994, the pirate captain is called Captain Roger again, so when they named him Ironhook I thought maybe it was a nickname he had acquired by, perhaps, ruling his pirates crew "with an iron fist," or in this case, "with an iron hook." (I'm in the US not the UK where BNP was distributed BTW). In case anyone is confused by what I mean by my "rule with an iron fist" expression, it means Captain Roger was very strict and mean and to the point.

The US magazine with Islanders on the cover also refers to him as Captain Red Beard (naming his ship Renegade Runner) but he is dressed in black this time and not the red torn shirt when they called him Captain Roger in BNP.

 

 

That's interesting; as a kid in the US I never thought the torn red shirt figure was the same character as Captain Red Beard in spite of their obvious similarities. Their faces have different color printing for the hair and beard, which is subtle but was maintained throughout all future instances of the Red Beard/redshirt figures for four years, while both figures continued to be used. If the designers had meant for the redshirt figure to be a new version of the same character, the original Red Beard design would have gone away in sets released after 1992, and if it was intended to be an alternate, updated design, there was no reason not to use the new head printing on the old body.

(On the other hand, in the US, the similarly updated red Imperial Guards leader figure was consistently said to be the same character as the blue Imperial Soldier Governor Broadside, and I accepted that without question!)

But there are other factors too: Red Beard appears consistently from 1989-1997 dressed in a coat, fancy scarf, and with a peg leg. The ragged look of the redshirt figure doesn't really match the character's established look. Plus, the red shirt figure appeared with and without peg legs and with pants of all colors, so it seemed that he was more of a generic pirate figure than Red Beard; likely representing a bunch of different pirates rather than just a singular character. His last appearance, as Mister Phes pointed out, was in the Red Beard Runner with Red Beard, which seems to clinch the whole thing.

I never thought much about Red Beard being the captain of the Renegade Runner as I assumed he was the head of all the LEGO Pirates at that point--with a small fleet, he could be in charge of any ship without actually being in the set.

In the March-April 1996 issue of LEGO Mania Magazine the red shirt pirate is called Jake "the Snake" Blake, which was the first time, as far as I can tell, that a variant of the figure was given a character name in the US. It wasn't until I started looking around on the Internet years later that I learned that the marketing materials overseas had made a much bigger deal about the 1992 wave, calling the Imperial Guard leader Admiral Woodhouse and the red shirt pirate Captain Ironhook (or Blackbeard in some countries). Whenever the Ironhook name appears, it's always to differentiate him from Roger, so I doubt that a new nickname and mis-translation would have resulted in one character being split into two.

More likely, as Tazakkk points out, the occasions when Roger and Ironhook are presented as the same character as you've discovered in the 1994 Bricks and Pieces, were a result of marketing folks not picking up on the differences in the minifigures, or deciding they were too minor to bother with a new character, which is apparently what happened with Broadside and Woodhouse in the US.

As with any LEGO backstory it's up to you, the LEGO Maniac, to decide whether they're the same character or not. :laugh: But the idea of Ironhook as a distinct character from Roger isn't a fluke or a mistranslation, it's very well established in the multiple sources Tazakkk and Jamesster mentioned: the 1992 Bricks and Pieces magazine, Die Insel der schaurigen Masken and Piratensegel am Horizont audio dramas, and the Time Cruisers Klick comics. (The audio dramas even give a whole backstory about how Roger sold Renegade Runner to Ironhook and why Rummy from the Golden Medallion appears in that set.)

Personally I like having as many pirate characters around as possible, so I love to imagine that Jake and Ironhook and Red Beard and Broadside and Woodhouse are all running around the Tropical Sea somewhere. :head_back:

TC

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36 minutes ago, TalonCard said:

[...] so it seemed that he was more of a generic pirate figure than Red Beard; likely representing a bunch of different pirates rather than just a singular character. His last appearance, as Mister Phes pointed out, was in the Red Beard Runner with Red Beard, which seems to clinch the whole thing. [...] It wasn't until I started looking around on the Internet years later that I learned that the marketing materials overseas had made a much bigger deal about the 1992 wave, calling the Imperial Guard leader Admiral Woodhouse and the red shirt pirate Captain Ironhook (or Blackbeard in some countries). Whenever the Ironhook name appears, it's always to differentiate him from Roger, so I doubt that a new nickname and mis-translation would have resulted in one character being split into two.

Given Ironhook was named in various advertising media would seem to differentiate him from a generic pirate figure, otherwise why bother naming him?  In the UK at least, he's been talked up to someone more than just a regular crew member or an alternate version of Red Beard/Roger...

Below are some excerpts from the UK 1993 and 1994 catalogues featuring the name Ironhook.  However, there was also a comic included with some of the larger islander sets and I cannot recall whether Ironhook featured in that or not. I'll try and dig it up later.

Ironhook.jpg

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1 hour ago, Mister Phes said:

Given Ironhook was named in various advertising media would seem to differentiate him from a generic pirate figure, otherwise why bother naming him?  In the UK at least, he's been talked up to someone more than just a regular crew member or an alternate version of Red Beard/Roger...

Sorry, that was the point I was trying to make--in the US he didn't have a name as far as I can tell (at least not until 1996), and he wasn't presented as a leader of another faction of pirates. 1992 was very much a continuation of the Red Beard/Broadside conflict from the first wave, and the only notable thing about Ironhook was that he was one of three new pirate designs that year. In the UK and elsewhere, as you point out, it was a different matter. 

TC

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11 minutes ago, TalonCard said:

Sorry, that was the point I was trying to make--in the US he didn't have a name as far as I can tell (at least not until 1996)

So what changed in the US in 1996?

Was he named somewhere?

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That was ultimately meant to be my conclusion...

In the United States, according to our media (we were limited to SAH catalogs and club mags) he was Captain Red Beard.

Here is our 1996 SAH holiday catalog:

http://imgur.com/a/cB63h

Notice the running comic especially King Kahuka(sic) challenging Captain Red Beard to cross his bridge in the Enchanted Island set, calling him by name.

We didn't know about the German radio dramas, story books (did we?), or Bricks N Pieces or catalogs from other countries unless we visited that country, until the Internet. We only had the Golden Medallion comic book, Captain Roger's Activity Book (and as a kid I sure didn't care about the details like Anne and Bessie and assumed they were designed for that catalog) and club mags.

My guess is, because Pirates are European history and since we Americans like to simply things, the European market designed the Pirate lore in detail, we just give small details.

Also, as a kid, I never took anything printed in mags as factual since you had to usually buy them anyway. I don't know if the Dragon jn Dragon Masters had a name in this country and if it did I surely didn't care or consider it concrete. Just fodder to help us get more excited about buying or playing with our sets.

Edited by kelceycoe

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2 hours ago, Mister Phes said:

So what changed in the US in 1996?

Was he named somewhere?

The March/April 1996 Mania Magazine (from the US LEGO Club) named all of the pirate figures included in the Red Beard Runner, the figures in the image you posted. The name given to the Ironhook variant with the brown tricorn hat was Jake "the Snake" Blake. I'd mentioned that in my earlier post.

 

55 minutes ago, kelceycoe said:

That was ultimately meant to be my conclusion...

In the United States, according to our media (we were limited to SAH catalogs and club mags) he was Captain Red Beard.

Here is our 1996 SAH holiday catalog:

http://imgur.com/a/cB63h

Notice the running comic especially King Kahuka(sic) challenging Captain Red Beard to cross his bridge in the Enchanted Island set, calling him by name.

We didn't know about the German radio dramas, story books (did we?), or Bricks N Pieces or catalogs from other countries unless we visited that country, until the Internet. We only had the Golden Medallion comic book, Captain Roger's Activity Book (and as a kid I sure didn't care about the details like Anne and Bessie and assumed they were designed for that catalog) and club mags.

My guess is, because Pirates are European history and since we Americans like to simply things, the European market designed the Pirate lore in detail, we just give small details.

 

That's not quite the way I read it. The Kahuka challenging Red Beard to cross the bridge isn't speaking from the picture of the set; he's a separate image placed above the set listing. While he's referring to a feature of the set, the Kahuka visible in the set picture has no dialogue. The other image of Kahuka could just as easily be calling out the Red Beard figure also shown separately from the sets on page 38.

I mean, I see where you're coming from for sure, but I saw the same media at the same time and came to the opposite conclusion. I think we can both agree that in the US Ironhook was effectively a nonentity. I do seem to remember a t-shirt that had the Ironhook figure on it with "Red Beard" embroidered on it, but it was from the early 2000s and I can't remember if it was from LEGOLAND or if it was a bootlegged unofficial shirt.

I'd imagine that the American desire for simplification is one reason why we didn't get the expanded Pirate storyline from later years, agreed. Pirates are very, very much American history too, though; many of the most famous pirates visited North and South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, and even New York, not to mention that the Caribbean is far, far closer geographically to the US than it is to Europe.

You were lucky indeed to get Captain Roger's Activity Book! I didn't even hear about it until about twelve years ago. Where was it sold in the US?

TC

Edited by TalonCard

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I bought the book (Captain Roger one; just realized there is an American Captain Red Beard one) myself only a couple years ago. But... I did find on my American instruction from a Kelloggs set promotion this:

act1-promo.jpg

Note: It was called Captain Red Beard's Activity Book here in the US. It was free if you sent two UPC codes from a $15 purchase of 2 Pirates sets. I'll have to scan my copy for better resolution.

Also... let's retire the use of "Ironhook variant" - clearly it is the same brown beard/eye-patch but not the same minifigure. It's also confusing and clearly a of us are getting confused with this stuff. It implies that he is Captain Ironhook but a variant (Think Scooby Doo... those were variants. A sitting Scooby Doo did not make the standing Scooby Doo any less a Scooby Doo BUT Jake "The Snake" Blake (Im guessing a take on a possible Pirate who may have had that name and not WWF wrestler) is a DIFFERENT ENTITY from Captain Ironhook.

We just as well could put Anne's head in place of his to make a new minifigure. Or... gasp... replace Red Beard's head with her head!

I mean, owning the entire 1989/1990 line, I have enough Pirate minifigs to make customs and not take away from the main crew lol.

And yes, you are correct, the Caribbean is closer to the USA... BUT... the Pirates setting was 18th century aka 1700s. We didn't become a country until 1776 so we were still owned by the British until then. So the Pirates were technically in Europe until after 1776 when we become the USA lol

Edited by kelceycoe

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2 hours ago, TalonCard said:

I'd mentioned that in my earlier post.

That you did, but stupid Mister Phes was busy with work and didn't have time to go back and reread the earlier posts.  Completely forgot the specifics of that post. :pir_wacko:

2 hours ago, TalonCard said:

The March/April 1996 Mania Magazine (from the US LEGO Club) named all of the pirate figures included in the Red Beard Runner, the figures in the image you posted.

Where might we find a scan of that magazine?

Is this the one you're referring to?

1.jpg

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The named pirates were hidden throughout the magazine; Jake is on page 10, lower left hand corner.

I know it's been awhile, but I did point out the miniland scans and their relevance to Pirate lore on this very forum. Like, over five years ago, but still. ?

TC

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58 minutes ago, TalonCard said:

The named pirates were hidden throughout the magazine; Jake is on page 10, lower left hand corner.

I know it's been awhile, but I did point out the miniland scans and their relevance to Pirate lore on this very forum. Like, over five years ago, but still. ?

TC

Thats all good and all but many of those issues remain incomplete, like the Mania premiere issue I just made another topic for.

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Dude, I know. I'm delighted that you've found more obscure pirate things and are finding a home for them; pointing out the shortcomings of the existing archives is unnecessary.

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4 hours ago, TalonCard said:

I know it's been awhile, but I did point out the miniland scans and their relevance to Pirate lore on this very forum. Like, over five years ago, but still. ?

These days I've become so busy I don't remember what was discussed 5 days ago. :pir_wacko:

I've got so many different projects underway, it's hard to keep track of forum discussions, so if the info/content is not within the immediate posts, there is a high chance I'll forget.

Anyway, I found Jake the Snake Blake on page 10 of the March/April 1996 LEGO Maniac Magazine!

10 - Jake the Snake.jpg

 

 

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On 6/7/2019 at 1:17 AM, kelceycoe said:

I bought the book (Captain Roger one; just realized there is an American Captain Red Beard one) myself only a couple years ago. But... I did find on my American instruction from a Kelloggs set promotion this:

Oh wow, that's a great find! I wonder if that version of the activity book was available anywhere besides the mail-in promotion--if not, it's probably extremely rare. I'd love what else they changed to reference the American version of the story.

 

On 6/7/2019 at 1:17 AM, kelceycoe said:

Also... let's retire the use of "Ironhook variant" - clearly it is the same brown beard/eye-patch but not the same minifigure. It's also confusing and clearly a of us are getting confused with this stuff. It implies that he is Captain Ironhook but a variant (Think Scooby Doo... those were variants. A sitting Scooby Doo did not make the standing Scooby Doo any less a Scooby Doo BUT Jake "The Snake" Blake (Im guessing a take on a possible Pirate who may have had that name and not WWF wrestler) is a DIFFERENT ENTITY from Captain Ironhook.

Wasn't sure what else to call him--Torn Red-shirt pirate with brown tri-corn? Personally, I agree with you that he's probably a different pirate character; as I said, I'd prefer for there to be both Captain Ironhook, renegade pirate, and Jake Blake, loyal crewmember of the Red Beard Runner.

(For argument's sake, though, there's no reason he couldn't be the same pirate with a different hat, but that's neither here nor there.)

Actually, I think you're completely right about the WWF wrestler Jake "the Snake" being a partial reference for the name. The 1990s Mania Magazines had lots of little nods to American sports and pop culture, and the red, torn shirt even looks a little like what a wrestler might wear. Good catch!

 

On 6/7/2019 at 1:17 AM, kelceycoe said:

And yes, you are correct, the Caribbean is closer to the USA... BUT... the Pirates setting was 18th century aka 1700s. We didn't become a country until 1776 so we were still owned by the British until then. So the Pirates were technically in Europe until after 1776 when we become the USA lol

Yeah, but it's not like Americans are only interested in American history at the literal point at which the US became a country, nor would we group our colonial history under the heading of European history before 1776.  :imperialguard_commander1:  I'd wager that pirate history and stories were just as popular here in the 1990s as they were in Europe.

TC

Edited by TalonCard

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13 hours ago, TalonCard said:

Yeah, but it's not like Americans are only interested in American history at the literal point at which the US became a country, nor would we group our colonial history under the heading of European history before 1776.  :imperialguard_commander1:  I'd wager that pirate history and stories were just as popular here in the 1990s as they were in Europe.

TC

In terms of history, right up to 1776 history books called the American Revolutionary War. Before that we were considered a part of Colonial Europe and thus our history before formulating as a country actually is European History.

Even if there are "American History" books that start off with Native American history then jump to Chris Columbus "discovering" America in 1492...but even then credit goes to Europe and European history no matter how many American authors try to "Americanize" or "revise" European history.

30 minutes ago, Mister Phes said:

Is now a good time to mention Captain Jack Knife? :pir-classic:

 

Cptn._Jack_Knife.png

And...who was he? A new pirate captain from Lego Universe? I don't really play the games. Never liked them since Island debuted 

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2 hours ago, kelceycoe said:

And...who was he? A new pirate captain from Lego Universe? I don't really play the games. Never liked them since Island debuted 

Yes, he's a character from LEGO universe, who became captain of the Black Seas Barracuda, after Captain Roger/Red Beard.

His original character design was based on Ironhook...

Capn_jack_knife.png

1 hour ago, Runamuck said:

So, has anyone actually bothered to check the index that we have over these things?

Of course not - that would be too easy!

Well, actually, I did consider merging these two topics at some point, but for now just seeing where this one goes.

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7 hours ago, Runamuck said:

So, has anyone actually bothered to check the index that we have over these things?

I know that it’s a bit outdated, but we made a rather lengthy list of named pirates and ships:

https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/2917-pirate-figures-and-set-names/&page=6&tab=comments#comment-1716065

Yes but on a mobile device it's hard to browse through. Unfortunately we are in a new era which means new technology and new ways of doing things. Indexes on a forum just aren't it.

Not to mention the links to brickset and brickfactory are broken, so verifying their appearances, listed on 2013, isn't a possibility.

Edited by kelceycoe

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How about "Hey, Runamuck, I'm sorry, I must have overlooked that list. I see you worked hard on that. Looks like some of the links are broken, but we could probably fix that with about a half hour of Googling." Or if you'd like to share some of those new technologies and new ways of doing things, we'd be all ears.

Edited by TalonCard

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On 6/7/2019 at 1:48 AM, TalonCard said:

I'd imagine that the American desire for simplification is one reason why we didn't get the expanded Pirate storyline from later years, agreed. Pirates are very, very much American history too, though; many of the most famous pirates visited North and South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, and even New York, not to mention that the Caribbean is far, far closer geographically to the US than it is to Europe. 

Besides some inferred American desire for simplification, I think another factor to consider is that LEGO didn't have many publishing partners in the United States until the mid-90s when they signed on with Dorling Kindersley. By the time DK started publishing theme-specific books in the United States, the Pirates theme had already gone on hiatus. So on the whole, during the original run of LEGO Pirates, there weren't many avenues other than LEGO Brick Kicks magazine, LEGO Mania Magazine, the LEGO Shop at Home catalogs, and LEGO.com that LEGO could use to communicate story content — and especially at that time, none of that stuff was nearly as well-suited to storytelling as the actual comic books and picture books being published in Europe.

Believe it or not, these sorts of discrepancies have persisted in more recent years. While both North America and Europe have quite a few LEGO publications through various publishing partners, they often aren't exactly the SAME publications, so there is content available in Europe that isn't available in North America or vice-versa.

For example, in 2011, Scholastic published four LEGO Ninjago chapter books (Kai: Ninja of Fire, Zane: Ninja of Ice, Cole: Ninja of Earth, and Jay: Ninja of Lightning), each with a short story and a longer multi-chapter story. The same four short stories were also published in the UK by Ladybird in the Kai/Zane and Cole/Jay 2-in-1 Ninja Handbooks, and in Germany by Nelson in individual Kai, Zane, Cole, and Jay Ninja Handbooks. But the European books had accompanying illustrations for these short stories, while the American ones did not — whereas the multi-chapter stories in the American chapter books were, to my knowledge, never published in Europe. The discrepancy in number of pages between the German single editions from Nelson and UK 2-in-1 editions from Ladybird also suggests to me that some European editions had content the UK ones did not.

Even more recently, the LEGO Ninjago Magazine and many other retail LEGO magazines only began to show up in stores and newsstands last year — while in other countries like Germany, Italy, and the, UK, they'd been available for many years prior. Some of the actual story content in these magazines (particularly the comics) were reprints of ones published as graphic novels in the United States, but others (such as the comics from the LEGO Nexo Knights magazine) never made it over here in any form!

And in that case, it seems to have less to do with any differences in storytelling tastes between America and Europe than with far fewer kids in the US buying magazines. Most of the ones I was familiar with growing up were education-focused like Highlights, Ranger Rick, and National Geographic Kids, rather than primarily designed to entertain or to promote a brand.

On 6/5/2019 at 9:10 PM, Tazakk said:

This is definitely the most credible supporting evidence of Ironhook being his own character, and I think it's further supported by the fact that in the 1992 and 1993 sets that name Ironhook as a character in the set names or magazine descriptions, Ironhook noticeably differs from Redbeard/Roger in that he doesn't have a peg leg. I think that pretty strongly suggests that he was intended as a different character at least in those years, whether or not later figures WITH a peg leg were meant to represent Ironhook or Redbeard/Roger.

That said, there are definitely a LOT of magazine pages in both the US and UK that use incorrect or inconsistent images for stand-alone character callouts. For example, each of the three Aquanaut minifigures (blue visor with headband, black visor with goggles, and black visor with communicator) were identified as Jock Clouseau in LEGO Mania Magazine depending on the issue in question.

In another obvious goof, the August 1997 (U.F.O.) issue of Bricks and Pieces featured names, bios, and a story for the three minifigures "Commander X", "Techdroid 1", and "Techdroid 2". But the image they assigned to "Techdroid 2" was in fact merely the same alien minifigure as "Commander X" with their helmet removed! Presumably, the ACTUAL Techdroid 1 minifigure would be the red U.F.O. droid minifigure named "Andy Droid" in the US Mania Magazine. Beyond that, there's no telling whether the image assigned to "Commander X" was correct — given the elite status described in his bio, I strongly suspect this name was intended to refer to the black-helmeted alien minifigure named "Alpha Draconis" and described as the faction's leader in the US Mania Magazines.

Edited by Aanchir

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57 minutes ago, Aanchir said:

In another obvious goof, the August 1997 (U.F.O.) issue of Bricks and Pieces featured names, bios, and a story for the three minifigures "Commander X", "Techdroid 1", and "Techdroid 2". But the image they assigned to "Techdroid 2" was in fact merely the same alien minifigure as "Techdroid 1" with their helmet removed! Presumably, the ACTUAL Techdroid 1 minifigure would be the red U.F.O. droid minifigure named "Andy Droid" in the US Mania Magazine.

Straying from the topic of Pirates, but just a correction - the magazine showed "Techdroid 2" as the same minifigure as Commander X (without the helmet), not Techdroid 1. Techdroid 1 was consistently the blue droid, and Techdroid 2 was supposed to be the red droid in that magazine. There's a 1997 large UK catalog which gets it correct. https://lego.fandom.com/wiki/Techdroid_I#Gallery (Again, I usually wouldn't recommend trusting that site too much, though I wrote what's on that page and the images speak for themselves - the caption for the magazine pic could use an adjustment though...)

Edited by jamesster

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36 minutes ago, jamesster said:

Straying from the topic of Pirates, but just a correction - the magazine showed "Techdroid 2" as the same minifigure as Commander X (without the helmet), not Techdroid 1. Techdroid 1 was consistently the blue droid, and Techdroid 2 was supposed to be the red droid in that magazine. There's a 1997 large UK catalog which gets it correct. https://lego.fandom.com/wiki/Techdroid_I#Gallery (Again, I usually wouldn't recommend trusting that site too much, though I wrote what's on that page and the images speak for themselves - the caption for the magazine pic could use an adjustment though...)

Thank you! That was just a typo on my part. I can go back and edit that.

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18 hours ago, kelceycoe said:

In terms of history, right up to 1776 history books called the American Revolutionary War. Before that we were considered a part of Colonial Europe and thus our history before formulating as a country actually is European History.

Even if there are "American History" books that start off with Native American history then jump to Chris Columbus "discovering" America in 1492...but even then credit goes to Europe and European history no matter how many American authors try to "Americanize" or "revise" European history.

What exactly was your original point, before you started applying technicalities that only you understand? "Formulating as a country"? No one phrases it like that. What American authors are you even talking about? Can you try to be a little more coherent?

 

6 hours ago, Aanchir said:

Besides some inferred American desire for simplification, I think another factor to consider is that LEGO didn't have many publishing partners in the United States until the mid-90s when they signed on with Dorling Kindersley. By the time DK started publishing theme-specific books in the United States, the Pirates theme had already gone on hiatus. So on the whole, during the original run of LEGO Pirates, there weren't many avenues other than LEGO Brick Kicks magazine, LEGO Mania Magazine, the LEGO Shop at Home catalogs, and LEGO.com that LEGO could use to communicate story content — and especially at that time, none of that stuff was nearly as well-suited to storytelling as the actual comic books and picture books being published in Europe.

And in that case, it seems to have less to do with any differences in storytelling tastes between America and Europe than with far fewer kids in the US buying magazines. Most of the ones I was familiar with growing up were education-focused like Highlights, Ranger Rick, and National Geographic Kids, rather than primarily designed to entertain or to promote a brand.

 

That's a really good point! (I loved Ranger Rick, BTW!) If I remember correctly, comic books in the UK were even published on a twice-monthly basis, and most of the LEGO magazines with premium content like comics and minifigures launched in Europe first. Kids there just had more incentive to visit a newsstand. 

As I was reading the list of magazines you mentioned, I was like "Wait, I also read Disney Adventures, which had lots of entertaining stories and comics," but then I remembered that LEGO did partner with DA for its proto-Maniac comics with trading cards (even if they were ads), so they certainly tried every available avenue for story based content in the US. 

TC

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