Early 90s LEGO Pirate Scans

[Lorentzen]

What a wonderful thread :) - thanks for the images. I have the catalogs from 1989-1996 and I often sit and look at them and dream myself back to boyhood and pirating :)

[Mr. Elijah Timms]

Beautiful, nostalgic, epic... I grasp for the words to do them justice.

Also have a bit of an admission... My name is Elijah Timms and I have never owned a bluecoat. There, I said it...

Edited September 8, 2010 by Mr. Elijah Timms

[David Thomsen]

Also have a bit of an admission... My name is Elijah Timms and I have never owned a bluecoat. There, I said it...

Uh... you have one right there in your avatar. If you take that torso, add some white trousers, gold epaulettes and a shako... instant bluecoat soldier. He even has Battle Damage! I'm surprised it hasn't been done more often...

[Andre1983nl]

There are some in Dutch.

[Mr. Elijah Timms]

Uh... you have one right there in your avatar. If you take that torso, add some white trousers, gold epaulettes and a shako... instant bluecoat soldier. He even has Battle Damage! I'm surprised it hasn't been done more often...

What, and give up my favorite jacket?? Then what will keep my warm at night against the spray of the deep Atlantic? Yaaaaaarrrr

[Norro]

I keep all the old magazines on my coffee table and regularly pine after these images. I think my entire building style was subliminally defined by a desire to create brick versions of these scenes. In fact my eventual goal is to be able to produce a large enough diorama that I can take a poster shot (in this style) and display it...

God Bless,

Nathan

[Mister Phes]

I keep all the old magazines on my coffee table and regularly pine after these images.

Blast Mr Norro - now I'm pining after them too!

[Dan the Brickman]

I agree that the old way they did the photos was neat. Also, I felt they showed the real Lego pieces better, and you didnt have to figure out if some of the poses were real or potoshopped/CG. Also, it is notable how with all their photo enhancing, it sometimes leads to what I feel to be mis-representing the products...

For example,(In an old alpha team set I cannot remember its name, but the truck with 2 firing missiles, and the target stand) they have 2 springs in the exploding box in the picture, but the set only has 1, and in some of the early viking pictures, in the S@H catalogs, they have the axe-heads with full loops/not the clips. They put a fair amount of work into adding the digital backgrounds, and "lighting effects", but failed to notice their errors with the product.

I spend alot of time looking at set pictures, to analyze their build and what pieces come in them, so the older style is better in my opinion....

Thanks for these scans ....brings back old childhood memories.

[Captain Roger]

When i was a child i could look at them for hours

Me too...

I love that old pics...i have seen all catalogues since 1991 to 1999...i always enjoyed looking that cool photos for hours. I love seeing pirates versus soldiers scenes.

I haven't got the 2009 catalogue but i have collected all 2009 pirate sets except to shipwreck hideout. but i have noticed about this:

in early 90s, when you bought a pirate set, there were a small catalogue inside the box, or even a simple catalogue-page in small sets. in that pages, you could see pirates fighting against soldiers in really epic battles

2009 pirate sets have "simple catalogue-pages" attached too...but there aren't epic battles...that pages only show you all actual sets, clearly separated. I'd like to see a picture of Captain Brickbeard's pirates having an epic battle in Brickbeard bounty against the new Imperial flagship or attacking Imperial's fortress

[Fugazi]

I'm slightly off topic, but I was wondering in what year did the catalogues disappear from the Lego boxes? It must have been during my dark age in the 2000s but can't figure out the exact year. I suppose that Internet spelled their doom, as people went online to get the latest set news.

[Andre1983nl]

http://link.marktplaats.nl/362005286

And it is for sale

How much money should i bid?

[Captain Fortune]

I rescue this thread from the past, hope that the administrators will agree...

I did it because, maybe, we can add some scans from the Lego Maniac magazines, etc.

As you explained, all this catalogs were almost a "religion" to me. I spent hundreds of hours watching them, and even drawing them.

In fact, I'm still keeping the catalog every year since 1993, but I have catalogs from 1989.

[cullmancreations]

I Still have some of my old catalogue stuff but there hidden I'm going to go look for them now

[VintageLegoEra]

I rescue this thread from the past, hope that the administrators will agree...

I did it because, maybe, we can add some scans from the Lego Maniac magazines, etc.

As you explained, all this catalogs were almost a "religion" to me. I spent hundreds of hours watching them, and even drawing them.

In fact, I'm still keeping the catalog every year since 1993, but I have catalogs from 1989.

I have the maniac catalog from 1993. Will try to scan when have time

[Slegengr]

This is a great topic to resurrect, IMO. I grew up in the 90's, so I also have many fond memories of spending hours looking at the catalogs of all sizes, especially the dioramas. I still have catalogs from when I was young, and I collect the catalogs for the nostalgia. I lost the "you nostalgia, you lose" challenge the instant I saw the first image, even though I was expecting it .

Quick question, though: If the scans added are for themes other than Pirates, should a different topic be created in the general LEGO discussion forum? That way, everyone can have nostalgia about their favorite themes. Maybe the scans people intend to upload will be only Pirate related, though, which would mean this topic is great. Now I am thinking about creating a topic like this for the Castle line (or resurrecting an existing topic) .

[cullmancreations]

Go ahead I think this is a fantastic topic. I have a catalog somewhere from the mid 90's from France when I was on vacation one year. It has some awesome pics

[Rogue Angel]

Back when I was a boy, before the whole inter-nets, we had to wait for the catalogs to see the new sets for the year. I remember when the new sets came out in January, I would always try to buy the cheapest set that I thought would contain the full size catalog (not the double-sided fold-up sheet) just to see what sets were new that year. That was back in the days of City-Space-Castle, so when Pirates came out, it was a complete surprise to me, and so exciting! (Even though I still love Castle best)

[Finlaybrick]

The catalouge pics were fantastic and whoever was designing and directing them did a great job. I still have a load of them in a folder somewhere, great nostalgia

[Kolonialbeamter]

Hi there,

I'm raising this thread from the two-digits-pages' depths (<-- repeat this five times in a row! ), 'cause during my recent nostalgia trip to back to childhood a stumbled accross old Lego catalogues and brought the most important with me.

So, here goes, scanned pirate content from the 1989 (which I didn't even know I owned) and 1990 German big catalogues. With my username I just needed them represented here

Click images for high-res. versions!

Especially this one might not be known to many (?)... I was sure to remember that scene but didn't find it in any scans I managed to dig up online... almost got me crazy.

Hmm... just watching these epic scenes back in the days... hours of my life well invested. I can't count the number of times I replayed them with my collection... And on top I still know the set descriptions by heart...

There's all catalogues with classic pirates content in nostalgia-land, plus some other stuff, including the Lego Idea Book of that time. I'll get more material on my next trip.

In the meantime, whoever else has (unknown) scans, feel free to share!

And now, another round of nostalgia comments, please!

[Dreamweb]

I have quite a few of those catalogues from the heyday of Pirates. I remember staring at them, literally for DAYS, the scenes were just so great. And not only that, in those dioramas you could also see the details of all those sets you were hoping to get one day. The stamp-sized set miniatures weren't good enough for that, the only real way to get to know better the sets you didn't have/couldn't afford were those amazing two-page battle scenes.

[Captain Roger]

Thanks, mate!!!! I haven't seen that beautiful pic before!!!! I really miss that dioramas

[Captain Fortune]

Thanks, mate!!!! I haven't seen that beautiful pic before!!!! I really miss that dioramas

Me neither!

[Cervantes]

Great memories in these old style dioramas.

I scanned another mid 1990s scan that I always thought looked great:

The schooner in the back always reminds me of the Goonies. I wanted that ship so bad when I was a kid. I begged and begged my mother to get it for me, but she would always insist it was too expensive. :( I hope they rerelease it like they did the barracuda someday.

[Captain Fortune]

The schooner in the back always reminds me of the Goonies. I wanted that ship so bad when I was a kid. I begged and begged my mother to get it for me, but she would always insist it was too expensive. :( I hope they rerelease it like they did the barracuda someday.

This 94' scan is one of the prettiest!

[Captain Dee]

Individually the sets were lots of fun. Collectively they offered hours of play. But the old catalog dioramas were staged and photographed so well it was like standing on the edge of the action. What true pirates fan didn't spend lots of time poring over those images? I drew a lot when I was young and even replicated one of the catalog photos (1991 or '92 I think) as a B&W drawing. Thank you all for sharing these images again.