Prototype Castle sets

[fenrir]

I'm stunned about how great these sets look.

The sets look realy big ( loch ness, and the early mine) I think it would be too expensive for the customers.

[manuelexar]

I'm stunned about how great these sets look.

The sets look realy big ( loch ness, and the early mine) I think it would be too expensive for the customers.

Great sets! I'd buy them all!!

[Artifex]

These. Are. Just. GREAT!!! Awesome sets, great find! Where did you find these? Any links? Amazing sets. I'd buy each and all of them even if thery were released today!

[Gabe]

Damn, these look amazing! Love the civilian designs at the top. They do look very big though, and i guess this was in the days before the large exclusive sets we know and love today.

[Tamamono]

Oh wow... Europa looks amazing...

Some of those sets look pretty fan-made to me. The castles are probably real, but the second rendition of the dwarves mine looks fake, as well as a few of the more intricate castle ones.

Well, they gave us Medieval Market Village, they gave us Dwarves' Mine, maybe there's hope for the Loch Ness Monster set and the Europa line as well?

Edited March 15, 2011 by Captain Tamamono

[Sirens-of-Titan]

What an incredible collection! I do think that crown looks quite good and wouldn't mind it being released as a back-u to the current one!

The thing that impressed me most is the scale at which these are built! It's almost like (I say sarcastically) they were miniaturized and boxed and in the process drained of character for the final product. The "Europa" set would be an instant win with all historic army builders, and released even as a small unit of 10 figures it would totally be a jackpot for LEGO!

(Here's hoping!)

[Commander Laquiet]

Some of these look really nice. I love that early mine, would've been a fantastic set, and the Loch Ness-ish set looks nice. Also interesting to see the early kind of MMV - Lego had that idea in the back of their minds for a while, it seems.

Great find.

[Dan the Brickman]

The lock ness is cool! Now I wish i didnt read this, just because it makes me sad it doesn't exist!

But thanks for sharing. Still, really cool ideas.

[LAKAbricks]

As people agree on here, those are some really interesting designs. I especially like the villages and the first mine. A lot of the clothes and wigs are certainly also nice. I really like the white wigs from Europa. Thay would fit perfectly to the pirates sets.

We should make a lobby group at TLG

[Nikola Bathory]

Great find, Hive!

Most look really great and this Europa theme too! It's close to Castle and Pirates, yes, but they could still have released it as a sub-theme...

[Nicker]

I've never seen these prototype pictures until now. Some very nice sets there!

[Lobberuno]

I think Lego stores ideas for then release, however, all ideas are modificated because the number of pieces for the final set growns up the sale price, and maybe we can't buy it 'cause results expensive.

But, all these lego protos look fenomenal!

[mobricki]

These prototypes are amazing!! Here's to hoping that their will be a europa line after potc ends.

[newwavepop]

for me there can never be enough castle sets and some of those are really cool. but that europa set would have been AWSOME.

[Lummox JR]

This thread really reminds me of the idea books, where they would post pictures of various scenes with building instructions for a few elements therein, using pieces from the current and sometimes previous generation of parts.

I think it'd be pretty cool to see that done now by the community, using LDraw to create models and some of the various available tools to produce detailed instructions. There is a slight hitch in that not all parts are in the LDraw library, and patterned parts in particular can be a bit difficult to work out, but with what we do have it seems like some really nice stuff could be put together.

Along with the idea books I also miss the alternate builds that used to adorn the backs of set boxes. I used to spend hours looking at those.

[Siegfried]

These pictures, and many, many more, can be found here....

[castlestrike666]

Thank you to share these amazing pictures with us!

If you look closely to some of them, you can see some sort of resemblance with some minifigs from the series (1-4) (see description below)

An interesting sort of precursor to the Medieval Market Village, pretty well-made.

- The guy in front of the white horse on the left with the brown beard --> caveman (serie 1)

- The guy on the right with this two-coloured pants --> painter (serie 4)

Another medieval village with an interesting look.

Some swords of these minifigs --> musketeer (serie 4)

Maybe they wanted to bring those early elements back to us in some way

[TheLegoDr]

Interesting sets, and there are some fine piece like the prototype cows (?) and swords:

the never seen form of the Lion's horse barding, or the two sided helbard (the trees are also great)

the bucket helmet early version

or the big Lion shield

I love that barding and the big Lion shield!

[Nabii]

Every single one of these images is from the LEGO Design Archives and I scanned and sourced them for exclusive publication in Brick Journal Magazine. With each of them I included what comments I could from the Design notes in the file explaining what I could about them and why they did not proceed.

I'm not particularly happy to see them reproduced without credit to myself, the LEGO Group or Brick Journal and without the explanations of the themes this is even worse. Scanning in copyrighted material is illegal and saying 'I recently stumbled across these images' like you are one of the archivists in the LEGO Idea House is just a little bit rude.

I'm not going to make you remove them as I don't want to stop the discussion, but I would recommend someone includes the information from the magazines and I request that in future permission is sought from myself and Joe Meno at Brick Journal - he will say 'no' as Brick Journal is his living and exclusive content is *EXCLUSIVE* and I'll say 'no' as I can only get permission for Brick Journal and nothing else, but at least you'll have an official statement. (Copyright is lifetime plus 70 years so assuming I live to be northern European average you can reproduce them without permission in around 2130.)

I will continue to put similar images in future issues, enjoy.

[UsernameMDM]

Some swords of these minifigs --> musketeer (serie 4)

Maybe they wanted to bring those early elements back to us in some way

I prefer that one because it doesn't have the ball on the tip.

[meyerc13]

I'm not particularly happy to see them reproduced without credit to myself, the LEGO Group or Brick Journal and without the explanations of the themes this is even worse. Scanning in copyrighted material is illegal and saying 'I recently stumbled across these images' like you are one of the archivists in the LEGO Idea House is just a little bit rude.

Yes, it is rude (and illegal) to violate copyright, but the problem with the Internet is that it isn't always possible to know that something is copyright and what the original source might be. According to the original poster, later in this thread:

I found them all on Brickpedia, searching for the word 'prototype'. There are lots of pics from other themes as well, a whole bunch from various space themes for example.

Assuming that is true, I think you should harbor ill feelings toward whoever posted them to Brickpedia, rather than the OP. Hopefully the OP will properly attribute these now that you've come forward.

In my opinion, it would probably be better for you and Brick Journal to allow someone to repost with proper attribution, because there are a lot of people like me who don't know much about Brick Journal, but find this type of content interesting so I'll probably look into it now. Thanks for doing the work to uncover this material, it really is fascinating, and sorry that people aren't giving you credit for that work.

[Edmond Dantes]

Yes, it is rude (and illegal) to violate copyright, but the problem with the Internet is that it isn't always possible to know that something is copyright and what the original source might be. According to the original poster, later in this thread:

Assuming that is true, I think you should harbor ill feelings toward whoever posted them to Brickpedia, rather than the OP. Hopefully the OP will properly attribute these now that you've come forward.

In my opinion, it would probably be better for you and Brick Journal to allow someone to repost with proper attribution, because there are a lot of people like me who don't know much about Brick Journal, but find this type of content interesting so I'll probably look into it now. Thanks for doing the work to uncover this material, it really is fascinating, and sorry that people aren't giving you credit for that work.

The OP was definitely telling the truth. Just go here:

http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/LEGO_Wiki, type prototype in the Search Brickipedia box and scroll down to the Castle section. All the pics are right there.

The OP did nothing wrong - he found these in the public domain and cannot be blamed for whomever uploaded them to Brickipedia.

[Shroffy123]

I agree, OP did nothing wrong. He didn't post the pictures maliciously. I don't understand why Nabil had make his grievance public; wouldn't a simple private message to the OP suffice?

[Hoboman]

I am glad the OP did not do anything wrong, but this does show how hard it is to police the Internet for copyright infractions.

But as far as the subject, I am glad I did have a chance to see these and enjoy them. It is interesting to see these. I am now very interested in the information that Nabil spoke of.

Nabil, is the complete article available somewhere on line?

--

Edited July 21, 2011 by Daniel's Dad

[Hive]

Every single one of these images is from the LEGO Design Archives and I scanned and sourced them for exclusive publication in Brick Journal Magazine. With each of them I included what comments I could from the Design notes in the file explaining what I could about them and why they did not proceed.

I'm not particularly happy to see them reproduced without credit to myself, the LEGO Group or Brick Journal and without the explanations of the themes this is even worse. Scanning in copyrighted material is illegal and saying 'I recently stumbled across these images' like you are one of the archivists in the LEGO Idea House is just a little bit rude.

I'm not going to make you remove them as I don't want to stop the discussion, but I would recommend someone includes the information from the magazines and I request that in future permission is sought from myself and Joe Meno at Brick Journal - he will say 'no' as Brick Journal is his living and exclusive content is *EXCLUSIVE* and I'll say 'no' as I can only get permission for Brick Journal and nothing else, but at least you'll have an official statement. (Copyright is lifetime plus 70 years so assuming I live to be northern European average you can reproduce them without permission in around 2130.)

I will continue to put similar images in future issues, enjoy.

I'm sorry that you feel offended and violated, but I don't feel I did anything wrong; I found the pics, as I said, on Brickpedia where there were *no* notice whatsoever of any copyrights as far as I could see. I don't appreciate being accused of deceipt and theft, and I wish you had bothered to actually check whether my story held true (as others have thankfully verified) before making any such accusations. While I do understand your wish to defend your copyright, I posted these pictures here in good faith - and if anyone here is being rude, it is most certainly you.

My apologies for bumping an old thread like this, but I only stumbled across this now and felt a need to defend myself from what I deem to be completely groundless accusations.