Useful Pirate Pieces from other Themes?

[Yperio_Bricks]

I wish they would bring back the classic palm tree trunk pieces.

[zinnn]

New sail from the Disney train:

 

 

 

Also the new Lego BTS set will have the classic small palm leaves in lime green:

[Aanchir]

On 1/28/2023 at 1:56 PM, Lemerbrix said:

A good piece to use in my opinion would be the new half column piece in the Mario line, could make a nice mast

Agreed! It seems almost ideal for that purpose since it has connections along the length that can be used for attaching yards and booms.

I'm surprised there's been no mention here yet of the fern piece from the Rivendell set? Seems like a very useful part for building tropical plants. There are also a lot of great recolors in that set including bar holders with clip and bar holders with handle in Medium Nougat, which could be useful for shipbuilders.

[Yperio_Bricks]

1 hour ago, Aanchir said:

I'm surprised there's been no mention here yet of the fern piece from the Rivendell set? Seems like a very useful part for building tropical plants.

Yep, it's a great piece and will be very useful in many scenarios

One more word on the palm trees. Looking at the picture above i really wonder why Lego stopped producing the classic palm tree trunk pieces. All palm trees Lego came up with, like the above one or the one from the Boutique Hotel or from Barracuda Bay, are very much inferior to the classic one imo.

[TalonCard]

Don't get me wrong, I love the original palm tree design, but I can see why the original segments and palm tree design were done away with. They had an annoying tendency to snap in half or fall over when being played with or moved, the small base and big leaves meant they were often top heavy, especially the earliest ones, the individual segments took up a lot of the piece count but you needed a lot of them to get a good bend, and you couldn't do a lot with them aside from tree building (brown being an uncommon color at the time; I think most other uses in sets were recolors). And to top it all off, they don't do a lot to evoke palm trees, with four leaves sticking straight out in regular intervals. The BTS palm tree is kind of the worst of both worlds; it has the old-style "helicopter" palm combined with a thin pole-like straight trunk. 

I think the palms in Barracuda Bay are actually a pretty good compromise between looking good, evoking the aesthetic of the actual plant, and consisting of parts with a wider variety of uses. I'm particularly fond of the coconuts. The only thing I'm not wild about is the technic base that doesn't look organic at all. IMO the best palm tree design yet is the one in 70604 Tiger Widow Island, which is similar to the Barracuda Bay palms but has an upside down beige bush piece that really sells the palm tree look.

[TeriXeri]

Best alternative to a classic palm tree is probably stacking cones and then reinforcing it with a flexible bar/"rigid hose" part inside.

But still, if we just talk "current" parts (and not sourcing parts via bricklink etc.), only the smaller palm leaf is in production.

The Large single leaf variant has not been made for 21 years, so even if it's listed as "new" it's not really. (but that's another discussion).

And I think LEGO should avoid doing things like this again : 

 

Edited February 18, 2023 by TeriXeri

[Aanchir]

I doubt that'll be an issue. Those single-piece palm tree trunks were a product of the much-maligned "Town Jr." era. These days LEGO tends to rely a lot less on prefab tree pieces than they did even in the 80s, let alone during that rather dire period in their history.

23 hours ago, Yperio_Bricks said:

Yep, it's a great piece and will be very useful in many scenarios

One more word on the palm trees. Looking at the picture above i really wonder why Lego stopped producing the classic palm tree trunk pieces. All palm trees Lego came up with, like the above one or the one from the Boutique Hotel or from Barracuda Bay, are very much inferior to the classic one imo.

I suspect maybe the old-school palm tree trunk segments may have been retired for some reason related to their hinges? Despite being used for less than two decades, they went through a startling number of mold changes/redesigns according to BrickLink, which leads me to think that there may have been some kind of quality assurance or production issue LEGO was struggling to address.

I'm reminded of how the Bionicle ball joint sockets have had to be redesigned so many times over the years due to earlier designs either losing friction over time or being prone to breakage. Mind you, I haven't heard much about builders encountering any of these sorts of defects with the palm tree trunk pieces. But that could just mean that LEGO was able to identify and filter out "duds" produced by those molds before they got packaged in sets, perhaps due to visible molding defects. Or it could just be because the palm tree trunk segments (at least when used for that specific purpose) rarely need to support as much weight as Bionicle joint pieces.

Notably, unlike most other LEGO "ball and socket" hinge pieces, the socket part of the palm trunk segments lacked any cutouts or grooves that would allow the part to expand and contract when additional segments are being added or removed. But I have not seen any sort of designer statements on the matter, so all I can really do is speculate.

20 hours ago, TalonCard said:

Don't get me wrong, I love the original palm tree design, but I can see why the original segments and palm tree design were done away with. They had an annoying tendency to snap in half or fall over when being played with or moved, the small base and big leaves meant they were often top heavy, especially the earliest ones, the individual segments took up a lot of the piece count but you needed a lot of them to get a good bend, and you couldn't do a lot with them aside from tree building (brown being an uncommon color at the time; I think most other uses in sets were recolors). And to top it all off, they don't do a lot to evoke palm trees, with four leaves sticking straight out in regular intervals. The BTS palm tree is kind of the worst of both worlds; it has the old-style "helicopter" palm combined with a thin pole-like straight trunk. 

Truth be told, I think the straight, thin trunks are a good fit for how the palm trees in the "Dynamite" music video look. But I agree that the classic "four big fronds" approach for the leaves is very inauthentic and cartoonish-looking for palm trees in most sets/themes, including that one.

Real palm leaves tend to be more layered, rather than arranged in a flat disk like daisy petals, and the fronds tend to look less like one big leaf and more like several little leaves joined together. This is probably why so many sets from the past decade or so have opted for the "finger leaf palm" piece instead.

The old palm leaves DO still work pretty nicely for some heavily stylized themes like Super Mario and Disney, though! They're also great for banana plants, which are not palms (and technically not even trees, since they lack a woody "trunk"), but DO have big, solid leaves with uneven tears along the edges.

20 hours ago, TalonCard said:

I think the palms in Barracuda Bay are actually a pretty good compromise between looking good, evoking the aesthetic of the actual plant, and consisting of parts with a wider variety of uses. I'm particularly fond of the coconuts. The only thing I'm not wild about is the technic base that doesn't look organic at all. IMO the best palm tree design yet is the one in 70604 Tiger Widow Island, which is similar to the Barracuda Bay palms but has an upside down beige bush piece that really sells the palm tree look.

The Tiger Widow Island palm tree design is definitely pretty great! And truth be told, many real-life palm tree species (such as coconut palms or palmettos) have relatively smooth trunks that more closely resemble the creature tail pieces used for palm trees in many current/recent sets than the old-school segmented look.

One weakness of these smoother palm tree trunks compared to other trunk designs/builds over the years is that they lack contours or attachment points along their trunks for animals like tree frogs or monkeys (or pirates fleeing pursuing soldiers) to grab onto. And they also can look simplistic compared to the rougher-textured trunks of some real-life palm tree species, such as date palms. So for those sorts of applications, either a more Technic-based construction or a more segmented build (like the classic palm trunks, or stacked cone or crown pieces) still works a bit better.

I doubt there will ever be one type of palm tree build that is perfect in all these different respects. But LEGO has gotten really good at both designing versatile plant pieces and designing brick-built plants with creative builds, so I feel confident that if they DID introduce a new piece for palm tree trunks in the future, it'd end up having a whole lot of great creative potential even beyond that application!

Edited February 18, 2023 by Aanchir

[Roebuck]

This is a new colour for that hat/hair right?
 

[evancelt]

On 2/18/2023 at 11:46 PM, Roebuck said:

This is a new colour for that hat/hair right?
 

Yes! Looking forward to that dual-mold hat hair tricorne

[PxChris]

As a collector who's focused very heavily on the classic era of Pirates sets in the 80s-90s, I can say that the palm trunk pieces are on of the few pieces (the others being the cannon bases and flag clips) which I've had numerous issues with cracking or breaking. By and large, the pieces of this era are pretty robust even after 30+ years (unlike the plagues of brittle reddish and dark brown!) but I've had many trunk pieces crack and/or get so loose as to not be able to hold together or hold the tree shape. I never take any of my trunks apart any longer when dismantling sets for storage.

[Aanchir]

On 1/28/2023 at 1:56 PM, Lemerbrix said:

A good piece to use in my opinion would be the new half column piece in the Mario line, could make a nice mast

The newly announced Dry Bowser Castle Battle set includes four of those parts in black, which will be especially useful for masts! And some of the alternate set images like this one even showcase how two of those can form a nice solid column with a sturdy base when placed back to back.

Also, as I mentioned in the Historic Themes forum's topic analogous to this one, the 2x2 box/container with treasure chest printing (also visible in the pic linked above) could be great for smaller treasure chests, coffers, lockboxes, or jewelry cases. Nothing about the print seems too Mario-specific, in my opinion.

[CaptainPolluxofOrion]

On 2/17/2023 at 5:53 PM, zinnn said:

New sail from the Disney train:

 

 

 

Also the new Lego BTS set will have the classic small palm leaves in lime green:

I didn't know there will be a Moana Minifigure.... I think i need this set or lets say the Moana Minifigure...

On 1/23/2023 at 10:11 AM, Captain Dee said:

Introducing Captain Bustle and her crew: 

Oh yes thats awesome! Will there be a Ship?

[F1stzz]

Did you see the official pics for new Indiana Jones sets, guys? I guess these gents right here could fit some of our MOCs decently  I'm also interested in the second guy's hat piece: is this one completely new or not? Looks like something that would work fine as kinda type of a bandana 🤔

Edited March 13, 2023 by F1stzz

[Yperio_Bricks]

Yeah, these minifigures are great! I'll definitely get the 77013 "Escape from the Lost Tomb" twice as a parts an minifigure pack. The price is surprisingly fair

The indigenous warrior is a wonderful minifigure but it's locked in a 150€ set, so won't get him.

[F1stzz]

16 minutes ago, Yperio_Bricks said:

The indigenous warrior is a wonderful minifigure but it's locked in a 150€ set, so won't get him.

Great fig indeed, especially love his legs: could be combined with several different Indian characters' torsos pretty much flawlessly  Paying 150€/$ in pursue for this fig rly seems a bit too much, but gotta consider making a separate BL order to get this guy (or his parts) some time later, huh? He would definitely make a good addition to anyone's collection, IMO

Edited March 13, 2023 by F1stzz

[Yperio_Bricks]

On 3/13/2023 at 3:32 PM, F1stzz said:

but gotta consider making a separate BL order to get this guy (or his parts) some time later, huh? He would definitely make a good addition to anyone's collection, IMO

We'll see which price the minifigure will get a BL. While i love minifigures and there are many wonderful minifigs out there, i am no collector and one is as good as the other as long as they fit into my mocs. So i would not pay more than 5 € for a minifigure. Let's say 5,50€

Don't know if he was already mentioned before but King Namor from set 76213 looks great too. With a different hear piece of course and maybe with erased side printing on the legs.

 

[Aanchir]

Apparently the newest batch of build-a-mini parts coming to LEGO brand stores includes a pirate skeleton torso!

It's a great design IMO, even if the use of plain white minifig arms is less than ideal (at least compared to other skeleton characters that have armor or sleeves to justify the use of standard arm pieces). You can see the back printing in one of the images from the full article.

[Jiesdeo]

On 3/21/2023 at 9:27 PM, Aanchir said:

Apparently the newest batch of build-a-mini parts coming to LEGO brand stores includes a pirate skeleton torso!

It's a great design IMO, even if the use of plain white minifig arms is less than ideal (at least compared to other skeleton characters that have armor or sleeves to justify the use of standard arm pieces). You can see the back printing in one of the images from the full article.

I wonder if this torso is exclusive for BaM or maybe a torso that will be used in the rumored Pirates set? Maybe there will be a Imperials fortress with a pirate skeleton in the dungeon just like there was an Imperial soldier skeleton in PoBB?

[thewatchman]

1 hour ago, Jiesdeo said:

I wonder if this torso is exclusive for BaM or maybe a torso that will be used in the rumored Pirates set? Maybe there will be a Imperials fortress with a pirate skeleton in the dungeon just like there was an Imperial soldier skeleton in PoBB?

Or potentially potc black pearl?

[LegoAUT]

8 hours ago, thewatchman said:

Or potentially potc black pearl?

This would not make any sense at this point. There are rumors of new Pirates of the Caribbean movies but they will likely not launch before 2024. 

[azog]

On 3/22/2023 at 5:12 PM, thewatchman said:

Or potentially potc black pearl?

I doubt that, usually Lego is very restrictive of licensed prints or parts. Example being the sword belts from pirates of the caribbean. We never saw them again because they were licensed locked, and I would believe prints are treated the same way because you can't order licensed figs off of pick a brick. 

[Classic_Spaceman]

27 minutes ago, azog said:

I doubt that, usually Lego is very restrictive of licensed prints or parts. Example being the sword belts from pirates of the caribbean. We never saw them again because they were licensed locked, and I would believe prints are treated the same way because you can't order licensed figs off of pick a brick. 

A Jawa torso and Greef Karga's S1 torso both appeared in BAM. 
 

[gedren_y]

20 hours ago, azog said:

I doubt that, usually Lego is very restrictive of licensed prints or parts. Example being the sword belts from pirates of the caribbean. We never saw them again because they were licensed locked, and I would believe prints are treated the same way because you can't order licensed figs off of pick a brick. 

Actually the baldric did reappear in The Lone Ranger sets, which means they are license controlled by either Disney (likely), or Jerry Bruckheimer Films (probably not).

[azog]

11 minutes ago, gedren_y said:

Actually the baldric did reappear in The Lone Ranger sets, which means they are license controlled by either Disney (likely), or Jerry Bruckheimer Films (probably not).

Interesting, I didn't realize that before! I can bet that it's Disney then.

 

20 hours ago, Classic_Spaceman said:

A Jawa torso and Greef Karga's S1 torso both appeared in BAM. 
 

This is true, I forgot about those torso's! Well hey, you never know then! I would love a UCS styled Black Pearl!

[Jack Sassy]

Not sure if it has been mentioned but that new sail from Disney Celebration Train is indeed fabric. A bit of a relief.