Thee Pirate

Michael Palin, John Cleese, and Sean Connery? I must've heard about this movie and just forgotten to check it out :-p At any rate, that there's Duplo blocks in a very well executed MOC surprises and amazes me. I've always wanted to use Duplo blocks in a MOC. I really want that new 14X2X2 Duplo arch in white, tan, black, or grey... In Brick terms, that's 28X6X4, a real win in my book since the arch opening would be 12 studs :-p Another piece I like is that tan angled arch thing they have in the Duplo Cars line... I just need to order some :-p Anyway, that MOC is killer.

That's amazing! I love it.. I don't really know what else to say. It's better than my current project. Way better. I should probably adopt this method of constructing hills. These one's are exceptionally well done. I think that's the first time I've seen someone mix so much brown and green in so it doesn't just look like a big ugly hill. It actually looks alive, with all the greenery.

I think those are all excellent ideas. I also think there's more to the Pirates line not selling well towards the end of the first run than just poor set design, although that is an important factor for us, as AFOLs, it's less of an issue with a little kid who wants a "pirate ship". If you look at Hollywood, in the '80's and early '90's, there was a lot of Pirate blockbusters. We had The Goonies in 1985, multiple retellings of Treasure Island across television film, The Princess Bride in 1987, a Peter Pan cartoon with Tim Curry (who you probably know as Dr. Frank N. Furter), Hook in 1991, but then Renny Harlin made Cutthroat Island in 1995 and it tanked. It cost $100m to make, it made $10m, the production company behind it went bankrupt, and it ended up holding the Guinness World Record for biggest box office flop ever. 1996 saw the release of Muppet Treasure Island, and there was nothing worth noting until 2003, when Gore Verbinski directed Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. It grossed $650m in the box office, sold $250m in DVD's the first year it was released, and Megabloks got the licensing rights for it. (I personally, saw PotC:tCofBP 3 times in the theatre :-p) Then they kept on making PotC movies, and Star Wars for that matter, so Megabloks and Lego both sold a lot of toys. As soon as it looked like the Pirates craze was over for PotC, Lego released the brand new Pirates II. Aside from having a very limited number of sets, they seemed to do pretty good. I searched high and low and wasn't even able to get Brickbeard's Bounty until about 3 months after the release. As soon as Lego was in a position to sign a contract with Disney (which was probably influenced, in part, by the fact they already had the Star Wars license) they went for it. In 2003, nobody knew PotC was going to be a blockbuster until a couple days into it's release. It took off, and I'm sure that if Lego had seen that happening they would've snatched up the licensing rights to it the first time around. In conclusion: the rise and fall of Lego Pirates is directly proportional to how well Hollywood made pirate movies. A couple side notes: I actually enjoyed Cutthroat Island, it has an awesome musical score, some pretty sweet swashbuckling, and some great action scenes. I loaned my DVD out awhile back and never got it back. I don't even remember who I loaned it to :-/

I really like your brick built cannons. I think they might look even better if you shortened the barrel by one brick. Also, if you piled some 1x1 round plates into a crate tbey could pass as cannon balls

It looks pretty close to the game version and I dig it... I also see what you did there with the slopes on the rear... You reversed them so the stern would support itself :-p

When I just opened this up, I wondered how you were going to handle the bow... I have a similar bow constructed in LDRAW from 2007 or 2008 but I havent used it yet. I oriented the slope bricks so the studs were facing the front... I dont think I ever shared it with anyone, but its nice to know someone thinks the same way :-)

Ive always admired your MOCs, and this one is no exception. Its beautiful. Your approach to half timber housing is better than a lot of people. Im still in the process of a 4 year MOC that keeps on evolving. You make me want to just finish it, regardless of whether its ready or not.

I'd pay more than that. It's beautiful. I paid $350 for my Millenium Falcon and its worth much more than that now. It retailed for $500. This Dutchman would easily be the largest lego set ever sold. I think it'd surpass the Taj Mahal in piece count by at least 500 pieces. I'd pay at least $600 for it, and I'd buy as many as I can.

I became a PotC fan in 2003. I was broke, and loved the Curse of the Black Pearl so much I saw it in the theatre 3 times. I watched Dead Man's Chest twice in theatres (one was a midnight showing) and I saw At World's End three times, two of which were on opening day. I saw On Stranger Tides twice in theatres. I love the Black Pearl, and I love these movies. That being said, I cannot stand the look of the official Lego set for the Black Pearl. I think the set designers did a much better job on the QAR. If the Black Pearl looked the same way as the one in the Lego game, it would win, hands down, best looking Lego pirate ship ever. As it sits right now, I would place it somewhere at the bottom of the list. The BSB is the standard by which all other ships are measured. It was the first one, and the best one. Rigt behind it, I placed the SES... Until now. (edited to clarify) I've put the SES and QAR together and I think its a draw. They both have things I love and hate. Example: I absolutely hate the cannon mounting on the SES, but I love the old rigging and masts. I can't really stand the style of the "new" masts.

I'm surprised no Chuck fans have posted in here. Chuck and Morgan are roommates/best friends, Chuck's a spy and they're both big time nerds working for Buy More's Nerd Herd. They have a lot of Star Wars toys and in Season 4 Episode 16, "Chuch verses the Masquerade" a bunch of Star Wars and Indiana Jones minfigures and small sets are seen for a couple seconds.

I love Monty Python enough that it was a screen name I used for a few years until I started using Thee Pirate (which is, or rather, was a Canadian punk rock band) The bank robber skit is one of my favorites, along with the scene from The Meaning of Life about every sperm being sacred and the short skit about the machine that goes ping!

That looks awesome. I have an old Optimus Prime transformer in storage that I played with a lot when I was little and thats pretty much right on. I wouldnt change the windows, i think thats an excellent way to duplicate the windshield from the toy. As others have said, the arms are a little bit of an issue, but i think it'd be next to impossible to fix because of the proportions of Lego bricks. It would look better if it was 6 wide, but then you'd lose those windows which I think look awesome. The back is different from my toy, but the back on my toy was rather plain and only had a hitch for the attached trailer.

The Caribbean Clipper is a really odd looking ship. Its short and wide, and not very well designed. For its size, it doesnt have that much sail. It would probably be the weakest ship of the Lego line without undergoing extensive modifications, the most extensive of shich would be increasing the length by 16 studs and adding an additional mast or two.

The original Imperial Flagship packs a lot of powder in a small package. It has a tremendous amount of sail for such a small ship and as such is much more manuverable. It may have half as many cannon as the new Imperial Flagship but its also a quarter the size. When you take into account the fact that it is actually a steerable vessel, all bets are off. The original Imperial Flagship wins, hands down. I have both ships, and thats my assessment of them.

I'm pretty sure it was these ones. When I was little, I remember being super jealous of Jack the Lego Maniac. You don't easily forget an ad campaign like that ;-)

We still have Pirates II on the shelves in Germany. I bought 8 Soldier's Arsenal last week ;-)

AGREED!!! I have loved Pirates of the Caribbean for as long as I can remember. I dated a chick that worked at Disneyland before I joined the Air Force and she took me to an employed only party before they shut down Pirates for the remodel... I went on it 12 times in a row without even getting off of it :-) single most amazing date of my life. I've seen all 3 Pirates movie 3x in theaters and waited for the special edition DVDs to come out before buying them. Pirates is up there for favorite movie franchises for this guy.

I vaguely recall reading one of these in a supermarket isle when I was 9. Unfortunately my 'rents never bought any of these for me so I don't have any of them. Fortunately, I do recall stumbling a website that had uploaded scans of the comics, but that was two or three years ago and I don't remember what the website was. The hunt is on!

But in the bigger scheme of things Pirates of the Caribbean as it currently exists is a theme park ride with animatronic pirates that has been remodeled to follow a movie that is in turn based on the ride, so PotC is one big circle. There really isn't anywhere else for the PotC universe to go and while the Pearl got it's own story in the last 3 movies I wouldn't put it past the writers to give it a cameo in OST. The Black Pearl is more Pirates than Jack Sparrow.

Let's not forget Star Wars and the Millenium Falcon. Even after they released the best possible set, they go and throw a curveball our way in the form of a midiscale. I can definitely see them releasing a better version if this line takes off... And I think it will. I seem to recall Srar Wars Sets being sold inside the Star Tours shop and the World of Disney even though there's a Lego store right down the path. I can definitely see PotC sets being sold inside the New Orleans Square pirated shop. I think the ship weight on my Millennium Falcon was 43 pounds ;-) I love it! This is probably the most plausible explanation. Now that you say it, I also suppose it's possible the ship in a bottle holds a spell of some kind that releases the QAR from a curse and allows it to become the Pearl again. This would sort of explain why the Pearl isn't in the movie AFAIK.

This is fun news. I was a little disappointed that the first run of cars was all Duplo. Way before I'm a pirates, I'm a gearhead, so I'll probably get all the sets from this theme. Is Doc Hudson supposed to appear in this film? ...and to everyone that says these won't be compatible with "normal" system cars, these look 4 wide from the pictures I've seen. For years 4 wide was the Lego car standard so I can still see it working

Which ship was the Endeavor? The other British ship was the Interceptor in POTC:CotBP