Mister Phes

But do we really need another big pirate set so soon? Thieves of Tortuga and Privateer Frigate Fortuna maxed out the 4,000 part limit. And not everyone is loaded with gold and can afford sets of that size, so a medium-size pirate design would better suit those with smaller treasure holds.

Do we have any reliable information on why this strategy (I.e. releasing the larger sets first) was used for Northern America? (Was it just the United States or did it apply to Canada too) According to the below catalog, all the smaller 989 sets became available to regular retail in 1990 (as indicated by the "NEW" to the top-left of each previously exclusive set)

From my understanding, in Northern America, only 6285 Black Seas Barracuda, 6276 Eldorado Fortress, 6270 Forbidden Island and 6274 Caribbean Clipper were available for the initial 1989 release. But it appears 6235 Buried Treasure and 6245 Harbour Sentry were available in exclusive mail-away promotional pack 6200.

Quite brave and innovative to attempt an Indigo Islanders design without any Islander minifigures. Thank ye for sharing - especially this interesting background information! Aye! Indeed it is a worthy stronghold for the tan coats! It is if the BrickLink Designer Team are looking for a ship for Crowdfunding for this series.

Real photography does bring a higher level of authenticity to the design if you're able to achieve the necessary quality... But digital renders are much cleaner and far easier to incorporate background imagery, especially if they have a transparent background. Inserting builds into appropriate environments makes them far more eye-catching, like how you presented the Series 6 version:

I realise I mentioned this in the inbox, but in the interest of adding more to the discussion here: A Classic-Pirates.com article for the Series 7 version of Fortuna is underway but there is trouble finding a suitable photo for the Featured Image. That sheet/curtain in the background of the Series 7 photos is not holding up well in comparison to the seascapes used for the Series 5 and 6 versions. Is there a digital render with a transparent background? That would make inserting an entirely new background much easier. Comparing that to what we created for Thieves of Tortuga...

You'll have to go back ASAP! But seriously, thank you again for sharing these pages which have been lost to seas of time.

Thank you for sharing these and the translations! I dug a little deeper and found these catalog pages... I don't think I've seen this particular catalog with just four sets. This is what I've typically seen in the past:

Thanks for the update! Look's like the new Camilla torso design belongs to an entire Imperial faction!

Thank you for contributing this information Although, I'm unclear why a new topic was created, because like @Murdoch17 has already mentioned, there is an edit feature in the drop-down menu on the top-right side of each post. @TalonCard is a respected long term member of this forum who has made many value contributions towards the history LEGO Forum, so it would be fantastic if you two could collaborate. Accusing someone of "board stalking" is never warranted, so if you feel a forum member has responded inappropriately, please contact a moderator. Now that this misunderstanding has been addressed, let's move forward and ensure such incidents do not repeat in the future.

I began writing an article on this subject matter around two and half years ago for Classic-Pirates.com but never found time to complete it. It was only intended to be a quick "10 things you probably don't know about LEGO Pirates"... But then those 10 things turned into a index for a much longer series of articles chronicling the development of the Classic LEGO Theme beginning in 197,8 and then exploding in 1984 into the myriad of themes that would be released over the next 15 years, after Nils Milan Peterson came onboard.

That won't be until mid next week at the earliest. That is indeed how it was back in the 80s and 90s. Also as a slight deviation... the Transformers toyline was discontinued in the United States in 1991 and 1992 while Australia continued to receive the European releases. As for LEGO, in modern times things have changed... The LEGO Group has established distribution centres in Australia so now when I order from LEGO.com, it's sent from an Australian warehouse rather than the UK. So that cuts delivery from 6-8 weeks down to 2-3 days. So after the data is collected, what happens to it? Where's stored? How's it accessed / how's it presented? I ask because this kind of data fascinates me

When I find some spare time I'll go into the archive and get the set out... but I've been rather inundated of late, nor do I live at the same location as the archive. I brought it from a department store named Kmart - not the US company of the same name, but it's a nationwide retailer throughout Australia. It appears during that period Australia used the UK versions based on the set naming. Here's a quick photo of the Australian 1991 catalogue (which happened to be laying around my current location) Here you'll note the UK set names but prices in Australian dollars. In the archive should also be the 1992 Australian catalogue, which in theory includes the Australian retail price of 1696...

I purchased it in Australia in a box in 1992 ... and may still have a MISB copy in my archive.... eBay is certainly a fascinating resource of promotional LEGO imagery not available anywhere else.

Thank ye! It fetched a decent price as well:

Crowd Support for BrickLink Designer Program Series 9 is between October 6 and 17, 2025 Get all the latest information and then... Scroll UP and Support each submission! Crow Support ends on October 17 / when the timer reaches 00:00:00:00

Out of curiosity... is there a link to the auction webpage?

Ok, so that's the same LEGO Maniac commercial as I posted above. Thank you for this comprehensive summary! This is very valuable archival retrieval for the history of LEGO Pirates!

You mean you didn't win the auction? Thank you for sharing! That's the first time I've seen page 28 and the cover, although I've seen page 29 somewhere before... Is this the LEGO Maniac commercial? And there were a couple of other commercials:

Now where was in my pretentious fan rant... So Pintel and Ragetti were excised because "lineup was already too large" and the designers chose tertiary characters over secondary characters.

This seems like a very exciting project! Looking forward to watching the finished result, so please keep us updated on the progress of your video. @TalonCard is our resident LEGO Pirate historian who's created a videos. Or instead of spreading the discussion over multiple platforms, how about we centralise it in this here topic.

This is what happened to Ironhook's leg...

Shooting versus non-shooting cannons - an age old topic! There are a few previous topics on this matter which may (or may not) yield useful information: Why were cannons in the USA non-shooting? Shooting and Non-Shooting Cannons...What you Have!? New Cannons' Ranges

Brilliant work! Got any high resolution renders? I've seen the images on BrickLink but they seem to be on the small side and I will not have time to render the .io file myself.

Thank ye for providing that information!