MAB

I'm very similar. My childhood (70s and a bit of the 80s) was also before most of the "Classic" themes. I was used to playing with LEGO alongside other toys. Lego was used to build engine sheds for Hornby trains, spectator stands for scalextric and subbuteo, Kenner SW figures went in bad renditions of SW ships built in red and blue, Homemaker maxifigures were fun to build with really long arms or 1m tall. Of all my old stuff, I have only a few sets on display. I have 112-2 (locomotive, but also with an additional blue tender, 612-1 tipper truck and 337-2 truck with crane along with half a dozen of the old LEGOLAND fixed limb minifigures and a house MOC with lots of old windows and other long retired parts. They rarely get touched, but act as a display to show just how far LEGO has come in terms of set designs. I find vintage sets quite boring to build compared to modern. For the time they were pretty decent but I don't think kids of today would ever pick one of them if they had a choice between vintage and new. I didn't have a lot of the Castle, Space and Pirates stuff as I was too old at the time but have picked up lots of it over the past two decades. I sell on most of it due to its value and buy modern parts. I enjoy Castle the most out of the three, but prefer MOCs with modern parts to the original old sets. I did keep a lot of the minifigures although now tend to sell on those too due to their value and replace with the modern versions where I can. I keep factions not yet redone but if they repeat, for example, the Wolfpack torso then I'll think nothing of getting rid of the old.

The second question is an interesting one. I would have preferred a new product inspired by the old theme, much like Barracuda Bay and the Lion Knights Castle are, rather than an attempt to remake an old set (or rather most of one old set and a bit of another). For the piece count, I think a better job (at least, to the eyes of someone that has had LEGO during the last 30 years) could be done with modern parts and modern techniques) by starting from scratch without trying to model it on a specific vintage set. They could have still used a vintage style box for a modern design. And that leads to the first question. I'll attempt an answer. It is important to understand what the question is! What is the fan base here - fans of the original set, fans of the original theme, fans of LEGO Pirates in general or fans of LEGO. Each is a subset of the next, getting bigger. I think fans of the original theme and fans of LEGO Pirates would be up for both the set as it is and a newly designed set. I imagine the fan base here is fans of the theme more than the exact set, based on the survey they did a while back before producing the Lion Knight's Castle, the Galaxy Explorer and leaving Pirates fans with nothing. I think that vote was enough to convince them that there is life in the old theme, although they could have gone either way with the remake / something new. I would imagine that if Pirates had crashed and burned in that survey, then this set would not have been made. So no, I doubt it would exist if it wasn't for the fan base if you define the fan base as people that voted for the theme in the Classic themes poll. However, the question is not just the fan base but the established fan base. That additional word needs defining - I'll take it to mean someone that actively builds Pirates MOCs or collects Pirates sets or similar. I doubt it actually matters to LEGO too much whether it is an active, established fan base that voted or if it was at the other extreme, people voting purely from nostalgia that had not shown any interest in LEGO Pirates for 30 years. I don't think it would have been made without the fan base voting for it but that doesn't necessarily mean it was only an established fan base that voted. The reality is probably somewhere in between. Both long term Pirates enthusiasts and nostalgic voters that hadn't thought about Pirates for decades, with a sprinkle of people with neither nostalgic memories nor any history with the theme that thought Pirates would be a cool new theme to them.

But still embraced by many despite having (horror of all horrors) a female head where there was once a (presumed) male one. That change doesn't seem to have made people hate the set because they have destroyed the 80s lore by allowing a forest woman to wear an outfit that, according to 80's lore, is a forest man's outfit instead of the bodice that 80's lore says they should be wearing. Including a female head (and changing the set name) opens it up a bit in terms of representation but doesn't detract from the set itself. There is something similar in the recent creator sets for Vikings and Pirates. Two older themes redone in a creator style. The old Midgard Vikings set had 6 males, no females. The new Creator Vikings set has two male and two female characters, whereas the Pirates one sticks to three males and a skeleton. I know we will never know set sales by gender, but it would be interesting to know if the Vikings set has a higher percentage of female consumers compared to the Pirates. Does making such a tiny change of switching a couple of faces to female open up the market for it or does it put off too many that won't buy it as they wanted male only. It can be argued that when when torsos are neutral, the set could be all male and if you want female representation you should add your own female heads. It can also be argued that it could be both male and female and if you want only male representation you should add your own male heads. However, one of these is quite open, whereas the other is quite closed when it comes to advertising and the implied consumer.

There are many reasons, for example - whether they feel represented in the theme, how females are represented (are they there only to be rescued or have minor roles in the narrative), how the toys are advertised (such as adverts featuring only boys playing with them), where the toys are advertised (such as in comics aimed mainly at boys, whether the toys are located in a "boys zone" or "girls zone" in a store rather than a more neutral zone, and so on. I probably would not have noticed any of that as a kid, being a boy and having only brothers and maybe you have never thought about it if you cannot think of any reasons why someone might feel excluded from a particular toy. But being a father of a daughter and son, it really opens your eyes to how things are both marketed and played with. For example, my daughter plays with modern City police and fire sets, but if I show her one from 15 or so years ago has less interest in it if the crew are all male. It might be almost exactly the same toy, but inclusion is important.

Not solely, no. But it is one of a number of reasons.

Yes, I believe the customer base would now be different. I think this is being marketed to not just small boys of the 80s that have now grown up but also to small girls of the 80s that have now grown up too. It is almost a statement of this is what the set should have been like in the 80s if we had more progressive views back then. I wonder how many girls would have been interested in the set/theme back then but didn't buy in as they felt left out.

It is interesting that they did a similar modernising remake of an old classic - the Forestmen's Hideout. They changed the name to Forest instead of Forestmen's. They took two original classic smileys and made one male and the other female. They adapted an old design but kept a similar vibe. And that set seemed to be quite well accepted.

It is quite surprising that it is often said that one of the benefits of unlicensed themes is that LEGO does not have to stick to a fixed storyline or designs and has much greater freedom when it comes to what they can include in a set or theme. And then there are all these complaints about them doing an unlicensed set wrong, not following the correct lore, flushing their history down the drain, and so on. If LEGO has to stick closely to stories and characters they published 3 or 4 decades ago, when both society and their core customer base was different, then this is not so different to licensed sets where they get less freedom over characters and designs. If LEGO cannot make sets that are up to date but based on old themes, then those themes should remain constrained to history. If someone wants sets exactly as they were in the past, then buy vintage sets. Whereas if we want older themes revived today, we have to expect that they will be made to today's standards.

What are you planning on using? Fabric, plastic sheet, paper/card, brick built, ...? Your own design or copying LEGO's?

Buildable rattan baskets confirmed!

Same here, I'm not a fan of (some) leg prints. My modern Black Falcons have plain black legs instead of the official ones, for example. I like to pose figures and if the print is continuous across the torso waist and thighs it looks a bit crap. Whereas decoration for things like knee pads, pockets, boots, etc (esp dual molding for boots) are fine by me.

If you want more realism, people of this era did not have yellow skin. Making everyone the same race is also bending the perception of history. LEGO could easily correct that by using the many shades of more accurate skin tones available now. But I imagine they will stick with the standard yellow in line with the other non-licensed sets.

The ONE JOB they had is to make a set that sells. There are many factors behind what makes it desirable to different people, other people's wishes may not align with yours. I'm a bit surprised at the lack of a pirate captain given the original but not all the other named characters that were not in the original set. But I also imagine people that will be after this will also have BB and might complain about getting another Red Beard and the waste of a figure.

Where exactly was I disrespectful? Toastie said there is zero reason to mix clones with lego. There are many reasons not to mix clones with lego. Some people may not care about those, but they still exist.

Or they have used tar / pitch to make it waterproof and black. But more importantly to match the original ship in the Imperial Trading Post.

They have mashed the original set together with the Imperial Trading Post. For a similar piece count, they could have removed the ship and used the original rowing boat and done a better build with the extra parts freed up. But I guess they want more individual builds/sections to the set rather than one larger building.

Yeah, often plastic toys crack and rubber parts can harden and shrink. It is sort of expected after decades. But if it is happening on relatively new LEGO sets, it is still a worry that there are production issues or they are not testing their products under realistic conditions.

US users do seem to have a bigger problem with this than Europeans. I don't know if it is your temperatures or the overall variation in temperature or the quality of the plastic used in the Mexican factory, or something else. I have 100s of figures and animals from the brittle brown age and I have had only a single horse break, and that was new from the box with no play at all. The legs were tight and broke as soon as I posed them.

Some clones are very good quality these days but the reason I don't mix them is often due to colour, if they are close but not quite the same as LEGO.

It is good that there is a choice. LEGO produces so many sets these days compared to the 80s or 90s. Kids that prefer the weird and wacky can go for that style set, whereas kids that prefer more sensible looking sets can go for those. Then the only people that have a problem are the ones that feel they need to own everything when they don't like some of it.

If they are tight, then gently move them up/down and they should soon loosen. However, if you are displaying them, then just move the arms to the angles you want to display them. I would not aim to remove really tight arms, as you might break the shoulder ball or you might crack the torso. The fix is glue or buying a new torso assembly.

Rather than using paper or fabric, why not use curved slopes for the roof. Take a look at brick built sails on ships. You can get a quite realistic look for fabric and give some texture/shape to make it more interesting than a flat, tiled surface.

It says "articles admitted unconditionally ". So what is the problem?

Based on the top selling themes, I don't think that is necessarily correct. Kids like City, Friends and Ninjago enough to keep them in the best sellers. And that is probably why those three themes dominate the unlicensed side - together they typically have as many minifigure based sets per year as all the licensed themes put together. I imagine it is more that LEGO prefer a fairly even split of licensed themes and larger evergreen unlicensed themes since they are easier to sell, and do not need to develop new advertising / media every year. Doing a small range of 6-10 unlicensed sets on theme A one year and another 6-10 on theme B the next, is not cost effective when it comes to marketing. Whereas small themes do work for licensed as they barely need to advertise them as the license sells them. That is probably why so many varied ideas get put into City, Friends and Ninjago when in the past they might have stood as stand alone unlicensed themes. Ninjago really covers a lot of ground, from mechs to fantasy dragons to things close to space and steampunk, cars and modern / fantasy vehicles, ancient and modern architecture, ships, etc.

They are producing more adult aimed LEGO sets now than ever before, and yet they don't care about any AFOL opinions? Get real. They are fully embracing the AFOL market now.