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I think the last time I saw an Ideas set on sale that I really wanted was the Woman of NASA set...usually I just wait until there's either double VIP points or there's a cool free set that goes along with it. (I timed my Ship in a Bottle purchase carefully to pick up the 60 Years set--a great combination!) That usually results in an effective $5-$10 discount on the next big set. (Although it may be a year or more before there's another big Pirate-related set worth getting, lol.) These sets are usually out for a good long while, so hopefully those of us who aren't getting it immediately will have a shot somewhere down the line. :) Mind you, if it weren't for the current situation, I don't think I'd have the patience to wait to pick this one up. ;)

I'm fortunate enough to work from home, and I would love some input from the community: which small Pirate set or sets should I put on my desk? I have pretty much all of the small sets, but my very limited space means that most of them are disassembled and in Davy Jones's Locker (AKA storage. ) However, I could really do with some cheering up in this trying time, and I have a little bit of space on the desk, so I want to put some Pirates there! I'd like something that would be interesting to fiddle with while I'm on calls. What do you all think?

The scariest number is that it's actually been five more years between the Legends re-release in 2002 (when I finally got my copy of the set) and the 2020 Barracuda Bay than the 13 years between the original release (1989) and the Legends set. (Or maybe that's only scary to me, hahaha!)

Well, I am gobsmacked. I was hoping for some kind of tribute to Classic Pirates in the packaging, but holy sea cow, they went all out on this one! Bios and stories in the instructions! Yellow-framed boxes! And the builds themselves are just magical...somehow, they managed to include the key parts that made the original Ideas concept unique (like the Pirate inn) and also designed it so that it can be re-arranged into a fully functioning Black Seas Barracuda that might, if I'm being honest, actually be better than the original set! (And, let's face it, probably a better build than the Bay version, but I honestly can't complain.) I never had any of the large pirate sets as a young, young kid so I would constantly be rebuilding my shipwreck island sets into the ships I thought they were originally. Seeing a whole set built around this concept is amazing! And I'm so, so happy for everyone that wanted a BSB but never got one--now there's another chance. Wow. Wow wow wow wow. The timing around the release is extremely unfortunate, but just looking at the pictures is giving me some much-needed cheer.

Scrum (first picture above) has a yellow enough skin tone print that it actually looks just fine with regular minifig heads. (I recently used it to make a custom Captain Foul since all of the red pirate torsos have ruffs that just don't match his look.) As for the rest...better break out the beards, lol. :)

Wow, that is really cool! The head is quite different from the last one; looks more swashbuckling like the original print rather than rouguishly goofy like his comic book and 2015 looks. And I love the pirate hat; it's perfect! I'm going to miss the 2015 hat; I feel like it was shockingly underused, but this is a nice refinement of the original. Here's hoping they'll finally retire the silly 2009 hat as the default LEGO pirate hat.

That looks fantastic! It's not a perfect match for any existing pirate ship, but it looks like a homage to the Black Seas Barracuda as seen in the Golden Medallion comic. So cool.

I just made a Foul and Culverin as well! I ended up using Scrum from PotC for Foul's body--all the red coat torsos have fancy ruffs that I felt aren't really Foul's style. ;) I just added a high res folder with some of the original pictures. (I resized everything for Eurobricks before I realized you could resize on Flickr.) Sorry it's not better organized, I'm a little short on time right now. :)

I wouldn't get too excited about it; while it's certainly possible that LEGO could use something from the display as inspiration, or that set designs could find them their way into a display (especially in Billund), that picture is from October. I'm fairly sure that ride has been there awhile before that too; possibly even when the LEGO House opened.

Not all of those movies did poorly (and Sinbad and Road to Eldorado weren't even Disney movies); it's just that overall there were a lot of movies that didn't catch on at the box office during that period, which tended to eclipse the successful films. Not all the movies that did badly were bad movies either (Hercules was among the ones whose numbers were considered disappointing) and many of them have become popular on home video. Treasure Planet was one that bombed particularly badly, though. That being said, Treasure Planet is a personal favorite of mine. :)

As far as LEGO was concerned, they were always part of the same faction, with the Bluecoats answering to the local governor and the Redcoats being the elite Imperial Guard. Fans do love to pit them against each other anyway. ;) The lighting is quite magical! The wires are very, very thin, and while I'm sure they had to put holes in some pieces, they wouldn't need to be much larger than pinholes. A lot of the wiring was carefully placed along where bricks were joined to each other, so it was almost invisible, especially at a distance. Very clever stuff; it sold me on lighting my models one day.

Hey all, Last October, I took a trip to Germany to see my brother, and we made a little detour to Billund. Okay, so we kind of went out of our way to go. My brother was kind enough to take detailed pictures of all the Pirates related displays. I put them up on Flickr, but here are some highlights: In the center of the LEGO House is a massive tree, with branches displaying classic LEGO themes from throughout the years. @Robin_IV shared a Beyond the Brick video about the addition of a Pirate branch in 2019 a while back in the Speculation thread, here's a closer look: I like the little Smugglers Shanty camp here: The details on the firing cannon and water splashes are a lot of fun too: (That tricorn appeared to be white in the display, rather than tan as in the Queen Anne's Revenge, possibly a non production part.) The Imperial port was nicely detailed; I think we'd all like to see a set like this: There was also a large island display, which featured a AFOL-designed Pirate ship in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Pirates theme! There are more pictures on Flickr, but one fun thing about the island was that one half was LEGO, and the other half was Duplo. The Duplo side also had a pirate ship (which I'd never seen in person before) with figures from the Duplo Pirate and Jake and the Neverland Pirates themes. Gotta get more of those some day. Captain Hook also made a cameo appearance.

That's awesome! The '89 Pirate sets actually came with the firing spring loaded cannon in the US for some time too, before the switchover to the black handled non firing variants. I can't be sure, but judging on my own experience collecting these sets, the firing cannon had been entirely phased out in the US by 1990, but while many of the original '89 sets were available well into the 90s, the bulk of the sets were sold in the early years of the theme. So you're actually pretty likely to get a firing cannon with vintage sets from the first wave even if it was sold in America.

I still think my submission, Black Dog's Barque, had a lot going for it.

I think the Brick Bounty was probably the height of that rediculousness: all three adult pirate characters had eye patches; basically the entire crew. ????

And the ice planet leader was named Bear in some sources too, right? So Ursa would fit. Anyone know who JohnKelly was? I was actually on rec.toys.lego, but not until a year or two later. (I'm so old!) Major Dr. Ursa Kelvin, perhaps?

I don't know that I'd recommend it; the gameplay is awfully tedious. I did notice from the YouTube videos that as you level up your characters, you get fun trivia facts and slightly more character details as well, so there is some added incentive. These would be interesting to read; I think collecting them might be in@jamesster wheelhouse.

One of the really cool things is that the game designers seem to have kept all the existing names for the LEGO characters, however obscure. For example, the 6281 variant of the green Armada figure is called Valiant, a fairly obscure name from the UK Bricks 'n Pieces magazine. Even better, some of the previously unnamed characters are now identified! Calling @Runamuck! Private LaQuay (Classic 1989 bluecoat soldier) Darwin (The red striped, blue bandanna, gray pants wearing pirate that appeared first in the 1989 6257 Castaways Raft) Scarlett the Buccaneer (The scarred female pirate with the large sword from the 2013 Classic Pirates minifigure set) Princess Argenta (The red female pirate from the 2015 Treasure Island set) Cook Bart (The Pirate cook from 2015's Brick Bounty) Admiral Nonsuch (The bluecoat admiral, also from 2015's Brick Bounty) There are some classic non-Pirate character receiving names for the first time as well, such as Doctor Kelvin, who for years was known as the Ice Planet Babe. Good to see her get a proper name at last. I wonder if the development team came up with all of these names, or if they were provided a list by LEGO. TC

And that's half the original price! But to a collector, totally worth it.

Surprisingly understated, but I like her! I'm hoping there's some more detail we're not seeing on the leg printing; it looks like she has some cool boots. I wish they were still doing the bios so we could learn more about these characters.

Mmmmmmm, I think we're perfectly happy to buy the remakes, if we're honest with ourselves. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of an original Pirate set in the vein of the Parisian Cafe too, but a lot of us Pirates fans love minor variations on the same thing. Aren't we the same people who hoard not only armies of bluecoats, but also armies of Redcoats even though the design is almost exactly the same except for the color? ? I don't want to take away your hope, but while it's possible that the BSB and other Pirates sets being on the LEGO Tree at this point in time might have been intended to indicate that LEGO is planning on releasing more Pirate sets (which we know is the case; there are at least two coming out this year), it doesn't mean that LEGO has any plans on re-releasing the BSB specifically. The LEGO Tree has always been used to showcase scenes of themes from past and present, with vintage sets alongside newer ones in cool dioramas, so this is just an expansion of an existing thing.

TBH, LEGO probably has a pretty good idea of how a Pirates line would sell already; they've got data from 2015 and 2009, plus Pirates of the Caribbean and whatever information from the 90s that can still be applied or extrapolated to the present day. The practice of releasing just a relative handful of Pirates sets every few years is probably something they've already realized works well.

That is AWESOME! It never occured to me that a Hidden Side castle would be pirates related, but it makes perfect sense. I LOVE that they even built pirate attacks into Newbury history. Does anyone know if there's an English version of the magazine? I've got to get that issue.

I saw those when I was at the LEGO House back in October. It was pretty amazing seeing all the sets lit up like that. It looked like there were some pirates with unique torso prints and a white tricorn on row boats between the Imperial Flagship and Black Seas Barracuda. (I don't think you can see this part of the display in the video. :( ) I think I see a swimsuit torso from a City set in the video in the Imperial village, so they could have just been using non-Pirate ones I wasn't familiar with.

Sir, have you heard about a little movie franchise called Pirates of the Caribbean? Admittedly that was well over a decade ago, but I think your gender assumptions are a little outdated...