TalonCard

What exactly was your original point, before you started applying technicalities that only you understand? "Formulating as a country"? No one phrases it like that. What American authors are you even talking about? Can you try to be a little more coherent? That's a really good point! (I loved Ranger Rick, BTW!) If I remember correctly, comic books in the UK were even published on a twice-monthly basis, and most of the LEGO magazines with premium content like comics and minifigures launched in Europe first. Kids there just had more incentive to visit a newsstand. As I was reading the list of magazines you mentioned, I was like "Wait, I also read Disney Adventures, which had lots of entertaining stories and comics," but then I remembered that LEGO did partner with DA for its proto-Maniac comics with trading cards (even if they were ads), so they certainly tried every available avenue for story based content in the US. TC

Wow, great work as always! It never ceases to amaze me how many abandoned LEGO media projects there have been over the years. The buildings in Adventures in LEGO World reminds me a little bit of that Jack Stone video from a couple of years later. TC

How about "Hey, Runamuck, I'm sorry, I must have overlooked that list. I see you worked hard on that. Looks like some of the links are broken, but we could probably fix that with about a half hour of Googling." Or if you'd like to share some of those new technologies and new ways of doing things, we'd be all ears.

Neat! You think he's the same as the blue coated pirate in the gundeck scene, or from somewhere else? TC

Oh wow, that's a great find! I wonder if that version of the activity book was available anywhere besides the mail-in promotion--if not, it's probably extremely rare. I'd love what else they changed to reference the American version of the story. Wasn't sure what else to call him--Torn Red-shirt pirate with brown tri-corn? Personally, I agree with you that he's probably a different pirate character; as I said, I'd prefer for there to be both Captain Ironhook, renegade pirate, and Jake Blake, loyal crewmember of the Red Beard Runner. (For argument's sake, though, there's no reason he couldn't be the same pirate with a different hat, but that's neither here nor there.) Actually, I think you're completely right about the WWF wrestler Jake "the Snake" being a partial reference for the name. The 1990s Mania Magazines had lots of little nods to American sports and pop culture, and the red, torn shirt even looks a little like what a wrestler might wear. Good catch! Yeah, but it's not like Americans are only interested in American history at the literal point at which the US became a country, nor would we group our colonial history under the heading of European history before 1776. I'd wager that pirate history and stories were just as popular here in the 1990s as they were in Europe. TC

Noticed that @kelceycoe has dedicated an entire section of his LEGO Pirate website to this timeline. Since he's taken most of the identifying information out (I'm only credited at the very bottom of the timeline, and the user names have been removed in the discussion between myself and @kabel , which have also been included), and in fact there's no direct link to this topic at all, I thought I would bump the thread so folks could see it in its original context. (I'm sure it's an oversight that will soon be corrected.) TC

I just clicked on the audio dramas (which should be indexed by title here) section to your site, and noticed this text, without any kind of attribution, at the top of the Audio Dramas page: "They were repackaged and re-released without the LEGO brand on June 14 2004, apparently to capitalize on the recently released Pirates of the Caribbean film. (It's interesting to see the non-LEGO versons of Roger, Will, Camilla, and Broadside.) They are available for purchase on CD and immediate download on Amazon.de." This is nearly identical to a post I made here about the audio dramas. "They were repackaged and re-released without the LEGO brand in 2004, apparently to capitalize on the recently released Pirates of the Caribbean film. (It's interesting to see the non-LEGO versons of Roger, Will, Camilla, and Broadside.) They are available for purchase on CD and immediate download on Amazon.de!" And again later on the page: "(Note: The concerns here about Broadside's theoretical replacement were also raised in the Ladybird book "The Royal Visit", but this seems to be a different story...)" Which hasn't even been changed from the original post: "(Note: The concerns here about Broadside's theoretical replacement were also raised in the Ladybird book "The Royal Visit", but this seems to be a different story...)" I appreciate the effort you've put into bringing all of this content into one place. I certainly don't claim ownership over the facts surrounding random LEGO audio dramas, but you can't just copy and paste text without attribution. Re-writing the text in your own words takes minimal effort compared to setting up the website, etc. Or, just explain who wrote the original text. I would even be happy to write content for your site myself, if asked, and given credit. I noticed that you've included the timeline I originally posted here on your own site, so that might be of interest to you. I see that you're trying to give credit throughout the site, but it's frustratingly inconsistent. I appreciate that you've given Runamuck credit for his translations. You've also mentioned the user who originally uploaded the audios to a certain video site, though this appears to be copy-pasted directly from the descriptions of other uploads on the same site. I am credited on the timeline section, but at the very end, with no explanation of who wrote the timeline or where it originally appeared, or a direct link to the forum post. Why is this so inconsistent? TC

I have the Blue Pirate keychain, but I'd love to get the Imperial Soldier or the Pirate with Brown Shirt keychains. TC

You need to do a better job of attributing your discoveries. I'll admit that 2-6 years is a long time when it comes to the internet and this forum, but please give credit to the fans who did a lot of the legwork in discovering this material a few years back. @Sadie Meowsalot was the one who went to all the trouble of contacting the original author of the comic, Per Sanderhage, and it was through her discussions with him that Island of Mist was discovered--if not for her, no one might have even known it existed, never mind it making its way online for us all to enjoy. That's her Brickshelf album you're linking to, and you've posted a quote from her discussion with Sanderhage from the Rock Raiders United forum on the Books/Comics section of your site without a link or attribution. You've included @Runamuck's translations as a text file in the Island of Mist download with no direct mention of him either, as far as I can tell, and I see bits of my own posts included in the download file with no attribution or even context. I appreciate the fact that you mentioned me in your post here, but I wasn't involved in this discovery at all. It most certainly did not go "unnoticed", a number of folks who frequent this forum were excited and an entire English translation was made by Runamuck. There was some concern at the time about widely distributing the scans because technically they still belong to LEGO, which is probably why the discussion didn't spill over into Eurobricks as much. I did notice that you've included an archive of the Rock Raiders United discussion in the download file, so the context for these things is in there somewhere, but this isn't really sufficient attribution. Since the discussion isn't mentioned on the website or directly in the download file, no one would know to go looking for it. I'm hoping that it's just an understandable enthusiasm to share LEGO Pirates material and get it saved in a central location for people on your site that's causing these things to be overlooked. But it doesn't take a lot of work to say something like "According to X user on this forum discussion (insert link here), there was a second comic. The scans originally posted on (link to original site here) can now be downloaded from LEGO Pirates: A Fan's Mania" or "This translation was made by this user and originally posted on this forum." TC

Upping for relevant Pirate discussion.

Upping as it's relevant to LEGO PIrate history. :)

Bumping for Minifigures name discussion. :)

Upping due to the recent interest in Ironhook.

Upping in case this thread is needed for reference.

That's good and all, but I'm not seeing a lot of confusion, just a list of publications that have been discussed on this forum for years.

Dude, I know. I'm delighted that you've found more obscure pirate things and are finding a home for them; pointing out the shortcomings of the existing archives is unnecessary.

Bumping for ongoing lore discussion.

The named pirates were hidden throughout the magazine; Jake is on page 10, lower left hand corner. I know it's been awhile, but I did point out the miniland scans and their relevance to Pirate lore on this very forum. Like, over five years ago, but still. ? TC

The March/April 1996 Mania Magazine (from the US LEGO Club) named all of the pirate figures included in the Red Beard Runner, the figures in the image you posted. The name given to the Ironhook variant with the brown tricorn hat was Jake "the Snake" Blake. I'd mentioned that in my earlier post. That's not quite the way I read it. The Kahuka challenging Red Beard to cross the bridge isn't speaking from the picture of the set; he's a separate image placed above the set listing. While he's referring to a feature of the set, the Kahuka visible in the set picture has no dialogue. The other image of Kahuka could just as easily be calling out the Red Beard figure also shown separately from the sets on page 38. I mean, I see where you're coming from for sure, but I saw the same media at the same time and came to the opposite conclusion. I think we can both agree that in the US Ironhook was effectively a nonentity. I do seem to remember a t-shirt that had the Ironhook figure on it with "Red Beard" embroidered on it, but it was from the early 2000s and I can't remember if it was from LEGOLAND or if it was a bootlegged unofficial shirt. I'd imagine that the American desire for simplification is one reason why we didn't get the expanded Pirate storyline from later years, agreed. Pirates are very, very much American history too, though; many of the most famous pirates visited North and South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, and even New York, not to mention that the Caribbean is far, far closer geographically to the US than it is to Europe. You were lucky indeed to get Captain Roger's Activity Book! I didn't even hear about it until about twelve years ago. Where was it sold in the US? TC

Oh hey, that's cool--I didn't know the Eldorado Fortress was still available in 1993! I remember getting the 1994 US Shop at Home catalog and hoping for a picture of the giant Skull's Eye Schooner, only to be surprised that the Black Seas Barracuda and Forbidden Island were included instead! (I wish I had begged my parents to order them, lol.) Dunno why that ship didn't seem to make it to mail order. The Imperial forces were always bundled together in catalogs, even when the Armada sets came around. The Imperial Guards have been consistently portrayed as part of the same faction as the earlier Soldiers, so that's understandable from a story perspective at least. TC

Sorry, that was the point I was trying to make--in the US he didn't have a name as far as I can tell (at least not until 1996), and he wasn't presented as a leader of another faction of pirates. 1992 was very much a continuation of the Red Beard/Broadside conflict from the first wave, and the only notable thing about Ironhook was that he was one of three new pirate designs that year. In the UK and elsewhere, as you point out, it was a different matter. TC

That's interesting; as a kid in the US I never thought the torn red shirt figure was the same character as Captain Red Beard in spite of their obvious similarities. Their faces have different color printing for the hair and beard, which is subtle but was maintained throughout all future instances of the Red Beard/redshirt figures for four years, while both figures continued to be used. If the designers had meant for the redshirt figure to be a new version of the same character, the original Red Beard design would have gone away in sets released after 1992, and if it was intended to be an alternate, updated design, there was no reason not to use the new head printing on the old body. (On the other hand, in the US, the similarly updated red Imperial Guards leader figure was consistently said to be the same character as the blue Imperial Soldier Governor Broadside, and I accepted that without question!) But there are other factors too: Red Beard appears consistently from 1989-1997 dressed in a coat, fancy scarf, and with a peg leg. The ragged look of the redshirt figure doesn't really match the character's established look. Plus, the red shirt figure appeared with and without peg legs and with pants of all colors, so it seemed that he was more of a generic pirate figure than Red Beard; likely representing a bunch of different pirates rather than just a singular character. His last appearance, as Mister Phes pointed out, was in the Red Beard Runner with Red Beard, which seems to clinch the whole thing. I never thought much about Red Beard being the captain of the Renegade Runner as I assumed he was the head of all the LEGO Pirates at that point--with a small fleet, he could be in charge of any ship without actually being in the set. In the March-April 1996 issue of LEGO Mania Magazine the red shirt pirate is called Jake "the Snake" Blake, which was the first time, as far as I can tell, that a variant of the figure was given a character name in the US. It wasn't until I started looking around on the Internet years later that I learned that the marketing materials overseas had made a much bigger deal about the 1992 wave, calling the Imperial Guard leader Admiral Woodhouse and the red shirt pirate Captain Ironhook (or Blackbeard in some countries). Whenever the Ironhook name appears, it's always to differentiate him from Roger, so I doubt that a new nickname and mis-translation would have resulted in one character being split into two. More likely, as Tazakkk points out, the occasions when Roger and Ironhook are presented as the same character as you've discovered in the 1994 Bricks and Pieces, were a result of marketing folks not picking up on the differences in the minifigures, or deciding they were too minor to bother with a new character, which is apparently what happened with Broadside and Woodhouse in the US. As with any LEGO backstory it's up to you, the LEGO Maniac, to decide whether they're the same character or not. But the idea of Ironhook as a distinct character from Roger isn't a fluke or a mistranslation, it's very well established in the multiple sources Tazakkk and Jamesster mentioned: the 1992 Bricks and Pieces magazine, Die Insel der schaurigen Masken and Piratensegel am Horizont audio dramas, and the Time Cruisers Klick comics. (The audio dramas even give a whole backstory about how Roger sold Renegade Runner to Ironhook and why Rummy from the Golden Medallion appears in that set.) Personally I like having as many pirate characters around as possible, so I love to imagine that Jake and Ironhook and Red Beard and Broadside and Woodhouse are all running around the Tropical Sea somewhere. TC

Ah, sorry, I meant that the virtual minifigure in the video game LEGO Battles called Camilla doesn't look much like the Camilla from the comic book, though they seem to be the main character. I don't think she's an exact match for either of the physical female minifigures in the Brick Bounty or Imperial Flagship, but she does appear to be in approximately the same style. From what Jamesster has said, it sounds like the character design was created first (based on the then-current sets) and then the name from the old Pirate comic was added retroactively. (I've also personally associated the female minifigure from the Imperial Flagship with the LEGO Battles Camilla for so long that I'd completely forgotten that was my own assumption and not based on any facts.) TC

Of course! How could I forget the monkeys?! I don't think the dolphins came along until 1995, though. (I ended up buying a Bellville set, of all things, from the US Shop at Home to get one.) TC

I'm afraid the paint would flake off, to be honest. I've washed some of the old tiny gold coins that way and the paint came off to varying degrees, it was almost gone one some coins. (I suspect the early years of gold coins wasn't quite as good as the later ones were, but I've been careful to use just regular water, if anything, ever since.) TC