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I actually preferred most of those island sets over this one. Barnacle Bay in particular was a nice little set, with the Imperial camp and Pirate shack--which, in a theme lacking civillian structures, could easily be made into a makeshift beach storefront. (It'd complement Smuggler's Shanty quite nicely.) At one point I remember sticking all the little island sets together to make a medium-sized destination for the Pirates. Ahh, those were the days! (Of course, since I also refused to modify any of my sets at that age, this particular island had pirate flags sticking up everywhere like so many McDonald's signs. But still...) Of course, the best reason for not liking this set is that there was already a much superior version out there. But then, I always was a snob when comparing older Pirates to newer Pirates--I didn't realize that there might not be any Pirates at all one day...not until it was too late... :( TC

Ahoy again! After the success of the the part I bring you Part II of my highly entertaining Guide to the Pirate Mini-figures. Part II delves into the hectic lives of the soldiers who strive to keep the cantankerous pirates at bay. a_guide_to_the_pirate_minifigures-part_ii.pdf Now tell us what you think!

Sigh. I think I got this for a birthday back in the day. My parents were so awesome. :) TC

Ooooh, I have good memories of this set. Imagine, if you will, a young LEGO pirate fan who has just saved up twenty bucks or so to buy a LEGO set of some kind. Imagine that at a Wal-Mart that very day, he just so happens to run across a Pirates set in a unique box that he had never even known existed; that wasn't in any of the catalogs (I had a similar happy experience with Barnacle Bay), and that had a large pirate flag, a zebra drum, and some more Islander figures (of which he had very few) plus a cool-looking Pirate captain with blue epaulets. That was the stuff dreams were made of back then, my friends. 1995 was a very dry year for Pirates if you didn't have enough money for Imperial Outpost or Skull Island, and it was all Islanders the year before that. I had that box forever until it was tragically flattened. Actually, I still have it. :-D TC

I'm really pleased to see all the interest in the next part! I started doing a little background research on 18th century military uniforms for the article, but I had to put everything on hold when my mother underwent heart surgery. She's doing much better now. I still want to get it out this month, but it may just be towards the very end of October. After that I'm planning on skipping November in order to pull together the giant Guide to the Tropical Sea, as there isn't really a logical place to split it into multiple parts. That should be out at the end of December as kind of a late Christmas present to all the fantastic folks on the Pirate forums! TC

Hey, that's great! Make sure you keep us posted with whatever you're working on. TC

Thank you! Yes it would! I've posted all the stories I've been able to find in the thread you've mentioned. I'm not sure how long the good stories were printed on the boxes--at some point after 1992, the stories became rather basic and generic. The earlier ones were more extensive and had sections unique to the set. Fortunately, they haven't vanished the way I thought they might. A surprising number of American Pirate boxes were preserved by collectors and can be had on Ebay and Bricklink. As I go about rebuilding my Pirate collection, I try to buy sets with boxes, so it's only a matter of time (I hope) before I have access to all of them. It may take years, however. :( TC

Great to see it up there! LEGO had a pretty consistant storyline for the original Pirates line, which was seen in the famous Pirate comic, the Ladybird Pirate books, and reflected in certain areas of the Pirate section of LEGOLAND. The larger American sets also had small stories printed on the box covers. These were different in tone than the European books, but the two were somewhat reconciled in the American version of the comic, which had the names changed to match the box background. After the initial wave, though, additional information is spotty and comes from brief and often absurd backgrounds given in catalogs and magazines. It took me about two days to write the article, and two more to scan all the pictures in. Of course, that's not all in a row... ;) Research for this first article I did mostly at Peeron and Lugnet as needed. This was mostly looking at old catalog scans to refresh my memory--having spent many, many hours as a child committing pirate sets to memory, I already knew most of what I needed to know. :-D For upcoming articles I have a whole stack of books, catalogs, and magazines, as well as the discussions we've already had here at the forums, for reference. I would love to be able to talk to designers who actually worked on the Pirate theme, but I have no idea how to even go about it. TC

Thanks again for all the kind words! >Oh, only one thing I would have included, or maybe it would be best after you've introduced all the characters: solid vs hollow stud heads since the change occured during the Pirates era.< That's a good idea! I have several nice examples of both kinds of figures. Perhaps as an appendix in the second part? >Do you also intend to carry this beyond minifigs, into the various hulls, sails, and cannons?< That's a good idea! Assuming someone with a bigger collection doesn't get to them first, I'd be interested in doing them somewhere along the line. Cannons would be first, I think. The subject interests me no end, and I'd love to explore the various stages of shooting vs. non-shooting cannon and the different colors of carriges. After part two of the mini-figure guide, I'm planning on doing a two-part guide to the characters and places from the storyline created for the theme by LEGO, followed by a picture-packed piece on the LEGO pirate comic. I'm hoping to bring in a lot of new information with those, as there was quite a lot of story released just in the US. TC

Thanks! That'd be the skeletons that were all over the place in the last few years of the theme. Whether or not they were actually undead is something I'll be delving into... TC

Ahoy! I've recently come back into Pirates after a long dark ages, and I've been really excited to find so many other Pirate fans here on EuroBricks. I'm also a huge fan of the Classic-Pirates website--it's a really great looking page that gives the Pirates theme the kind of attention it deserves. I've recently written an article for the site, a guide to the minifigures of the Pirate theme. Part one, a look back at the Pirates themselves, is up now. Part two will feature the the Islanders, Soldiers, Guards, and the Armada. I'm also gathering material for a guide to LEGO's Pirate characters, as well as a look at the various LEGO Pirate comics. Please take a look--I'd appreciate any feedback! TalonCard Download: a_guide_to_the_pirate_minifigures-part_i.pdf

I suppose I should come clean and admit that I, one of the most adamant LEGO pursuists anywhere, bought a MegaBlocks set last year. Being the pirate fan that I am, it was, of course, a Pirates of the Caribbean Jack Sparrow set. I certainly didn't buy it for the bricks--it was the package that made me do it. It came in a really nice plastic copy of Jack's compass from the films--probably the best one you can buy as a toy. At less than $6 US, it would have been a steal if I also wanted the bricks or the figure, which I most certainly didn't. I'll admit that the gap between LEGO and MegaBlocks has gotten smaller recently. MegaBlocks has upped the quality of their bricks and themes, while LEGO has decreased the quality of the bricks, and the sets, once pretty much uniformly good, have been all over the map for about a decade now. Some are excellent (2007 Star Wars, anybody?), some were just plain awful (three words: Cross Bone Clipper.) Still, that gap is still there. MegaBlocks has a positively tiny range when it comes to themes. Their bricks still don't work well with LEGO, and anything that isn't a standard brick (bridges, figures, swords, trees...) is rubbish. TC

Allow me: click here. These books were printed in the UK, so they have different set names. "Fort Sabre" is Eldorado Fortress, while "Pirate's Nest" is the Forbidden Island. "Port Royal" and "Fenzance" have both been used for the Imperial Trading Post, either the "Island of Skulls" or the "Skeleton Island" could hold Skull Island and/or Volcano Island, and the "Island of Ruins" could, of course, be home to the Islanders. Let the geographic speculation begin! TC

>I'll make this question just European oriented. Metric oriented. Why can't Americans be simple and calculate with simple metres instead of feet? I never got that. A man's foot length differs from guy to guy but a meter is always constant. How can you use feet?< If you're going to be historically accurate, you'd probably have to use something like the "American" measurements and then convert to metric. The metric system was, if memory serves, developed in France, and did not become popular until the early nineteeth century. The Pirates theme takes place in the eighteenth century, in spite of the somewhat anachronistic garb for the Armada and Imperial soldiers. ;) The reason we use "feet" and so on is because they were at one time the European, or at least the British standard, don't forget. And when we say something is a foot long, we mean exactly twelve inches, not whatever the length of our own foot happens to be. For scientific purposes that demand even more accurate measurement, we use the metric system just like everybody else. TC

>As for cannons: I have two Lagoon Lockups that came with the black handles; I had 3 CCs, each one with a pair of the three different cannons.< Now that's interesting. My Lagoon Lock-Up box clearly shows the non shooting canon with the crossed canon mark. Were these used or bought new? Another interesting note: I distinctly remember having quite a few of the disabled black handled canons as a child, but I can't find a single one in my house--they're all the crossed canon kind. The older ones just vanished. I remember thinking for a long time that the black ones were the shooting canons, and being dissapointed because they didn't shoot too well. :-D Imagine my surprise when I finally obtained a shooting canon this year, and found you can fire them several feet and even knock over a minifigure if you aim right. One more reason why Pirates rule. ;) TC

Ah yes. Darn, but I hate childish things. Now, if you'll all excuse me, I'm going to play with my toy pirate ship and make them fight the smiling plastic soldier men. ;) Sorry, couldn't resist. One of my favorite non-brick Pirate collectables is the hat Jolly Roger hat I brought back from the LEGO store in Orlando. Yeah, it's Jack Stone inspired, but it's almost like Red Beard's. :) TC

I've always thought that the figurehead of a vessel was one of those great little details that no ship should be without. Some are better than others, but any figurehead is better than none at all. And then there's the mystery of the Armada flagship, which may or may not have a figurehead... :-D TC

It's a tough choice here, because each of these sets are wonderful! Aside from the two Shipwreck Islands (which, I note, are not in the poll) I don't think the Pirates theme even had a sub-par outpost set. (And even those islands are darn fun to play with, even if they are somewhat lacking in design.) For sheer size, which means more bricks, more figures, and therefore more fun, the Imperial Outpost and Lagoon Lock-up stand out from the rest. Sabre Island is great, sure, but it is lacking in standalone play value. Where are the pirates? Where's the jail, or a place to hide treasure? It works best alongside the Eldorado Fortress or Lagoon Lock-Up. Of the Outpost and Lock-up, I'd have to go with the Lock-Up. The design is well executed, the figures (soldiers AND pirates) are great, the sail boat is a must-have, and the main building is particularly well thought out; it's not too open or too enclosed, the open areas are incorporated into the design, and it looks like a dockside tavern and not another random military structure. One of the best sets LEGO ever made in that price range. TC

You're kidding, right? TC

Yeah, the two are apparently different characters. The US sets never made a distinction between the two, and in fact several sources name this figure as Broadside. I was glad to add another character to the LEGO Pirate cast when I found out otherwise. TC

>Hmm. I just bought Eldorado's Fortress AND Caribbean Clipper. I paid $118 for EF and $67 for CC. Is that cheap?< Cheap? No. But reasonable? Considering that both prices are within twenty dollars of the original price you'd pay in a higher end store in 1989, and accounting for inflation, and that they are two of the oldest and greatest Pirate sets, I would say they're more than reasonable. TC

You know what seems odd to me, is that in spite of the fact that people may be willing to pay $14 for a rare Governor Broadside, this doesn't seem to have led to price hikes in the sets he appears in. Complete Caribbean Clippers and Eldorado Fortresses, both with the Broadside fig, seem to be quite reasonably priced. TC

Allright, here's an oddity for you all to ponder on. I recently obtained a vintage American Caribbean Clipper, complete with box. It has shooting cannons (YES!), dating it from around '89 or '90. (I know that by '91, the shooting canons were gone.) The minifigure heads for the sailers, the standard smilies, are all solid. But Broadside's head is hollow! Now, my other used Pirate sets have a mixture of solid and hollow heads, which makes sense: they were probably swapped for newer ones at some point. However, I would have thought that Broadside would never have been produced with a hollow head, since the two sets with him in it went out of production right before the hollow head was introduced. Broadside was replaced completely by Woodhouse, who has a similar but definitely different face. (Woodhouse has brown wiskers, whereas Broadside's are black.) Thoughts? TC

Wow, what a question! I've actually thought about this before, ever since discovering the MISB sets on Ebay. I haven't seen a MISB Pirate set since 2000, when I found two or three Pirate polybags in a small town Target. I of course bought them immediately and opened them, because LEGO is for playing with, not for displaying in the packaging! A nicely kept box provides the same collector's benefits as a sealed one, with the added benefit that you get to build the set. That said, I've come up with the following contingency plan in case I do ever run accross another MISB Pirate set at a reasonable price (unlikely): #1: If the set is a copy of one I already have complete in good condition (which at this point is limited to the BSB, the Caribbean Clipper, and Forbidden Island) I will keep it sealed, sell it on Ebay, and buy myself plenty of used Pirate LEGOs with the resulting booty. #2: If the set is one I don't have...sorry, all bets are off. I won't be able to get it home fast enough, and when I do, I'll have the sweet nostalgic joy that comes with punching through that thin cardboard, ripping open those awesome polybags with the tiny holes, and sorting through the bright shiny new LEGO pieces! :'-) TC

Ah, Eldorado Fortress--next on my "to get" list. I've been absoutely amazed to see that these sets can still be had in better condition than most of my LEGOs are for $100 or less... Can't wair! :D TC