Classic LEGO sets: Pirates
Posted by Huw,
This, more appropriately titled article in our series about old LEGO sets, has been contributed by Daniel, The LEGO Chronicler:
For this week's look back at classic LEGO sets your collection should contain, we are going to dip our feet into what was one of my favorite childhood themes: Pirates.
Bursting onto the scene in 1989 with an initial offering of four sets, Pirates were unlike anything those of us who were collecting back then had ever seen. For younger readers who have grown up with Star Wars and Ninjago, it may be hard to imagine how revolutionary these sets were. Their scale was largely without precedent (especially in terms of height), they introduced a slew of new pieces (monkeys, cannons, boat hulls, weapons and more), were the first to include non-smiley faces, were the first new theme in many years, and the list goes on.
In selecting what to include in this article I took my cues from the types of sets LEGO released in the initial 1989 offering. The four-set initial wave reflected a formula for the basic types of sets that would define the the theme going forward. These included: the Pirate Ship, the Good Guy Ship, the Good Guy Base and the Pirate Island. In the years that followed right up through the most recent 2009 iteration LEGO followed this formula in each of the Pirate waves (with the exception of the third which did not include a formal Good Guy Base) filling out each offering with a variety of supplemental sets. In light of that I have selected the set from each of these categories that you should have in your collection.
Supplemental: 6261 Raft Raiders
There have been a lot of fabulous supplemental Pirate sets through the years (6265, 6260 and 6258 come to mind) but if I could only pick one it would be 6261.
One of the problems with the Pirate theme has always been the price of entry. By necessity, the large ships were expensive. This little gem gave those of us with non existent allowances a taste of the big boys through the inclusion of a small sail and the brown rigging pieces which, in addition to looking great on this set, could be used to construct a very satisfactory small ship MOC (or as they were known back then in the LEGO Magazine: Crazy Creations).
This set can be played with quite happily on its own but is also a great addition to a pirate fleet. With three pirate figures, the large sturdy raft and a shark for the price it is a value that was hard to beat then and almost unheard of now.
Pirate Island: 6273 Rock Island Refuge
The Pirate Island category has had some great entries through the years and also a few duds (I am looking at you 6281, seriously LEGO, what were you thinking...), but if you can only have one in your collection it should be 6273 Rock Island Refuge.
A good Pirate Island needs a dock and a crane for unloading plundered loot, a jail for holding unfortunate Imperial Guards or Islanders, and a thrown together look respective of the unruly bunch who put it together from whatever scraps they could find. All the Pirate Islands have some of those traits but only 6273 has them all, and perfectly executed on the classic ramp and pit baseplate to boot! Throw in a pirate raft, Imperial Guard row boat (with rare white and blue sail!) and an excellent assortment of minifigures and 6273 emerges as both a fabulous play set and a gorgeous display piece.
Good Guy Island: 6276 El Dorado Fortress
It would really stink to be a civilian in the LEGO Pirate world. Why? Because until the release of 10210, the good guys have pretty much always gotten the shaft. The reason for this is of course marketing. LEGO hits certain price points with each theme and since the Pirate Islands and ships usually locked up the more expensive slots, many of the Good Guy bases have been more like outposts (6267, 6263, 6265). There are, however, two fabulous exceptions.
Choosing between 6276 El Dorado Fortress and 6277 Imperial Trading Post is a choice I advise you to avoid if at all possible; they are both so awesome just save yourself the heartache and get both! But if you were to send me to a desert island and I could only take one I would give the privilege of being marooned with me to 6276 by the slimmest of margins (at least for today, I may change my mind tomorrow...).
6276 uses the classic ramp and pit baseplate better than almost any other set (6086 and 6081 are its competitors for that distinction). With three cannons, a dock, a jail and a crane, as well as interesting architecture and an Admiral's cabin, it is the perfect home base for your Imperial Guard fleet.
Good Guy Ship: 6271 Imperial Flagship
In keeping with the trend of the good guys getting a bum deal, their ships have always been smaller and more poorly armed then their pirate counterparts (again until 10210). They are not bad ships, it is just that believing they could fight the pirate ships they were paired against required some... suspension of disbelief. Of the classic Good Guy ships, the one you should have is 6271 Imperial Flagship.
LEGO did something different with the sails on this ship by including both a main sail and a spinnaker on the same mast. This gives the illusion of it having two masts, I actually didn't realize it only had one until I had built it. The result is visually quite striking making the set look bigger than it actually is. A variety of other small details and a nice color scheme made this my favorite of the classic Good Guy Ships.
Pirate Ship: 6285 Black Seas Barracuda
If you spend any amount of time trolling around on discussion boards devoted to LEGO Pirates, inevitably you will find a topic titled something along the lines of: which is the best pirate ship of all time? In this discussion you will be exposed to as heated and vicious a debate as can be found in any hall of politics with the opinions of the various combatants.
In deciding what ship to include here I have the luxury of being able to walk down into my basement and survey every ship ever produced as they are all gloriously lined up on a shelf that I refer to as "the most awesome 8 feet in my house" (not kidding, you can ask my wife). As I weighed the merits and demerits of each ship I realized that one and only one had a unique distinction. I have gone through and modified my ships so that each includes an enclosed rear cabin, a walkway along each side of the gun well, enclosed holds accessed through hatches and a retractable anchor. I have had to make one or more of these modifications to every classic ship, save one: the original 1989 Pirate Ship 6285 Black Seas Barracuda.
It is hard to describe how fabulous this ship is. Her colour scheme is gorgeous, the rear double doors into the captain's cabin are spot on, her towering height, the figurehead, the enclosed hold with its hatches and lovely rear cabin with its decorative touches, not to mention a full crew of minifigures. When I built this set for the first time, I literally stopped and stared at it when I was finished, its that good. Whether for display or play if you only get one classic Pirate set, make it this one.
Unfortunately copies of all but the smallest pirate sets (and sometimes even those) command high prices on eBay, Bricklink and Brick Owl. There is however an alternative that I have taken great advantage of in expanding my pirate collection. The classic pirate sets are excellent candidates for part sourcing. Aside from boat hulls, masts, rigging and sails (and really with the exception of the sails even those pieces are not outrageously priced) most of the pieces that comprise these sets are fairly inexpensive and there is a lot of repetition amongst sets which limits the number of stores you have to purchase from. If you choose three or four sets to source at once you can save a lot of money by buying the parts individually and then assembling the sets. If you are willing to compromise on some of the rarer figures and go with more generic ones, you can save even more. I took it a step further and made my own replica LEGO sails which allowed me to source six of the classic ships for dramatically less than it would have cost me to purchase them as sets.
Want to buy the sets mentioned in this article?
Many are listed on eBay at the moment, both used and MISB. The links below will show available lots at eBay.com.
- 6261 Raft Raiders
- 6273 Rock Island Refuge
- 6276 El Dorado Fortress
- 6271 Imperial Flagship
- 6285 Black Seas Barracuda
The commission we receive when you buy or bid at eBay via links at Brickset directly contributes to the running and upkeep of the site.
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38 comments on this article
Fantastic and very well written article! I pretty much have to agree with everything said here... the old pirate sets rock!!!
Thanks Daniel for contributing another excellent article.
I was in my 'dark ages' when Pirates were first released but when I emerged in mid-1990s I used to buy up lots of LEGO advertised in classified ads in local papers. Invariably Pirates sets would be among them and I must have built 4 or 5 Black Seas Barracudas and El Dorado Fortresses at the time. They were always a enjoyable build although I probably got bored with them after the third one or so!
Once built, I used to sell them via rec.toys.lego, I don't have any now :-(
Great article, thanks.
Any chance of sharing photos of your "most awesome 8 feet" and the amendments to the ships? My wife has won many a... 'discussion' about Lego being on display on our house but no one can withstand the mighty 10210-1: Imperial Flagship - its sailing the stairwell shelf sea in our house.
I have allot of the parts for the Pirate Ship: 6285 Black Seas Barracuda should really get on buying the missing parts and seeing this set in all its glory
Nice article. Having just had the pleasure of recently building pretty much every pirate set going I have to say for me 6277 Imperial Trading Post is far better than 6276 El Dorado Fortress. Double the baseplates, a very nice little ship and the dock. Its just the perfect lego 'base'. 6276 just felt a little underwhelming by comparison.
I also think 6279 Skull Island deserves a mention, although perhaps not quite as good as 6273 Rock Island Refuge its a great, novel set.
Then the big one, for me 6285 Black Seas Barracuda is well beaten by 6286 Skull's Eye Schooner. Sure, the latter has its flaws as you mention, but it also has many advantages such as the sliding rotating cannon and the big one - it just looks incredible and so much more piratey. Perhaps its because the BSB came first, but I just don't get the love for it. If I had to choose and could only keep one it would the schooner every time.
A couple of years ago I gained an obsession with LEGO Pirates and bought up most of the sets. I now have quite a few ships and the Eldorado Fortress, although the Imperial Trading Post has remained just out of my price range, which was the set I had wanted the most.
Thanks for the fantastic article Dan!
Pirates has always been my favorite theme, and LEGO Chess my favorite pc game, with half of the game being about the 1996 pirates. I have always wanted the Black Seas Baracuda, but never got it while it was rereleased, because it was too expensive. Now it's beyond expensive, and especialy if you want it unopened!
I believe 6279: Skull Island was my first pirate set, and was a really good starter set, providing all you need for pirate building, together with 6493: Flying Time Vessel and 6240: Armada Flagship.
Ah, El Dorado Fortress. One of my all-time favorites. I really should get mine out of storage and build it again. I had so much fun with that set. And yes, that is probably the best use of the ramp and pit baseplate ever. It does have a design problem though, one it shares with a lot of Pirate sets over the years. If you look at it closely, you realize there's no way they could reload the cannons...
The Black Seas Barracuda was my first - and for years, my only - big set. I think I cried with joy when I opened it on Christmas morning. I was really annoyed with Lego though as one pretty major piece was missing. I can't remember which one exactly but it prevented several further steps from being done correctly.
Talking about crying, I still silently weep when I remember hearing that my mom gave away my childhood Lego collection to some random kid who lived up the street. It happened about 20 years ago and I'm still bloody annoyed about it! There were some real gems in there, including most of the smaller Pirates sets, and some of the early light and sound pieces which I used to love.
Great piece, although I had lego before this, this is the first theme I wanted, we couldn't afford the Pirate ship, I ended up with the Clipper. A great theme, I wish I still had mine
growing up in the 00's, I never even had a chance to get any of these sets. I hadn't known what I was missing out on until now. believe it or not, a guy my age considers Exo-force, Agents, and Bionicle to be "classics"
While I never went through a dark age I didn't have a job until half way through the first pirate theme and being no ebay/bricklink at that time I decided not to get any sets. That and not getting any of the first Batman set have been my biggest Lego mistakes in my life. As now I'm trying to get them all NIB if they have stickers, string, or cloth parts.
When I was 6 years old I had been saving all the change I could find, hoarding it all, spending it on nothing. That plan changed when I saw the Black Seas Barracuda on the shelf at Anne & Hope. My parents made me a deal, that if I saved up half the price they would cover the rest. I can still remember counting out the piles of dimes and nickels on my bedroom floor. So many years later, I take pride that the first thing in this world that I (half) bought with my own money was a piece so cherished by collectors and so dripping with nostalgia. I had good taste back then!
Thanks for the article. I do enjoy reading these. I have looked into Daniel's blog regarding the Skull's Eye Schooner. It was an interesting read. I am recreating my own version of the Schooner since I always wanted that ever since coming back into LEGO a few years ago. I won't paint any pieces, but the cloth sail reproduction I am more than okay with.
In regards to these sets, I didn't have the Imperial Flagship, but I rather like the Caribbean Clipper myself as the small ship category.
I didn't have Rock Island Refuge. That is one set I really wanted as a kid. My friend Aaron had one and I did envy him for that. Looking into the instructions as an adult, I'm not too wowed by it, so I don't plan on rebuilding it like I had wanted, but as a kid I was thoroughly impressed.
The BSB is amazing. That was one of the few sets I rebuilt coming out of the box (dark ages). That and Black Knight's Castle (which I love the raised baseplate in that too). I still haven't rebuilt the El Dorado Fortress, but I suspect I will sometime in the future.
It's fun reading about these old sets and other people's viewpoints.
This has to be one of the best lego themes, i hope the pirates theme is reintroduced
@Huw, was just wondering why the writer's name isn't mentioned anywhere on the article posting (or at least that I can see).
Finally another article from my favourite series. Luckily I managed to comllect quite some bunch of pirate sets. I almost got the first wave complete. However, I am still missing El Dorado fortress. It is on my wishlist though. For the record we got the 6274 - Carribean Clipper for Christmas in 1991. Since then I desperately wanted the Black Seas Barracuda so there can be a proper battle. It took 21 years of waiting. In 2012 I got finally Black Seas Barracuda as well!
Great article! Until 1989 when the pirates theme was introduced, my lego collection consisted of the space, knights and city themes. But in 1989 the pirates sets gave us guns, canons, minifigures with beard, pirates, pirate ship and so forth, so I was really excited when the pirates theme was introduced.
Me and my brothers bought almost every pirates set in 1989 and the beginning of the 90's - and in my living room the 6285 Black Seas Barracuda stands on a shelf, It is a super set! At my father's house we have 6276 El Dorado Fortress and 6277 Imperial Trading Post. My brother and I rebuild 6277 this Christmas which was pretty much fun. He got the set as a present from Lego when he was 7 because he was a test builder.
@graphite, it's in the first paragraph.
I also have bought used lots of LEGO and re parted many a set in the past, and the Pirate sets are something that appeared while I too was in my dark ages. I never really liked them when i was younger. I guess it was part envy due to how expensive they were when I was in my dark ages.
In my travels of rebuilding sets from lots I have come across many pirates sets, almost all of the sets in fact, and the detail on all of the sets is pretty amazing to be honest, the feature that I really like are the 'lit' torches on some of the buildings. The Imperial trading post and El Dorado fortress are two of my favs. I have had almost every Pirate ship through my hands over the years. I think the only ones I have never seen are 6280 and 6289
I would say Skull Eye Schooner is one of the best ships, and not really easy to get your hands on for cheap though. Black Seas Barracudas are so nice they made them twice (once in Pirate line and again when they did the 'Legends' sets)
The other think Ill say is most I have come across are dusty because they have been all displayed like a model, not a play set. As a result they are also pains to clean, sails and all. And a major pain to build IMO, but man are they well detailed.
Why no love for the Islanders????
6246 - Crocodile cage is one of the best smaller lego sets ever not just pirates.
and
6244 - Armada Sentry is an excellent small pirate set.
I was 12 in 1989 and was "aging out" of Lego. I would still check out the Lego section at Toys R Us though, and the pirates sets looked awesome...so awesome that I couldn't pass up getting at least one set. I ended up choosing 6260: Shipwreck Island. It had a lot of new elements: a parrot, a monkey, a cannon, a palm tree, two pirates and it came with its own printed baseplate. It was a great little set and had it displayed on my desk for a time. It ended up being the last Lego set I bought before my dark ages.
As coincidence would have it, just last night I was reorganizing my garage and retrieved some Classic Pirate sets, including a MISB Skulls Eye Schooner and Imperial Trading Post: http://www.bricksetforum.com/discussion/15164/classic-pirate?new=1
I have a lot of the smaller classic pirate sets in my collection, but am lucky enough to have 6285 as well. Bought it at a yard sale with about 50 other sets for $100. It was missing the sails, however.
As the article states it IS massive. I remember when I first built it my Dad was in awe and it became a staple in the living room of our house for many years - even without the sails!
I also have 6263 Imperial Outpost, which is a medium sized set. It got a lot of play when I was a kid as well.
Thanks for the post!
I was truly hoping this would be the next topic covered. Classic Pirates was my favorite theme as a child, and it remains dear to my heart today. While I've moved on to Modulars, UCS Star Wars, and the Large Scale Models, I'll always be a pirate at heart.....arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Great article! Please keep these coming.
These sets came out in a time when I had outgrown Lego (well, you know...) I was a teenager at that time and more into music, girls and other stuff teenagers are into. But I doubt I would have really wanted these sets, because pirate toys never really did it for me anyway. Same goes for knights, a theme Lego embraced in my childhood years: I had some sets, but never that many, though my father tried hard to have me like them (I think he did like the theme). Also, I was getting into Technic at that time...
I picked up Lego again before they stopped making the last Pirate sets, but the only pirate related Lego I own, are the parrots that came with the Pet Shop modular.
Nevertheless: I know this is a beloved theme for a lot of Lego fans out there and I understand that attraction. The sets are really nice and sometimes very detailed. They're just not my cup of tea...
Tnx for a great article bringig back the magic of the revolutionizing theme (didnt know it then) that made me a happy kid.
The two christmases with the Eldorado Fortress and the Carribean Clipper are so good memories...
Thanks everyone for the comments and especially the stories! Pirates really are a great theme. Hopefully next years re-boot will give us some great new entries!
@The Baron: I will try and take some pictures of the most awesome 8 feet in my house and post them in the forum.
@cheshirecat: 6279 is also awesome set, as is 6279. The cannons are actually one of the things that swings my choice to the BSB as I have always preferred the non-turntable cannons. Though being able to present a full four cannons on one side is a great feature. Both awesome ships!
@TheOtherMike: You ae right on about the cannons!
@Legonizer: I now feel old ; )
@Sethro3: Thanks for reading my blog, good luck with your project!
@super curry max: I chose to exclude the islanders because I am considering doing a whole article on them as the whole subtheme is one that should be in your collection and I didn't feel I could do them justice including them here. Stay tuned...
Thanks again to everyone for reading!
Thanks for the great article! The only Lego sets to survive my dark ages are the 6285 barracuda, 6257 castaway raft & 6235 buried treasure. Actually they are sailing on my shelf now... I consider myself very lucky to still have them all intact :)
Another nice article on sets from days gone by.
Do you happen to accept potential article submissions? I used to collect classic train sets a few years back when my financial situation was considerably greener, and I'd love to write something up like this for the theme.
^ We certainly do, anyone is welcome to get in touch [huw at brickset.com] with an idea for an article.
Other great article Huw. Other than 6261 (which is a great set) I completely agree with your picks. One note. 6276 has only TWO cannons, not three. 6277 has three.
Ah the disadvantages of being young... These sets look amazing.
My bros as all these except 6285. :P I remember as a kid playing with 6261 and 6273, fun times.
My own 'eight feet' is my mantel over the fireplace, the Clipper, the first and second Imperial Flagships, one I built myself and a retrofitted Queen Anne's Revenge I rechristened Concorde (the name of the ship before Teigh stool it back from the French), I've also got El Dorado, always on the look out for Pirate ships,
Pirates is without a doubt my favorite theme. I'm looking forward to the new version of the theme next year and hope we receive some spiritual successors to sets like El Dorado and Imperial Trading Post. In the mean time I will be buying the modular building sets :)
Great article!
What's the rigging on 6271 Imperial Flagship?
Great article indeed! Although I never let myself get drawn into the Pirate theme (on account of neither having the room nor the €'s for a real collection) I could not resist the finale LEGO presented on this theme, with set 10210 and it's still on display in my house; Great ship!
I have but one question regarding the description about the sails on set 6271, as mentioned in this article. I actualy think this ship has a "boom sail" (or "trysail") attached to the backside of the main mast. The spinnaker is the sail rigged on the bowsprit in front of the main mast. I agree on the boom sail giving the illusion of the ship having two masts. And as far as I can tell this rigging is indeed unique so the good guys still managed to have a special treat for once ;-)
Hope to be of service to an otherwise great article and still Greater website....