Featured set of the day: Sabre Island
Posted by Huw,
On the day that Pirates sees a something of a reboot, LuLego has chosen one of the originals for the featured set today:
Three pieces – that’s all it took. Three special (yet far from unique) pieces that swept me into a wave of nostalgia and set me off on an expensive voyage to rediscover the best set that LEGO has ever created...
It was a 'wet play' at the school at which I'm a teacher. And for those of you who have not experienced life in school for many years, wet play hasn’t changed a great deal since you were there: my class were only too eager to rummage through the LEGO box.
As we all understand, the classroom LEGO box is a cauldron of very old LEGO pieces, a few torsos and the odd generic (bitten) head, thrown in with more modern clone bricks, the odd Playmobil part and it is very likely to have a few felt-tip pen lids thrown in for good measure.
But scattered on my classroom floor were three parts that immediately made my pulse rise: a palm tree piece , a very scuffed flag (with clips broken, of course) and a printed panel piece. I was immediately recaptured: it was Sabre Island – MY Sabre Island!
I knew, however, that my own Sabre Island was too far gone. I had just 3 pieces of the 79 parts in this set remaining. A few clicks on ebay, fast-forward a week and I had in my hands a new, sealed set: 6265 Sabre Island.
Sabre Island was obviously not the ‘flagship’ set of 1989. That was, of course, The 6285 Black Seas Barracuda. But there was something about this small set that struck a chord with me. This review, therefore, is my way of fathoming exactly what it is that makes this little set so endearing.
Even the box is special - the front image is exactly how I used to set mine up, even down to the positioning of the oars in the minifigure’s hands. Flipping the box over reveals the buff map background with a compass in the top left corner. The images depict the alternative builds; they are quaint enough, but they aren’t as magnificent as the actual model. I hesitate as I push the tab open. Surely a set that has been kept unopened for over thirty years deserves a little more respect. Is it sacrilege to do this?
I rip the box open – literally. If I am doing this, I am going to do it as a child, as I would have done thirty years ago. The base plate spills out, and I am ten-years old again.
The blue base plate, with the island pattern is just how I remember it. Look closely. It isn’t just blue for the sea, yellow for the sand and then green for the land – notice how the blue fades into the yellow to represent a rock reef.
I pick up my favourite piece of the set: the white panel with scattered red bricks. I just love how the pattern of just a few bricks suggests that the tower is aged and I imagine render crumbling off the wall. It amazes me how LEGO is able to do this – it is so simple yet very effective. Things don’t have to be overly detailed for the set to ‘feel’ detailed.
There’s not really much to say about the building experience. At 79 pieces, it doesn’t take too long to build. I miss these old instructions though. They were a challenge to ‘spot the difference’ and I imagine how long the 10-year-old version of me took to build this model. Did I savour the build back then? Did I make any errors? There are a total of 10 steps. I come to step 9 and place the black 6x6 plate on the top of the tower. It isn’t symmetrical. I remember that small fact! That was something that even back then annoyed me ever so slightly about this build. The tower is 5 studs wide, yet the plate on top is 6 studs. The single stud over-hang annoys me even more now as an adult than it did as a child. But it was a familiar grievance.
The printed flag is stunning! It’s big too. I love the crossed cannon design and the blue design is far more aesthetically pleasing than the red flags of later years. The clips are fragile though and I should imagine that the majority of these pieces are broken, like the one in my original set.
The three minifigures are splendid! The Imperial officer looks iconic. He has yellow epaulettes and wears a tricorn hat. The torso printing is smart. Not over-done, nothing fancy. It works. But it’s the two Imperial soldiers that really make me smile. Their faces are generic – but I LOVE that about them. With red epaulettes, a backpack and shako hat, they strike me as perfect! The flintlock pistol and musket make fitting accessories and I admire their fine shape. Again, they aren’t overly detailed - LEGO was pretty good at making things seem detailed when actually they were quite simple.
The completed model is just wonderful and looks charming on display today. In fact, seeing the images of the new 21322 Pirates of Barracuda Bay, I am sure that the two sets together, though thirty years apart, would complement each other well –old meets new. Stepping back to once again admire 6265, I realise that I know that tower! It reminds me of the towers at the end of Brownsea Island. Suddenly, memories of summer holidays flood my mind, of sailing past Brownsea Island on a ferry to France. I realise why this set is so special now. I understand completely why, to me, this set is the best LEGO set ever. It isn’t the set itself. It is the association it brings.
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39 comments on this article
Great read
I just picked up this set at Bricks Cascade last month! Such a fantastic set!
What is "wet play" for you?
For many it is playing in the rain/wet - not playing with Lego on the class room floor.
I love the original soldier lineup from the 1989 Pirates theme!
I even made an MOC of this a little over 5 years ago that was an updated version - using parts/figures from the 2015 lineup:
https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/105550-moc-modernized-sabre-island/
My first set! So many memories!
I remember buying this for my savings when I was young. For some reason I have always liked the soldiers better than the pirates and it was no way I could afford something like the Eldorado fortress back then. So this set was the best compromise between price and most soldiers included.
Thank you for a nice trip down memory lane :)
My first Pirates set, and had 2 of this set.
Those clips on the flags did snap over time however :(
Very well written, but you have to tell us how much a sealed 30yrs old set was........ I must admit I never considered Pirates, there cannot be many themes I didnt look at when I was 5-20. According to Brickset I own 2 "pirates" sets, both from 2015 One is a Chess set the other a throwback special edition.
I found one of these alone on a shelf in a Kmart in my teen years, not knowing what Lego had made since entering my own Dark Age. I was immediately smitten, "Lego Pirates?!?"
That was all it took one summer of 1993, and now I've been all in ever since.
I loved it on the pictures. Never had it, sadly.
I had at least 6260 Shipwreck Island, has the same baseplate.
Excellent review. You can feel your enthusiasm for this set lifting off the page!
Great read! It's so funny - Just this last weekend, I was just cleaning up my old Pirates sets from my childhood and putting them together. All that's left of Sabre Island that I could find was the unique printed wall element and the printed baseplate! I couldn't even remember having gotten it as a child, but sure enough - those parts survived the test of time. Now to find comparable-era replacement parts to rebuild it in its entirety....
Great article, your childhood excitement genuinely shines through! I recently rebuilt this set and it really does bring those joyful memories rushing back.
Great set. Remember picking up this set while in college.
The Winnie the Pooh figure has been leaked from the Ideas set. Under the bear mask Pooh has Xi Jinping's face.
April Fools!
Ah! One of the first sets with the minifigs having faceprinting! I was blown away in ‘89! Bought/got 6 of the sets back then. Even my kids now love em!
Absolutely loved this set...those fragile flag clips tho!
@ritzcrackerman The printed wall piece was also in Eldorado Fortress and Imperial Trading Post, so it’s not unique. The baseplate was also used for Shipwreck Island. Did you possibly have any of those?
Original Pirate sets will always have a special corner in my heart. I love this set so much!
I have this in my collection of Pirates, as I was stunned to finally get Lego pirates. (As a Lego fan one was always looking over in jealousy to the friends who had Playmobil and such a vast universe with Wild West, pirates, jungle etc.)
Thank you for the review but I would have loved to see a few more photos of the finished set. I know how it looks like, though. But still, it's always nice to see others set up a playset. Also curious what you paid, I estimate 130€ for this.
@iriz said:
"What is "wet play" for you?
For many it is playing in the rain/wet - not playing with Lego on the class room floor."
Given the context and what I recall of being that age, I believe it's when it's raining at playtime in school, so the children aren't allowed out onto the playground and have to spend it in the classroom instead. Hence, I guess, the box of Lego coming out when you need to occupy something like 30 kids who aren't able to go outside!
I remember when I was in year 2, our class had a box of Lego for that same reason. That was REALLY old pieces... I remember it had parts of several of the Homemaker figures in it, though not much else specialised. And, like you say, the constant infiltration by pen lids xD
On a different note: did anyone else notice that the flag and the palm tree are in different places on the box art to the instructions? I feel like that was done on a couple of sets I remember from my own childhood, too; I was never sure which arrangement was more 'officially accurate' to run with!
In any case, those thoughts are only tangentially related to the article; that was a really cool recollection to read, thanks for sharing! :D
Really regretting selling all my Pirates sets a few years back.
I used to have pretty much all of the Pirates sets at one point or another (except for the white hulled ship for whatever reason) and A few of these smaller Pirate sets. I can see why they were popular as LEGO did an excellent job of giving you a feel for that time period with the cannons, torches, and the panels with the paint 'crumbling' off.
I have been waging a war with myself lately in terms of keeping these sets that I still have because they really are a great example of a really well done theme for LEGO.
I'm always a little sad about the fact that this is still up to day the largest set of the classic Pirates line I own - a fact that I hope to change in the next couple of years (it also makes me very excited about that new Ideas set :))
As far as I can remember this was my 5th or 6th set from the Pirates range back when I was 4 years old. Iwas really fascinated by the colorful baseplate, palm tree and big flag and I kept using these parts everywhere in my own builds. Many of which were of cause inspired by 260 Ideas Book, which even had a direct combiner of this set and the large Eldorado Fortress.
Though I already had a cannon from 6245 Harbor Sentry, this one's was new because it had a red base! Unfortunately one of the upper clips broke off quite early on, but at least many years later I finally found a replacement. I always found it odd that the red bases were so much rarer than brown ones, especially since the rowing boats were spread out more equally in colors.
Did you ever notice that all of the early Pirates set boxes featured artwork on the back (yeah on those treasure map style thingies) that depicted the actual set in a highly stylized somewhat realistical way?
Also the baseplate came in 2 versions (which I have both nowadays): (Light) Grey and Blue. Both have the island printed on top, but the grey one of cause has also the surrounding water printed. The quality of the print is quite good - they're practically indistinguishable from each other if looked from above. I wonder why this was the case? I presume the grey ones came in older sets, since my copy originally came with a blue one and was from around 1991/1992. Were they not able to make blue baseplates before 1989/1990? The baseplate of 6270 is also grey underneath a full scale blue print...
Love my Sabre Island and all my old Pirates sets. The last couple FSotD (of which mine was one) are all sets that I have: this, the UFO Interstellar Starfighter, and of course my Deep Freeze Defenders. Both of them. These articles have been a rocket-sled trip back to my childhood. I have all my sets down in the basement broken down except for what's in my city and on display, but like the author concludes with, it's the association these sets remind us of, rather than the sets themselves, that is their true joy. Birthdays, Christmases, end-of-school years, random trips to stores with parents or family. Nostalgia is a very powerful thing and I think many of us pine for the seemingly halcyon days of when we were kids. I think this pandemic and the way it's forced a radical rethinking of our daily lives will have the positive affect of reminding us to slow down, not live to work but work to live, take the time and enjoy a freshly brewed French Press coffee in the morning, remind us why we wanted to start families, etc. I think we've been overdue for a course correction regarding the breakneck pace we live life and what we deem important, but that never would've happened without a huge impetus, such as this. These FSotD are perfect examples the little things in our lives that we've forgotten or chosen to ignore that now all of a sudden have much more meaning.
Adored this set. There is just something about it that just works, like it has the perfect "balance".
Size is just right for anyone to have,
Detail is just right.
Features and extras are just right.
Just the right kind of build where you could get a couple more to add on if you wished.
It made you want to buy pirates to add to it.
It had a "centerpiece" feel to it despite being nowhere near the usual set that would do so.
I did want to buy 6266 Cannon Cove as a kid as I saw it as a "sequel" set to this one, but never did.
Still have it!!!
Good memories.
Gotta feel a bit sorry for the soldiers.
Stationed on a tiny island with no beds, no food and no rum!
Very well written! I own two of these, bought back in the day from hard earned money. I was just about to slip into my dark ages when the Pirates theme came out and I was hooked! I ended up buying the entire first wave! Today the towers proudly guard the entrance to the harbor that I always wanted to build as a kid and turned into reality about two years ago.
Have this one, too! Just built it a few weeks ago when the Pirates nostalgia hit after seeing the new Ideas Pirates of Barracuda Bay advert.
To me nostalgia is half the fun when I'm building Lego.
Great review of a great set! I remember that this was my very first pirate set of many to come.
It's funny: As a kid who had blue as his favourite colour, I hated the newer red coat soldiers. I a way I still do, partly because I couldn't mix them with the blue ones. Only as an adult I found out that the blue coats could stand for French troops and the red coats for English ones. Regarding that, I would prefer the red coats as a faction, but still... I like blue...
@LuLego said:
"It isn’t the set itself. It is the association it brings."
I can relate to this so much! I'm so glad for you that you picked this set up from Ebay and experienced the same feelings you had as a kid. This is exactly what I'm doing right now, searching for old sets to buy and get those memories back.
I also had this as a child. It was the only "base" for the Imperial Solders I had, so I expanded it with Castle pieces so they could defend themselves from my Barracuda, because this tower alone was so small the Barracuda could just run over it...
I played with this set for hours as a kid! I still have it. It is a great set.
One of the all-time great small sets.
Such a cute article. That was one of my favourite sets <3
Excellent set that I am proud to own. Having two fully equipped bluecoats and an officer to boss around was all that I wanted as a kid ;-)
Only thing that really bothered me back then, was the lack of wheels at the cannon! Fortunately other little sets like that, had cannons with wheels ready to be played inside our family car
@natro220 said:
" @ritzcrackerman The printed wall piece was also in Eldorado Fortress and Imperial Trading Post, so it’s not unique. The baseplate was also used for Shipwreck Island. Did you possibly have any of those?
Nope. Those two together solved the mystery, lol. I found some other remnants. I was very fastidious with my other 90s-era Pirates sets, all are 100% complete, I just must have not taken as good care of my Sabre Island.
What a lovely read. I think you nailed the particular appeal of Lego from that era: just enough detail on minifigs and decorated elements to surprise and feel special, in comparison with basic bricks. And the fact that the generic nature of the minifigures is a huge part of their appeal, something that I think has gotten a bit lost today. Having a very strong, cohesive aesthetic means that any small variation is particularly pleasing. Modern minifigures are amazingly detailed, but there's a purity to the overall look of the 80s Pirate and Castle figures...