@GSR_MataNui said:
"One skeleton doesn't make a very good crew.

Oh, but of course! The human has a skeleton inside of him. Quick we have to get it out! "

Here, borrow my skeleton key.

Pirate: "Avast...what happened to ya'!?!?!"
Skeleton: "Fifteen guys showed up, and stomped MY CHEST...THEN MY LEGS...THEN..."
Sorry, couldn't resist. :D

One of cheap PERFECT SETS.

I call it "Mr T-Bone new mancave"

A really cool set! I like the pirate's torso print a lot. It's a shame we didn't get some updated little sets like this for the 90th anniversary.

Damn, right in the nostalgia. I loved these cute little sets.

While Billy the pirate is about to poke out the skeleton's other eye, he doesn't realize its eye patch is just a decoy. Skeletons have no eyes.

The skeleton just wants to sell the pirate his weird light refracting disks. He has no use for such things at his age. Now let's hope the pirate brought the good stuff: calcium.
If not... the skeleton is a retired veteran and doesn't like being robbed of his merchandise!

I think this was my second skeleton ever (and First conquistador helmet). It Looks Kind of Nest next to 1747.

A bit sad though, that this guy is the only unnamed pirate from the 1996 line-up.

Easy mistake to make, but the name of this set should actually be "Skeleton, Crew": One skeleton, one pirate crew member.

Apart from random parts inherited from an older cousin, this and 6254 were my very first Lego sets. Nice memories from Christmas '96.

@Lyichir said:
"The face on this pirate reminds me a little of Lego designer Carl Merriam from the Bowser video the other day. :P"

Designer himself looks like Kenneth Branagh.

At first, I was literally like; “Wait… huh? Has the new, upcoming live-action Star Wars TV-show ‘Skeleton Crew’ already gotten some LEGO-sets?! But they haven’t even starting filming yet!? How is that even possible? Ohhh – It’s something else…”

Hahah, actually tricked me there for a second. Lol was I the only one? (probably)

@Rob42 said:
"Easy mistake to make, but the name of this set should actually be "Skeleton, Crew": One skeleton, one pirate crew member."
A comma would undermine the play on words though. ‘Skeleton crew’ is a stock phrase meaning a highly depleted team, one barely sufficient in number. It describes the set in that it only has two figures but also one of them is a skeleton.

One of the first vintage sets I managed to pick up after emerging from my dark age… Nice! I really wanted that morion helmet (I never had one in my original collection) and I liked that pirate torso - it looked more versatile than original pirates I had from ca. 1990.

Great little set of you can find it at a decent price!

@PurpleDave said:
"Skeleton crew, and aspiring skeleton crew."

Soon-to-be skeleton crew, if he doesn't find some provisions! Pirates love their treasure, but you can't eat gold...

This was one of the first sets I ever had! Those panel pieces got used on a lot of spaceships...

Weekend at Barrrrhnie’s

@Paski:
You know, for how many pirates there are that wear eyepatches, have hooks for hands, or peg legs, you never saw any skeletons with those things. Clearly pirates were robbing the dead of their eyepatches, just in case. And when they got hands or legs cut off in battle, they’d have to track down the last guy with a hook or peg leg and swap their missing limb for the rare and expensive prosthetics.

@ThatBionicleGuy:
Well, many of the skeletons with posable arms have glowing eyes, so there’s not much that’s charming about something that’s preparing to stab you and eat your immortal soul. You know, assuming that’s what they’re after, and they’re not just trying to collect the two Pieces of Eight you owe them for newspapers.

I like the eyepatch even though the skeleton has no eyes, but I guess it could be leftover from when he had more flesh.

@Paski:
@ambr:
So, um…what eyepatch?

@HAL_9001:
You actually can eat gold. It’s not really beneficial to do so, but supposedly it’s non-toxic. I remember seeing something on TV where they were adding sheets of gold leaf (99.9% pure gold, extruded into sheets that are one molecule thick) to the frosting on a cake. I watched the price of the cake go up a few hundred dollars, basically just so someone could feel rich and show off how rich they are to other people.

If it had a skeleton and gold coins, I was IN.

I wonder if or when LEGO will re-use the generic "ninjago" skull again :

https://brickset.com/parts/6309089

@PurpleDave ever had a shot of Goldschläger?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldschl%C3%A4ger

Such a good set! As $4CAD sets go, you couldn't beat this back in the day. I only had one, but you could have bought 100 of these and not gone wrong: a skeleton army, all those Armada helms, palm leaves, gold coins, grey bricks--to say nothing of one of the finest generic minifigures LEGO ever released. The new designs given to Pirate figs in 1996 are some of LEGO's most beautiful, most versatile.

This set is ALSO part of my family's lore because my younger brother got his copy as part of an attempt to help him recover from a great trauma. We'd been on the first long road trip of our lives--our first trip from Canada to the States, and we'd each bought a LEGO set (I bought 6625, he bought 6008). Well... somewhere on our drive back into Canada, we stopped for lunch or a bathroom break or something and... after that, there was no sign of the Royal King's head. This trauma continued all the way to our grandparents' house, where the youngest siblings were. He got to buy some more LEGO--getting both Skeleton Crew and 6244, which put him well ahead of me for LEGO acquired that trip--but the loss of the King's head, one of the few genuinely lost pieces of our childhood, would sting until the Bricklink era.

I'm not sure he ever did replace the King's head, but for most of our childhood years, he would borrow the pirate sailor's head from this set to use as the king's. It made any crossover games between the two themes... interesting.

@darkstonegrey:
I’m not really a drinker, so no. I did get a tiny bottle (1oz?) filled with some sort of clear liquid with gold flakes floating it when I was in Alaska, though. It has a similar look, but I have no idea what sort of liquid they used.

@Formendacil:
Wow. Seems like it would have made more sense to just buy another copy of 6008. Or call the phone number and ask for a replacement part, if that was possible back then (I never had to inquire until I got the Technic R2-D2 with the wrong mix of angle connectors, which was post-2000).

A little story I came up with for the set a few years ago.

---
During the night, a pirate is shipwrecked and knocked overboard. Swimming for his life, at the end of his energy, he miraculously stumbles upon a rocky sandbar. With only enough time to catch his breath and to get comfortable, he falls right to sleep against a short rock wall.

In his dreams, the pirate remembers a fireball hitting the galleon. Or was it lightning? Dread. An all encompassing feeling of dread from the sight.

In the morning, sleeping under the big leaf, the pirate is awakened by sunlight intermittently shining on his face. He is still half laying in water; the side with his weapon continuously being lapped by waves. Sitting up, he sees his field of view is nothing but ocean to the horizon.

The pirate crawls out from under the large plant leaf, stands up, looks down feeling for any major injuries....to his surprisingly sharp clothes. He draws his flintlock pistol. Water pours out the end. *sigh* Holding it daintily by the butt, he lets it drop. He rolls his eyes and picks it back up again. It might work again later, after it dries. Besides, a water logged flintlock still makes for a small club, if nothing else. The pirate ventures out to inspect his hopefully-not-permanent new residence.

Coming around a corner, his legs walk straight into a barrel, clumsily going on a tumble down with it. His jaw is now stinging from a new pain of several gold coins spilling out of the barrel. Struggling to get up using the barrel for support, the corner of his eye notices another object that doesn't match the natural surroundings. He turns to look and is startled back, diving out of the way. Nothing happened. After recomposing himself, he slowly peers again.

It's a skeleton lain in the back of a tiny cave. The skeleton is wearing only a Spanish helmet and a cutlass through the rib-cage. The crudeness of the sword doesn't seem to match the style of the helmet. It probably wasn't a suicide.

The pirate takes the helmet off the Spaniard just to try on.

He knew he wasn't that good of a swimmer. And he had been hoisting on ropes all the previous day, so he knew he couldn't have had that much endurance left anyway. The ship was on a standard route, specifically to hunt merchant ships. He couldn't have gotten far.

Last he knew, they were in neutral waters, meaning if there was a rescue to be had, it could be pirates, traders, or authorities -- including any friends of the "Spaniard". With the helmet and his current outfit, he could at least pass as a lowly solder.

The pirate pulls the cutlass out of the Spaniard.

There is a change to the sound of ocean waves. Looking out from the cave opening, the pirate sees something not too distant, creating a small wake in the water's surface, moving toward the island. The pirate angles the tip of the sword toward the disturbance. A red object breaks the surface of the water. As it moves toward the shore it grows taller.

It's a person in a strange red outfit, like leather. They're wearing a round solid-looking head covering, with an opening for their face. Their face looks pale.

Closer now, it's clearly not just a face, but a white skull.

Dread. That same feeling of dread.

The pirate turns back, instinctively searching for any option.

The face of the Spaniard is now touching his.
[End Scene]
---

I'm a fan of Space: The Comic and so I had imagined Captain Dash on his own type of hunt in this little scenario. *Psst* It was the 918 that hit the pirate galleon.

This set is small enough for this question: Can BrickLink (or a similar site) take an inventory and create a parts list to buy? I just feel (total guess) that I can get all these parts for $20?

I also miss those arms. As a kid, they were the most fun because it was easy, with tiny hands, to move the arms as you wanted during a minifig sequence. Those arms have so much more range of movement, it made it so fun to play with.

So I understand the interest in posable minifigs, but yeah, old school skeletons win this duel.

@asherkobin said:
"This set is small enough for this question: Can BrickLink (or a similar site) take an inventory and create a parts list to buy? I just feel (total guess) that I can get all these parts for $20?"

While the answer to your question is yes (BL want list features), I think you can save both search time and shipping money in buying the set itself. Even with the automated buy-all cart on BL, I never have had a whole want list of any real size available from a single seller.

@asherkobin:
Yes. I don’t know the specific process, but you can convert a set inventory into a new Wanted List and use that to shop for the needed parts. Or there’s one seller with a complete Used model, including the instructions (no box or extra parts) for $7.52. Easiest to buy that set with the intention of parting it out, do that, and use the loose parts to build that very same set. Well, technically, it would be easiest to just pull it out of the mailer already built and set it on a shelf, but you’d keep your costs around half your projected target by just buying the set vs splitting it up between multiple sellers and increasing the number of times you have to cover shipping fees.

@PurpleDave said:
" @Formendacil:
Wow. Seems like it would have made more sense to just buy another copy of 6008. Or call the phone number and ask for a replacement part, if that was possible back then (I never had to inquire until I got the Technic R2-D2 with the wrong mix of angle connectors, which was post-2000)."

You would think that might have been an option, but it never once occurred to us--let alone to my parents!--to call LEGO to replace a piece *we* lost. That sort of clever maneuvering would have to be introduced to use by the Internet (and I think I *still* have never called to have a part replaced).

As to getting Skeleton Crew instead of a second Royal King... well, if he'd have done that, he'd have had 1 complete set instead of two incomplete sets, but the goals of a 7-year-old change swiftly.