Lego Pirates Ships

One of the frustrating things about Lego was the choices! We'd get to the Lego aisle and be instantly overwhelmed, wanting it all and coming away with one, but knowing all the while that whatever we came away with wouldn't disappoint, even if it was your standard Renegade's Raft or Battle Cove (both of which I know we had). Every little piece added to the Legoland mythos we were slowly building up in the bedroom. The Lego Pirates were always my favorite Lego system because they had the coolest boats and I was really into boats. Introduced in 1989, the Lego Black Seas Baracuda (pictured) had to be one of the classiest Lego products ever assembled, with its striking red-striped sails and stern-side cabin (complete with little windows), raft, real-working pulley and anchor system, plank (as in, "walk the plank!"), and two canon ports, it really just doesn't get any more cool from Lego (and that's saying a lot).

That was of course until the even more impressive Skull's Eye Schooner came along in 1993. On this one they really outdid themselves, decking it out with all the above (minus extensive stern-side cabin although it's still there), but adding taller masts, black-striped sails, and four canon ports. They even threw in a shark for good measure. So if you were lucky enough to get your hands on the best of the Legoland universe, it was still sure to be the choice of "I want both."

Then there was the more battle-rattled Red Beard Runner, which featured some more movable parts and torn up sails for combat action and functioned as the the pirate's response to the Armada Flagship. For those who don't know, the Lego Pirates system included a few spinoffs with its Imperial Armada and Islanders collections designed to give the pirates some foes to contend with and ultimately some more sets for you to buy to complete the saga. The Imperial Armada were supposed to be the "good guys," but as any swashbuckler will persuade you, the pirates were always the real good guys with the heart for adventure while the Armada was just "the Man" trying spoil the fun. That "man" (so to speak) was called Commander Broadside, the archenemy of the fierce Captain Red Beard, or so we are told. This was the equivalent of Treasure Island on my 8yo me's imagination. 

Many of the Imperial Armada sets had something to do with brigs and jails for the pirates, but they also had their own fleet of ships which weren't as impressive as the pirates of course, like the Armada Flagship (also called the Royal Warship), which only had one main mast and stern sail, one canon, and movable masts for combat, so of course you just had to have both to get any high-seas adventure going. Despite this, just the contrast of the blue-striped sails and feather-hatted, stuffed-shirted soldiers clashing with the patch-eyed reds made this also a must-have, and it's actually not as small as it looks. It was joined by the more striking Imperial Flagship, which had two canon ports and was obviously designed more to go ship-to-ship with the pirates. 2010 apparently also saw the release of an even more impressive Imperial Flagship to rival its pirate archenemy, showing just how much progress they made the first time around. You can't beat the pirates, but you can certainly try!

Lego Island Vacation

Lego Island was and continues to be one of the coolest PC games I ever played, second only to Myst. It was the first video game Lego ever put out and it's still the best in my opinion. For the 8yo Me, this small island was like heaven, packed with everything I loved and all in one spot. As soon as that computer animation kicked on in the opening with the bricks falling from the sky, I was seeing pizza delivery, race cars taking off at the speedway, an ambulance collision with decapitation jokes a-plenty, and a cop on his motorbike jettisoning himself out over the police station and into the ocean where a jet ski dude was trying to outrun a shark!! Damn!!

I was very much pleased to say the least.

With all that in just the first two minutes, the Lego universe had finally come so completely to life all around me that I was just in utter bliss being submersed in it. Screw vacationing there, I could've lived there and been perfectly happy the rest of my 8yo life. But if any summer was going to be vacation-less (like this current one), then Lego Island was without a doubt going to be my default destination, and likely will be again very soon... 

The main character you can play is "Pepper" ("the dude with the food"), a skateboarding pizza delivery boy on an island where all they eat is pizza, and you basically just ride him around from place to place, building the jet ski, the race car, the regular car, and racing around on all these awesome side quests and mini-games, like the jet ski race, or the race track, or helping people out with their dilemmas. On the way, you can't go two feet without bumping into hilarious skits and a whole cast of characters, all of which you have power over. I used to walk around transforming all the flowers into trees, and all the Lego people's hats into cups and kittens!

"Life's a beach."

Even the actual main-game was fun. You had to deliver a pizza to "the Brickster," the island's criminal mastermind, so hot it melts the bars on his jailhouse! He ends up escaping in the helicopter (oddly parked right next to the jail, to make it easy for him I guess), and he basically wreaks havoc on the island, sucking up people and buildings. You have to steal back the helicopter to launch an all-out aerial pizza assault on him, shooting down pizzas to lure him toward the cops. Oh, and the cops "Nick and Laura" are so unmotivated to catch this guy that you have to shoot down donuts just to lure them toward the Brickster. "Thanks Pepper, I really needed that." You can't make up brilliance this brilliant!

There were a few cool locations around the island, like the lagoon, the pizzeria (where Pepper's stereotype Italian parents work), the beach with the lifeguard dude that kept dropping "totally dude dude!" into casual speech, the police station where the cops always came away with two donuts in hand (or claw), the jail, the hospital, the race track, and the gas station where the cowgal always greeted you with a "well hey there honey!" There was also the mountain park and the houses in the residential area that you could literally "flip" and renovate with just a click of the mouse. The information center had an elevator that allowed you to both go under water and up in the sky.

Computer animation this detailed was just coming around in 1997, so this entire game all seemed like one epic movie that you'd get to play a part in. Yeah, the jokes are 80% "brick puns" and more decapitation and dismemberment than you could shake an arm at, and the actual gameplay was not as epic as that opening fly-over animation of the island (in fact it was downright choppy on those slow computers of yore), but hell, I got to ride a Lego motorcycle, build a jet ski, and race around the island hopping ramps. I got to go down in a submarine with the Lego sharks, build a race car, and race it through a trippy underground race track. Hell, I got to build and fly a Lego helicopter! Add to that a lot of pizza, and this was just about as good as it could get for me. My brother and I used to get up at 3 and 4am and fire up the computer just so we could spend a few precious hours of freedom on Lego Island before the rigors of our daily life took over. All in all, pretty good for a "staycation."

Here's some shots from the catalog/manual that I poured over so much the pages wore out.

Lego Pirates Ad

How cool was the original Lego Pirates? And how cool is this commercial? They just don't shoe-horn enough catchy, corny rap into kids media these days, and it's a damn shame. I mean, how can you not like these lyrics:

Word up! Zack's back! The Pirate Lego Maniac!
Yo-ho-ho and a barrel of fun,
the pirate adventure has begun!

Between me and my brother, we probably had every Lego Pirates set there was, except for the real expensive ones like the pirate ship... always begged for around every holiday and birthday and granted upon successful room cleaning throughout the year. The Lego Pirates weren't just pirates, they also had those Spanish galleons with "Commander Broadside" at the helm, which weren't as cool as the pirates but hell, it was great to have a whole "good guys" vs. "bad guys" thing going on. A ship was a ship, whether it had those blue and white striped sails or a big red skull and bones. I vividly remember just staring, eyes agape, with total bliss, into print ads for these Lego ships--the pirates and the armada--coming blow to blow in a cannon showdown on the still waters.

I loved every detail of these sets... the black captain hats, the curved "swashbuckler" swards, the palm trees, the little boats, the stiff flags, the little brown handguns and the wide-barrel muskets...even the little black mustaches! And ANY set that had a shark in it was a must-have! I remember the excitement of getting a fresh new box of Legos and ripping open the side. I remember the crinkle of the plastic bag with the small holes in it, the instruction book with the blue faded backgrounds, the different sized pieces in all their own bags. It was always a magical experience.

It was so awesome that it got me thinking, "Why should this Zack kid have all the fun?"

Lego Islanders Ad

Part one in my month-long "things I wanted for Christmas" quadrilogy, filed under...

How Cool Was that Catamaran?

Lego Creations

Here's a few pics of some cool Lego works by a cool 8 year old who most certainly isn't a dork. He has kindly submitted them to this blog (with the help of his dad) for all to check out. It looks like an X-wing from Star Wars, and some other ship from the newer movies. 

Great job, Kyle.

A Real Lego Maniac

Screw Zack, that Lego Maniac. He had nothing on me. My brother and I were Lego freaks. End of discussion. Who does he think he is claiming to be better than us just for being a Lego obsessive? Never was a kid more deserving of a swift kick in the groin to set him straight. Truth be told, my brother and I had thousands of those things called Legos all mixed up in draws from the hundreds of sets we'd built, demolished, and scattered to the floor ten minutes after tearing open. Okay, maybe not ten minutes, but they never lasted all that long. Playing with Legos was as much about the joy of creation as it was the folly of destruction. It was an activity where we got to play God, bestowing civilization on our own little Lego towns and disaster upon our annoying younger brother's. Legoland was at our mercy, and sadly, didn't survive, but its golden age was beautiful.

The most important thing that Legos ever taught me about life was... how long my digestive system takes to do its thing. See, I accidentally ate a Lego once (don't judge me) and ended up waiting with anticipation for the inevitable... the day we would meet again. And it was like, a mini-advent just awaiting the return of the swallowed Lego (I think it was a Lego coin), with days and nights of expectant curiosity, counting them on my calendar, each successive toilet excursion another adventure, with the coin's golden reappearance at the other end seeming more and more inevitable with each passing... pass... until finally... nothing. No treasure. To this day I don't know if that little Lego coin ever made its way out of me, but I certainly hope so. So yeah, Legos rule.

But my dad hated Legos. He wanted to go fisticuffs with whatever "jerkoff" invented those little plastic bricks. Not surprising, because he was the one who had to step on them in the hallway at 3AM. And what a cruel irony it was that in the early years he was usually the one building the bigger sets for us. Now if only most instructions for things were like Lego instruction manuals... just pictures, no words, no seven different languages... some of us maybe would have been able to program VCR clocks or assemble Swedish furniture. Those instruction manuals were made for boys, just simple pictures because they know words are not our strong suit. And how right they were, seeing as I was calling them "constructions" for the longest time, rather than "instructions." At least I had the excuse of being six (dad didn't). ;p

Here was my castle: complete with draw bridge and the "gnarliest dungeon!" :

Once that Lego catalog came in, I was guaranteed to not want to pick up a book for at least a week. I used to sneak the Lego catalog into school and gloss over it whenever I had a spare minute. One day after the first Lego CD-ROM game "Lego Island" came out, my brother won out in the fight over who was going to bring that particular issue to school that day. I remember it as the day I took the longest "bathroom break" of my life without having gone to the bathroom. I signed out, and was off to the other end of the school, digging through my brother's cubby just to get my hands on that computer animated Lego Island comic strip it featured. But drats! The stinker had made off with it, and was smart enough to keep it on him.

The catalog was page after page of the latest sets in elaborate set ups. They always brought the world of Lego to life, leaping off every page (except the girls section) with excitement... cannons firing from the battleships, snakes hissing on the desert sand traps, and spaceships that fired pretend lasers! None of that came through out of the box, but I didn't care one bit. They always had a page toward the end where you could order parts if you were missing pieces, along with the Lego real-working Train and Technic series (for older kids).

Sometimes we'd take a trip to the toy store just for being good on errands or doctor's appointments, and mom would just have us pick from the tiny boxes at the end of the aisle. Even the cheapest little "pirate and cannon"-like set was enough to pacify us, although we got plenty of the big expensive sets as well. My brother and I both had the Lego castles. I had the black one with the draw bridge and my brother had the white one with the trap door. That's the only way you can reason with brothers, each one has to get a castle with something cool or else a real joust will go down, and the black and white knight have nothing on two jealous brothers.

We loved the pirate ships (but never got them), anything from outer space, the castles, the ninjas, and all their little themes, but then Lego started getting way too into merchandising. Lately they've been coming back with themes like "City" and "Town," and the Lego "Games" is an interesting idea, so I have faith in a Lego future beyond Lego Harry Potter. There is life after Lego Indiana Jones, thank you God.