Pirates of the Caribbean is a theme based upon the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie trilogy and the fourth installment, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. The first wave of sets were released in April of 2011 and the second was released in November. The theme consists of nine sets covering all four movies and includes LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game, developed by TT Games in the same format as LEGO Star Wars. All sets (excluding key chains, magnet sets and promotional sets) include a LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean poster. Admiral James NorringtonAmmand the CorsairAnamariaAncient SailorAngelicaAnglerBlackbeardBo'sunBootstrap Bill TurnerBroondjongenCabin BoyCannibalCapitaine ChevalleCaptain BellamyClankerClubbaCottonCrashDavy JonesDerrickEITC CaptainEITC SoldierEduardo VillanuevaElizabeth SwannExecutionerFemale Statue (Pirates of the Caribbean)Ferdinand VI of SpainFinneganGarhengGentleman JocardGiselleGovernor Weatherby SwannGrappleGreenbeardHadrasHector BarbossaHorse Coach DriverJack SparrowJack the MonkeyJacobyJellyJimmy LegsJoshamee GibbsKing George IIKing George's SoldierKoehlerKolenikoLianLieutenant GilletteLieutenant Theodore GrovesMaccusMallotManrayMartyMistress ChingMonkMoreyMr BrownMr.
MercerMullroyMurtoggNavy CaptainNavy SoldierOgilveyOld HaddyPalace GuardPalace Guard (Pirates of the Caribbean)Palace Guard CaptainPalificoParkPenrodPhilip SwiftPintelPiperQuartermaster ZombieQuittanceRagettiRatlinSalamanSao FengScarlett (Pirates of the Caribbean)Scratch (Pirates of the Caribbean)ScrumSkeleton (Original)Spanish CaptainSpanish SoldierSri Sumbhajee AngriaStengSyrenaTai HuangTamaraThe CookThe Gunner ZombieThe SpaniardTia DalmaTortuga MusketeerTortuga PistoleerTwiggWheelbackWill Turner Included with several Pirates Of the Caribbean sets are codes which are used online on the LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean page. These codes are very special and can only be used a total of three times. The cards with the codes are only in the five On Stranger Tides sets. The Jack Sparrow minifigure as seen at San Diego Comic-Con International in 2010As the recent movie so aptly demonstrates, the great joy in Lego is that anything you imagine can be built with those plastic bricks. As it turns out, there are over 915 million ways to combine six basic two by four Lego bricks.
Lego provides the perfect medium with which to create entire universes to play in. That said, there is also great joy in jumping in to a universe that has been carefully crafted by somebody else and playing around with existing characters and your favourite heroes. This is part of the reason we keep toys on comic book store shelves, right? Collecting, and more importantly building, Lego is the hobby that most often competes with comics for my leisure time. When the two come together, I count that as a good day. As you may be aware, over the past ten years or so, Lego has gone out of their way to develop strong licensing partnerships in an effort to strengthen their brand. Even if you aren’t seeing the toys on the shelves, just look at how Batman played a large and very hilarious role in The Lego Movie. As a complete aside, if you haven’t seen The Lego Movie, you really should… even if you don’t care about Lego. Although not quite the juggernaut that Lego Star Wars has become, the Lego Superheroes theme has been a success in its own right.
The Lego Group has managed to secure partnerships with both DC and Marvel. Most commonly, the sets produced are based directly on superhero films, but Lego will dip into cartoons and even the source comics themselves for inspiration. I’m not privy to the actual arrangement between Lego and Marvel, but it seems that the terms of the license state that Lego can produce sets based on one film per year. Thus far, we’ve seen The Avengers, Iron Man Three, and Guardians of the Galaxy in brick form. Lego sneakily releases a few sets every year that are not based on the superhero film du jour, though. A line of sets from the Ultimate Spiderman cartoon have been popular. Likewise, a few sets from Avengers Assembled have hit the shelves. My personal favourite Lego Marvel Superheroes sub-theme is the Lego X-Men. To date, only two sets have been released: 2012’s Wolverine Chopper Showdown and the recently released X-Men vs. The Sentinel. The neat part about the latest X-Men set is how it sort of brushes up against Days of Future Past.
Lego’s deal is with Marvel and Disney, and as such, they cannot make a set based on a Fox film property. I don’t think they’re fooling anybody, though. This year also saw the release of an Ultimate Spiderman set featuring Electro (Sony’s The Amazing Spiderman 2 being likewise off-limits) and even a couple Avengers Assembled sets that feature Captain America and Falcon. Lego may have chosen to develop sets based on Guardians of the Galaxy this year, but there is no sense in wasting the associative marketing potential that came with The Winter Soldier’s release. If I’m honest, many of the actual Marvel sets themselves are sort of underwhelming. I was always more of a castle, pirate and space sort of guy when I was growing up – not that town Lego is bad in any way, it was just never caught my imagination in quite the same way. The Marvel sets tend to feature trucks and helicopters and boats; the same sort of thing you see in a Lego city. I’m hesitant to say they’re boring, because they’re not – Nick Fury’s flying car is never boring – but they just aren’t as fantastical as other themes.
Not surprisingly, the real stars of the show in the Superheros line are the heroes themselves. Marvel’s characters are exceptionally well-suited to Lego minifigure form. First of all, pop them into a regular Lego City scene and it goes from being boring old Hometown, USA to something just as fantastic and magical as Skull’s Eye Schooner, Black Knight’s Castle or Ice Station Odyssey. Secondly, it doesn’t matter if the Lego figures came from an Iron Man 3 set or an Ultimate Spiderman set or an X-Men set, they work in concert. Marvel is so huge that any strange team-up you come up with is in some way plausible. Licensed Lego sets usually try to retell a particular scene, or capture some sort of action from a film. The sets based on Marvel properties do the same, its true, but they don’t feel as limited. Because the vehicles that accompany the figures translate so well in to an existing theme and because the figures themselves match so many more scenes than just those in the movie, the potential for play in an existing universe is unparalleled.
Finally, with the X-Men sets in particular, you have the implied existence of the Danger Room. From here, the possibilities become limitless. If you ever wanted an excuse to have Storm fight Davy Jones on the walls of Helm’s Deep, there it is. Wolverine vs. The Frosticon Flurr (its okay if you don’t know what that means – I’m not sure I do either) on Ice Planet 2002? Why the heck not! At about sixty dollars, X-Men vs. The Sentinel seems a little pricey. But for a true fan of both Lego and the X-Men, I think it is a reasonable price of admission. The Sentinel, replete in pinks and purples, is such an iconic villainous figure that it alone is a must-have for a serious collector. It is brick built, rather than made up of one or two special Lego elements. In theory, if you don’t mind the colours being wrong, you could build an entire army of Sentinels from your collection. The Sentinel also gets its own instruction booklet, which makes the whole thing sort of feel like two sets in one.
The Blackbird is significantly hefty; bigger even than the box it comes in makes it look. With sleek curved lines making up the fuselage and angular wings that sweep forward, it has that comic bookey, sci-fi feel, but maintains the air of a stealth jet. The combination of dark blue with lighter highlights and the striking yellow X on the cockpit make for engaging presentation of an iconic vehicle in comics. Although I feel this set is certainly above average for the Marvel line, the greatest features of the set are again the minifigures themselves. Wolverine and Magneto are both repeats from Wolverine’s Chopper Showdown (which, as an aside, is totally a misnomer since the chopper in that set clearly belongs to Deadpool). Lego did us the service of giving these two characters updates – both in new costumes, this time Wolverine comes with his iconic hairpiece and his excellent hood. Magneto gets both helmet and hair as well, and comes with a much better flying metal platform than last time.