Thee Pirate

Michael Palin, John Cleese, and Sean Connery? I must've heard about this movie and just forgotten to check it out :-p At any rate, that there's Duplo blocks in a very well executed MOC surprises and amazes me. I've always wanted to use Duplo blocks in a MOC. I really want that new 14X2X2 Duplo arch in white, tan, black, or grey... In Brick terms, that's 28X6X4, a real win in my book since the arch opening would be 12 studs :-p Another piece I like is that tan angled arch thing they have in the Duplo Cars line... I just need to order some :-p Anyway, that MOC is killer.

That's amazing! I love it.. I don't really know what else to say. It's better than my current project. Way better. I should probably adopt this method of constructing hills. These one's are exceptionally well done. I think that's the first time I've seen someone mix so much brown and green in so it doesn't just look like a big ugly hill. It actually looks alive, with all the greenery.

I think those are all excellent ideas. I also think there's more to the Pirates line not selling well towards the end of the first run than just poor set design, although that is an important factor for us, as AFOLs, it's less of an issue with a little kid who wants a "pirate ship". If you look at Hollywood, in the '80's and early '90's, there was a lot of Pirate blockbusters. We had The Goonies in 1985, multiple retellings of Treasure Island across television film, The Princess Bride in 1987, a Peter Pan cartoon with Tim Curry (who you probably know as Dr. Frank N. Furter), Hook in 1991, but then Renny Harlin made Cutthroat Island in 1995 and it tanked. It cost $100m to make, it made $10m, the production company behind it went bankrupt, and it ended up holding the Guinness World Record for biggest box office flop ever. 1996 saw the release of Muppet Treasure Island, and there was nothing worth noting until 2003, when Gore Verbinski directed Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. It grossed $650m in the box office, sold $250m in DVD's the first year it was released, and Megabloks got the licensing rights for it. (I personally, saw PotC:tCofBP 3 times in the theatre :-p) Then they kept on making PotC movies, and Star Wars for that matter, so Megabloks and Lego both sold a lot of toys. As soon as it looked like the Pirates craze was over for PotC, Lego released the brand new Pirates II. Aside from having a very limited number of sets, they seemed to do pretty good. I searched high and low and wasn't even able to get Brickbeard's Bounty until about 3 months after the release. As soon as Lego was in a position to sign a contract with Disney (which was probably influenced, in part, by the fact they already had the Star Wars license) they went for it. In 2003, nobody knew PotC was going to be a blockbuster until a couple days into it's release. It took off, and I'm sure that if Lego had seen that happening they would've snatched up the licensing rights to it the first time around. In conclusion: the rise and fall of Lego Pirates is directly proportional to how well Hollywood made pirate movies. A couple side notes: I actually enjoyed Cutthroat Island, it has an awesome musical score, some pretty sweet swashbuckling, and some great action scenes. I loaned my DVD out awhile back and never got it back. I don't even remember who I loaned it to :-/

I really like your brick built cannons. I think they might look even better if you shortened the barrel by one brick. Also, if you piled some 1x1 round plates into a crate tbey could pass as cannon balls

It looks pretty close to the game version and I dig it... I also see what you did there with the slopes on the rear... You reversed them so the stern would support itself :-p

When I just opened this up, I wondered how you were going to handle the bow... I have a similar bow constructed in LDRAW from 2007 or 2008 but I havent used it yet. I oriented the slope bricks so the studs were facing the front... I dont think I ever shared it with anyone, but its nice to know someone thinks the same way :-)

Ive always admired your MOCs, and this one is no exception. Its beautiful. Your approach to half timber housing is better than a lot of people. Im still in the process of a 4 year MOC that keeps on evolving. You make me want to just finish it, regardless of whether its ready or not.

I'd pay more than that. It's beautiful. I paid $350 for my Millenium Falcon and its worth much more than that now. It retailed for $500. This Dutchman would easily be the largest lego set ever sold. I think it'd surpass the Taj Mahal in piece count by at least 500 pieces. I'd pay at least $600 for it, and I'd buy as many as I can.

I became a PotC fan in 2003. I was broke, and loved the Curse of the Black Pearl so much I saw it in the theatre 3 times. I watched Dead Man's Chest twice in theatres (one was a midnight showing) and I saw At World's End three times, two of which were on opening day. I saw On Stranger Tides twice in theatres. I love the Black Pearl, and I love these movies. That being said, I cannot stand the look of the official Lego set for the Black Pearl. I think the set designers did a much better job on the QAR. If the Black Pearl looked the same way as the one in the Lego game, it would win, hands down, best looking Lego pirate ship ever. As it sits right now, I would place it somewhere at the bottom of the list. The BSB is the standard by which all other ships are measured. It was the first one, and the best one. Rigt behind it, I placed the SES... Until now. (edited to clarify) I've put the SES and QAR together and I think its a draw. They both have things I love and hate. Example: I absolutely hate the cannon mounting on the SES, but I love the old rigging and masts. I can't really stand the style of the "new" masts.

I'm surprised no Chuck fans have posted in here. Chuck and Morgan are roommates/best friends, Chuck's a spy and they're both big time nerds working for Buy More's Nerd Herd. They have a lot of Star Wars toys and in Season 4 Episode 16, "Chuch verses the Masquerade" a bunch of Star Wars and Indiana Jones minfigures and small sets are seen for a couple seconds.

I love Monty Python enough that it was a screen name I used for a few years until I started using Thee Pirate (which is, or rather, was a Canadian punk rock band) The bank robber skit is one of my favorites, along with the scene from The Meaning of Life about every sperm being sacred and the short skit about the machine that goes ping!

That looks awesome. I have an old Optimus Prime transformer in storage that I played with a lot when I was little and thats pretty much right on. I wouldnt change the windows, i think thats an excellent way to duplicate the windshield from the toy. As others have said, the arms are a little bit of an issue, but i think it'd be next to impossible to fix because of the proportions of Lego bricks. It would look better if it was 6 wide, but then you'd lose those windows which I think look awesome. The back is different from my toy, but the back on my toy was rather plain and only had a hitch for the attached trailer.