Dunecan

What amazing pictures! I had that little blue helicopter when I was a child. It seemed really complicated at the time, with a chain-driven retractible undercarriage and canopy that I dreaded building because it was so hard to get the connectors to line up. It looks tiny and very basic next to this years' monster. Thanks for posting these!

The very first classic space figures wore red or white suits when the line debuted in 1978. Yellow, blue and black suits came later- I think black was the last. I've read somewhere that initially the designers envisaged the red and white spacemen might represent competing factions (any guesses as to who the red guys were comrades?), but this never really took off. I used to pretend that the red spacemen were technicians and the white ones pilots...

True, but the UCS SW sets came in 2000, a year after the first (and very basic) Star Wars sets were tentatively released by Lego and flew off the shelves. Had the line sold poorly we probably would not have seen them. Additionally, Star Wars had an estabished AFOL fan base given that many of us are (ahem) old enough to have seen the OT the first time round which justified the risk taken in developing the UCS sets in the first place. I don't think you can say the same for POTC. However I would be delighted if Lego released plans for any UCS sets (of any genre) they might have designed but never released, perhaps in an ideas book or CDROM?

Hi, I’m new to these forums. My children (who are 6 and 4) absolutely love this set and have played with it non-stop since I picked it up from Argos on Saturday- thanks for the tip Vindice. They were recreating scenes from the movies as I was building it for them. The curious figure selection didn’t bother them. The ship is sturdy and very easy to play with without sections collapsing or falling off. This is clearly a toy rather than the accurate model many of us were hoping for but as such it is an instant classic. From the other side of the room it shouts “pirate ship!” From an AFOL perspective, I’ve bought another for donor parts and am following Captain’s awesome LDD design. I’ll bet I play with the other one more though!