LEGO Ideas posted a reveal of 21322 Pirates of Barracuda Bay. This set features a shipwrecked ship spread over a couple of small islands that can be re-assembled into a pirate ship, the Black Seas Barracuda, WITHOUT having to be rebuilt.
The set features 8 minifigs and includes the infamous Captain Redbeard!
Even the box design is a throwback to the sets of yesteryear.
The final set is vastly different from the submitted and approved Pirate Bay idea by Bricky_Brick. And by “vastly different” I mean looks absolutely nothing like it. Here’s what that submission looked like:
Makes me wonder if LEGO had a pirate ship up their sleeve already and just added island bits to make it kinda look like it can be shipwrecked.
21322 Pirates of Barracuda Bay will retail for $199.99 USD and will be available for purchase on April 1st, 2020 through LEGO Shop@Home.
I think you may be mistaken about the “not having to be rebuilt” part, since the shop at home website specifically says “rebuild”. It looks like there’s too much re-arrangement needed to do a quick switch, and at that point one is inviting a philosophical discussion about definitions and whether an island is still an island after 5-10 minutes of rebuilding work is put into it, and at what precise point an island becomes a ship.
P.S. I hope they made the front flap of that box open up to reveal a tray with randomly half-assembled figures, pieces of gold, and a monkey on display like the old days.
It looks like a similar amount of rebuilding that the Voltron set requires (which if you haven’t built, just requires taking off, rotating, and reattaching the black lion’s legs—they unfortunately do not rotate on their own.) There’s probably a little more to it here, but I would guess it’s an easy enough process that one can remember how to change the sets back and forth—meaning you shouldn’t need to get the instructions out every time (but maybe I’m wrong!)
I think the set they’re releasing looks great, but it just does not scratch the same itch the submitted set does. There are a lot of people saying they love the final version because of the classic theme AND because it’s an update to a set they wanted as a kid but never got. And that’s great, but what about people who have the set and wanted this pirate bay to display next to it? What about people who don’t like the retro colors and voted on this set because of the subtler palette?
It just seems unfair for LEGO to release what they’ve come with *as* the set that got voted on. Sure, build techniques of approved sets can change. The Voltron set is constructed very different than the submission (pretty much just the heads are similar.) But it’s still the lion Voltron at a scale approximate to the submission. Imagine if LEGO released the vehicle Voltron? “Well, it’s still Voltron, and I like cars more than lions,” some fans might say. How do you argue with that? Imagine if a UCS-style Enterprise NCC 1701-D got approved and LEGO decided to release a tiny set instead. Or vice versa. Sure, many fans would be happy, but NOT the fans who voted for it, because they’re not getting what they voted for. Right?
I think the new set is cool, but I’m mostly disappointed that it won’t fit on my shelf! It’s like twice the height of the original submission.
I watched the Brickvault review on youtube – they time it and it takes 20 minutes to switch the first time you do. Probably once you get practiced you can do it in a quarter of that time possibly. But you still have a lot of loose palm tree etc. pieces lying around afterwards versus Voltron where I don’t think there’s anything left over between forms (I haven’t built mine yet).
So I guess maybe the most accurate thing to say is the island can be “very quickly rebuilt” into a ship. Yeah, I’m going to go with that.
I also agree with your sentiment that Lego really shouldn’t alter Ideas sets this much, even though I on balance this time, I’m kind of glad they did. Of course we all know there will be another time in the future where we go “WHAT THE HECK IS THAT THING??? WHAT HAVE THEY DONE!!!??”
Twenty minutes? Wow, that is a lot more rebuilding than I was expecting. That actually kind of makes me more interested in the set, as it means the island shipwreck isn’t just an illusion created by the three boat sections placed at odd angles with a few stairs and docks around them.
You nailed it. I was really excited for the set that got approved, and it was going to be one of the first sets I would have bought in a few years. This one? It looks cool and all, but mostly I look at it and I’m disappointed, and probably won’t buy it because it’s not the set I want. What’s the point of the ideas program if they turn sets into what Lego wants and not what the people who vote on them want?
P.P.S. You get better Mario and Luigi minifigures in this than you do in the official Lego Super Mario theme.
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