LEGO Pirates to Return in 2015?

A tantalising piece of information and an image more exciting than licensed Minifigures has been posted by LEGO on their ReBrick website... a contest to name a new LEGO set has revealed that in 2015 we are getting a new Pirate ship, and since there's a logo alongside it we may well be getting a full blown Pirates theme!


To recap, ReBrick is an official LEGO website for AFOLs and TFOLs to share awesome LEGO stuff that they have created or found. A few days ago a competition was launched on ReBrick, to come up with a name for the next LEGO Pirate ship, due for release early in 2015. What's more, alongside the teaser box is a new Pirates logo. Why would LEGO do to the trouble of designing a new logo, unless it's time for this classic theme to return?

It will be six years since the LEGO Pirates last set sail by the time 2015 comes around, so the theme would certainly have a degree of 'newness'. The next Pirates of the Caribbean movie is not due until 2016, so there wouldn't be any conflict with a potential Disney theme (although yet again it might ensure Pirates is a one year only kind of deal). LEGO Stores had a little mini-figures pack style exclusive featuring Pirates this year, showing that there must be some degree of appeal out there for Pirates product.

What form will a possible Pirates theme take? Will Captain Brickbeard be back? Surely better to stick with him rather than come up with a third generation Pirate captain, especially as he appears often at LEGO theme parks and on licensed products. Either way, the new theme would do well to follow the template set in 2009 when it comes to designing the mini-figures and accessories. Hark back to the classic theme, take influence from it, but freshen it up and update things where necessary. There are give aways that the 2009 Pirates sets are from a different era of LEGO set design to those from the eighties and nineties, but they can still sit aside those other sets and not look out of place.

This time around it would be nice to see the LEGO designers have the chance to take some of the fan favourite sets from yesteryear and give them a modern twist. It would be nice to see children picking up sets like Eldorado Fortress (6276) and be able to marvel at what it becomes from a pile of bricks. Hopefully there won't be just the one wave of sets this time, which would allow the designers to start off with a core range and then expand to really great sets like this.

With all of the new elements developed for the Pirates of the Caribbean theme, and other themes with crossover potential, it's a really exciting time for Pirates to be making a comeback. The thought of popping together palm trees and loading up the cannons, as well as lining up ships in bottles and adding a globe to the captain's cabin will no doubt fill many LEGO fans with glee.

So may eight months of anticipation and speculation begin, but before getting carried away with dreams of what brilliant concepts LEGO Pirates designers will be coming up with, don't forget to go and suggest some names for the new Pirates ship that will be part of the theme... if there's one thing more exciting than Pirates making a comeback, it's the idea of  Pirates making a comeback and knowing you have named the new flagship...

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