"Pyrates" is a 2005 toyline created by "Megabloks", now known as "Mega Brands". As I'm sure you can guess, this was a toyline centered around Pirates. Stylized to be spelt with a Y. Crazy, I know.
The toys were a knock-off brand from LEGO, that much is undeniable. No matter how much I love them. But Megabloks did go above and beyond to create a toy that could stand on its own when compared to its contemporaries.
Most notably, were the figures. In the past, with lines such as Dragons and the early Marvel stuff, Megabloks used figures that were near identical to LEGO. But, starting with Pyrates, Megabloks rolled out their new figure style.
These were called "Micro Action Figures" and featured far more articulation than LEGO minifigures. They had ball joints for the hips, shoulders, and head. As well as having bendable knees and elbows. This, coupled with the awesome story, created a very stand out brand from LEGO. At least in my opinion.
The original Pyrates toyline went from 2005 to 2009. And featured 27 unique sets as well as 4 combo packs. The series was then given a sort of "reboot" in 2010. Since dubbed by fans as "Pyrates 2.0", this line only featured 5 sets. All of which were remakes featuring only slight changes, most of which were downgrades.
Although its not part of the same line, its worth mentioning the "Pirates of The Carribean" toyline from Megabloks as well. Its easy to consider this a sort of sister toyline to Pyrates. They shared many molds, pieces, and set themes between the two. As far as I know, the two themes were released side by side. However, Megabloks lost the rights to POTC in 2009. Part of me wonders if this had something to do with the sudden reboot of Pyrates.
This website is a spin off from my main site House of Doll Bones. It was originally created as a fanpage, but I decided it would be better fit as a standalone site. Since it deviated pretty heavily from my main content over there. I absolutely love this toyline to death. I have many nostalgic memories with it and I wanted to create this corner of my website dedicated to it.
Don't expect a cold and clinical wiki format. This site will be covered from head to toe in my personal opinions on the toyline. This is the part where I would suggest you to go to the Pyrates Wiki for that, but unfortunately an idiot has been going around vandalizing it with his stupid OCs and fancontent. And of course, no mods are around to do jack shit about it.
Don't get me wrong. I love fancontent. Especially for a franchise as small and insignificant as this one. I love seeing that people are still passionate enough to write their own lore. But that kind of stuff shouldn't be paraded around the wiki as if it were canon. That's why I'm doing it here. In the privacy of my own website.
This is the first part in a series of blogs that I'll be using to catalogue my collection of the Pyrates series.
This series was one of my favorites when I was growing up. However, I really didn't appreciate what I had when I had it. And as such, many pieces of my original collection have been lost, destroyed, or scattered around the attic.
Which unfortunately meant I was more or less starting over from scratch. Aside from a box of random pieces and a handful of salvaged figures.
My re-collection journey started on September 22nd.
September 22nd was also the day that my interest in the Pyrates franchise was revived. I was scrolling on eBay when I found an auction listing for Captain Cuttlass' Stormstalker.
At the time I found it there was only one bid, and the price was sitting at a cool $50.00. I foolishly got overexcited and bid on the spot.
This caused a small bidding war, with the price jumping up to $112.50. Which is still a good price for the complete set.
Thankfully, I was able to win the auction. And my beloved Stormstalker was on its way.
On the same day, I actually went into the seller's account and saw that they also had listings for the three skull sets. Maroon Gally, Mutiny Isle, and Coffer Trap. All for incredibly low prices.
I immediately bought Maroon Gally. As it was the most nostalgic for me. This was probably a mistake. In hindsight, I should've bought Mutiny Isle. As, for some reason, Mutiny Isle is far more rare than the other two are. I have yet to find another complete listing for the original set.
But regardless, it was mine. And these two sets would serve as the foundation for my new collection.
Like I said before, I had a lot of these sets already as a kid. And I mean a lot of them. Off the top of my head I can only think of a handful that I was actually missing.
Unfortunately, as children are inclined to do, I wasn't very respectful of my toys. Nor did I know that one day I would end up valuing them so much. As a result, most of my childhood sets and figures are completely gone. Destroyed or thrown away. In one particularly harrowing memory, I'm pretty sure I left my Admiral Scathe's Predator outside... Where it got hit by a lawnmower.
So I was left to pick up the pieces of what remained from my childhood. I was able to find a good amount of random pieces and parts in my attic. I currently have a rather large box full of random parts now.
Thankfully, one of the most important parts were pretty nicely tracked by Kid Me. The figures! I was able to find a large collection of my childhood figures. And with that, was able to piece back together a decent amount of characters.
Ta-da! Not a bad score for digging through toys that I hadn't touched in almost 20 years! I found characters for almost every faction.
Characters listed from Left to Right
I also found a lot of random unmatched body parts. From both Pyrates and Pirates of The Carribean. Though I'm not really into collecting for the latter. At least not yet.
The standouts from this haul are easily Bluebeard, Philias Plank, Ghoulluger, and Jonathan Juryrig.
Bluebeard speaks for himself. He only ever came in one set, Battle for Treasure Island. Though he's not super rare, he's not super cheap either... But yes. You're seeing that right. Child Me scribbled all over his beard with a sharpie. Ruining his look. Which means that, even though I have him here, I will need to buy a non-sharpied version eventually.
Philias Plank is a somewhat hard to find character. He only came in Longboat Lookout. Its not super common. But I was lucky enough to find him completely intact. Not a singlepart out of place. Lucky!
Ghoullugger was a miracle to get. I pieced him back together from individual scraps I found in my attic. Literally piece by piece. I was very, very lucky to have been able to piece him back together whole.
And Jonathan Juryrig... My boy. He was one of my favorites growing up. Though his legs aren't the right color, I was still very pleased to have found him in such good condition.
All in all, it wasn't a bad haul. All these figures plus all the miscellaneous parts I found, like I said.
I also found something I was quite pleased about!
This is the set known as Pieces of Eight. One of the four pouch sets. What pleased me so much about it was that I found it to be sealed! Brand new packaging! Unfortunately I didn't think to take a picture before opening it.... But at least the set is here.
I know the decoder coin isn't in the picture, but I have that too. The copper one, to be exact.
A mere four days (September 26th) after I purchased Stormstalker and Maroon Gally, I stumbled upon another incredible deal on eBay.
I was just beginning my re-collection journey, and was still after the mainstays in anyone's Pyrates collection. So my eyes were on the obvious things. Stormstalker, Treasure Island, the skulls, and of course...
Dread Eye's Phantom
One of the main ships of the series. (Not a high bar, I know. There's only three of them). And one of the most iconic, next to Stormstalker herself. I was browsing deals on eBay when I stumbled upon an absolute goldmine of an auction. Dread Eye's Phantom, mostly complete. For an insanely low price.
Now, I had learned my lesson from the Stormstalker incident. I wasn't going to get overexcited, bid instantly, and drive the price up. So I waited and watched. The time ticked by and still, there wasn't a single bid upon it. In its final hours, I threw down 50 dollars. And won her.
50 dollars for an ENTIRE ship is insanely good. Less than half of what I paid for Stormstalker.
Now, however. The eagle eyed among you might have taken notice of one thing. This ship isn't the original Dread Eye's Phantom.
To those of you that don't know what I mean. Allow me to remind you of something I mentioned at the start of this blog. Remember how Pyrates had a reboot in 2010? This is one of those rebooted sets.
Now, its not too drastic with Dread Eye's Phantom. Unlike Stormstalker 2.0, The Phantom remained largely the same. The biggest changes were removing the gray sails, with the Skeleton Crew logo, and replacing them with pure black sails. They also replaced the throne in the back with a third tiny mast.
The hull of The Phantom now no longer lit up either. But that wasn't that big of an issue.
Speaking of the hull though, one disapointment of this set actually comes from the 2.0 boxart.
As you can see, on the boxart of this set the 2.0 version of The Phantom is depicted as having a black hull. Which looks absolutely incredible when paired with the black sails. It makes me very much wish that this set had the black hull instead of gray. Because honestly, the gray on the 2.0 version of the set looks way worse than it does on the original.
The listing I bought also came with some random extra sails. They aren't Pyrates. I believe them to be Playmobil. I would've told the owner to keep them, but I worried that he would've misunderstood me and kept the actual sails instead of those weird things.
The set arrived a few weeks later. Officially joining my growing fleet. The plastic definetly feels cheaper on these 2.0 sets. Unfortunately.
The set came with four skeletons, including Dread Eye himself. As well as Brigadoon Blackburn, a very interesting choice of Marauder for the set.
It was around this time that I also was able to snatch up a relatively cheap listing for Coffer Trap. I was now one step closer to having all three of the original skull sets.
Oh, one last thing before I end this post. In this set is a character known as Shifty Merchant. Who bares an identical appearance to Topmast Tremblay. Its rare that Megabloks did this. Usually they'd at least change the character's body or head or something. But nope. Shifty Merchant and Topmast Tremblay are a rare case of identical figures. I've decided to headcanon them as twins.
