Pause Magazine's Lego Set Reference Guide - Castle

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The 6000 Idea Book (sometimes referred to as the Bill & Mary book), published in 1980, showed wonderous castles near the end of the book. Unfortunately, the small print said these sets were not available in the U.S. Not until 1981, that is. Since that time, the Lego Castle System has been one of the most popular of all. The first castle (set 6075) was built on a flat, green baseplate, and included horses which you had to build from regular bricks. The one piece horses used still today were introduced with the next wave of Castle sets in 1984.

This first group of sets are the Generic or Unspecified sets - those which don't fall into a Castle sub-theme. Following these are the sets in the Black Knights, Wolfpack, Dragon Masters, Royal Knights, Dark Forest, Fright Knights and Ninja sub-themes.

The Black Knights sub-theme was introduced in 1992 with three new sets. It also incorporated two older sets, 6034 Black Monarch's Ghost and 6059 Knight's Stronghold. The Dungeon Master's Castle was later renamed the Black Knight's Castle.

Wolfpack also made its debut in 1992, to be the adversaries of the Black Knights. Wolfpack had the potential to be as cool as the Forestmen, but the sub-theme was never expanded beyond these two sets.

The 1993 year saw the largest new Castle sub-theme yet: The Dragon Masters. These were the first sets to include the dragon, as well as Majisto the Wizard. The 6082 Fire Breathing Fortress is an impressive structure, reaching even higher into the sky than the 6086 Black Knight's Castle.

The Royal Knights were the first sets to incorporate the new, larger raised baseplate, a King with a golden crown and the skeleton mini-fig (along with the 1995 Pirate sets).

Hail the return of the Forestmen! For 1996, Castle collectors were treated to Forestmen sets again, under the sub-theme name Dark Forest. The three sets in this sub-theme are very reminiscent of the original Forestmen sets, except that they use mostly brown tree pieces where the original Forestmen used black.

New for '97 in the Castle line-up is the Fright Knights sub-theme, featuring witches, both black and green dragons, bat-wing helmets & bat staff tops, crystal balls and more! Look at those neat pieces which curve upwards...combined with arch pieces, you can now make big circle openings or windows. The two buildings are built on brick-thick baseplates instead of normal or raised baseplates...

The castle theme welcomed the addition of the Ninja sub-theme in 1998. There are lots of new pieces used in these sets, and there is also a great variety of pre-existing pieces used to give the buildings an ornate look that hasn't been found in too many sets over the last few years. In particular, roof pieces are used generously, with the biggest Ninja set incorporating no fewer than 65 black roof bricks!

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