Least Favorite Castle Set!

Discussion of official LEGO Castle Theme sets and products
Elbadar
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Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by Elbadar »

The title says it all (nearly) :D . The only rule is that you must own the set you pass your wicked judgement on. My least favorite had to be the first KK2 castle I dont even remember what posessed me to hope it would be any good !!! I suppose i had delluded myself enough to think that if Lego made it it must be good. In any case I was gravely mistaken, hence the mad emoticons . Tha parts were poor, the figs wer crap, and the flags were double-sided. It was scraped within a month and the only things I have of it that I liked were the eccesive gray slopes and the lone shadowknight. How about you? Did anyone else ever buy a set that made them do this--> :mad:
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Mörs
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Re: Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by Mörs »

This topic doesn't make much sense... since obviously all of the Caslte sets I own I do love!

And I don't have anything from KK2; that theme happened during a time when I wasn't buying any new LEGO. If I were to pick one, it would be extremely difficult...
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Jojo
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Re: Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by Jojo »

Hello!
Mörs wrote:This topic doesn't make much sense... since obviously all of the Caslte sets I own I do love!
Sure it makes sense. Being a collector myself I own every Castle set, just for the sake of owning it. (Yeah, silly enough.) Naturally some of these sets I do not like that much. Like Willa's Windship 6037 or that infamously awkward KK1 Grand Tournament 8779. From the greater days I always found Knight's Arsenal 6016 was a bit boring.


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Re: Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by architect »

Jojo wrote:Hello!
Mörs wrote:From the greater days I always found Knight's Arsenal 6016 was a bit boring.
This was also my least favorite castle set from the 1980's. If you were not a space fan, the pieces were not very good making mocs. It also lacked the 2x2 turn table element with the horse hitching. Apparently some carts only go straight and can not turn.

Comparing the KK2 joust and Willa's Windship is a tough call. The windship is likely my least favorite due to the overly fantastic design. Why use an entire windship if you have a broom?

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dyntar
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Re: Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by dyntar »

My least favourite is the Guarded Treasury 6094. Its the only set that I have for the Bulls and Lions KK1.It doesn't really fit in with the rest of my sets and I got it just before my dark ages.
The set doesn't really make a lot of sense if you don't have a castle to go with it. There's a stand alone prison and a tower that's too small for anything apart from the sword that goes inside it.
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DaleDVM
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Re: Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by DaleDVM »

I have got a feeling that this is going to be a landslide. Although, I thought it was named Witch's Windship. So another vote for that. This is the very specific set that put me over the edge into a dark age. I can't check on the name because the box is in storage. I don't want any chance of accidentally seeing it! :eyebrows:

I especially hated the way the wings are in no way anyway near the dragons body due to the strange contraption connecting the dragon to the gondola. What a horrible design. Ben I am guessing it is not ladylike to ride a dragon or a broom directly?

I must put in an honorable mention for 6056 The Dragon Wagon. That rickety wagon couldn't hold a bunny rabbit.

2nd honorable mention for 6043 The Dragon Defender. Outlandishly unstable insane device for simply throwing rocks around. The lego designers thought they had a winner with that ugly huge dragon head they designed and put it on anything they could! :spin:
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Re: Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by Mörs »

I actually am kind of fond of the Witch's Windship. Come on, a windship carried by a dragon; who would have thought of that!?
Why use an entire windship if you have a broom?
A broom can't breath fire, can it?
Umm, if I must decide, maybe this one, since it doesn't have a lot of weapons compared to other impulses from that time.
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Sir Kohran
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Re: Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by Sir Kohran »

Come on, a windship carried by a dragon; who would have thought of that!?
I think that's one of the main reasons it's disliked :P
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Re: Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by Funnyham »

The dark Fortress landing, or whatever it was called. I bought it from a website that only had a picture of the box cover, and I thought that it was a small fortress and actually had 4 walls! Disapointment ensued.
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Re: Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by Mörs »

Sir Kohran wrote:
Come on, a windship carried by a dragon; who would have thought of that!?
I think that's one of the main reasons it's disliked :P
:lol:

I still think it was an interesting idea. The Fright Knights were a very strange theme indeed... They had some really good stuff (in my mind, at least), such as the Batlord's castle (the tallest LEGO castle ever, I believe!), and some minifig torsos and heads (it was also the line that introduced bats), but on the other hand -- the witch's hideout was just downright horrid (it looked like it was made almost solely from BURPs!), and the story behind it always confused me: who were their enemies? What was the relation between the witch and the Batlord? I remember reading once in a catalogue that the witch was planning to get her hands on the Batlord's jewels (LOL :roll:), but then why does she have a place in his castle? Odd...
Last edited by Mörs on Thu Jan 14, 2010 1:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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CodeGeorge
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Re: Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by CodeGeorge »

Yellow Castle for it being ugly and overrated. :tasty:
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Re: Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by Funnyham »

Personally I quite like the fright knights, especially Basil the Batlord, and would love to get the big tower.

Willa's windship though...come on.
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Re: Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by davee123 »

In order of appearance:
1978 - 375 Castle: This held the title for a short while, partially because it was the ONLY castle set at the time! But I also liked it less than the other castle sets of the day because the yellow scheme for the building always seemed silly to me. Not terrible, but kinda odd.

1987 - 6016 Knight's Aresenal: This one took the title away from 375 because you only got 1 figure, and because I never understood the rubber tubing as a kid. I understand today what they were going for, but it always looked to me like some sort of space-age cross-theme bizarrity.

1993 - 6043 Dragon Defender: Ok, Dragon Masters. "Hated it!" I recall looking at Dragon Masters back in the 1996 timeframe and thinking they were the lamest faction ever. Their castle was a contender for the "worst set" except it did have some good qualities. The Dragon Defender, however, did not. The catapult mechanism didn't work very well, forced you to try and shoot both at once, it was brightly colored, and didn't do a good job resembling an evil dragon head. If you showed up to battle with that monstrosity, you'd win only because your opponents would be laughing too hard to fight back.

1997 - 6037 Witch's Windship: Similar to Dragon Masters, Fright Knights took the cake at the time for "worst subtheme" until KK2. Poor sets abounded, the worst of which I think were Witch's Windship and the Fright Knights Flying Machine. But Witch's Windship usurped the "worst set" crown because it's just too wacky of an idea for me. On the basis of part selection it might be better, but not by enough to offset the all-too-strange idea of Willa needing a big basket to fly in, that a dragon would bother carrying it, and that it's basically trying to rip off the idea of an 1800's hot-air-balloon.

2004 - 8779 The Grand Tournament: And finally, the current record holder in my book. There are a few other poorer sets like the large-scale constructable figures, or possibly some DUPLO or Belville castles-- but I'm not really counting them. The Grand Tournament set a new low for strangeness. KK2 was weird enough with its futuristic concepts like "magical armor that prevents knights from getting hurt", but it also had a color scheme for figures that was atrocious for all but the youngest of kids. Further, there were no soldiers to speak of, except for the Shadow Knights (who were the only real redeeming factor of the lineup). To top it off, they debuted in 2004 with the color change, which forever puts a black mark on them in my memory.

This set in particular was nothing more than a play activity for kids rather than anything even closely resembling something medieval. Sure, the contestants rode "horses" (if you want to call them that), but they had enormous wheels, and were clearly intended to smash into each other rather than knock each other off their mounts. Further, the set even deviated from the plot line of the story, since as I recall, they were expected to fight with swords, and it came down to Jayko using the uber-shield in order to win, which wasn't even in the set. Also, although my memory is hazy on the subject, didn't Jayko have to defeat Vladek before the King was freed from custody? Anyway, the lack of useful pieces, useful figures, and purely activity-based rather than building or figure-playing based theme to the set wins it the "Worst Set Ever" award from me.

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Elbadar
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Re: Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by Elbadar »

That is definitely a good worst, and because of my foolish younger self i own it too :mad: . I still think that the castle of morcia is worce though, largely because of the fact that, taken for parts the tournament is a decent set. It was constructed of mostly basic parts, the king and vladek (but not jayko) were decent figures, and it didnt include nearly as many useless terrible parts as any other set in the lineup. So, based on parts and price I still dislike Morcia Castle more, though this is up there :mad: . And I wasn't counting big figs either, so thats my stance too.
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Re: Least Favorite Castle Set!

Post by Count Blacktron »

8779 KK2-The Grand Tournament. Really? Grand? The Kingdom of Morica obviously could not afford to feed and house horses. More like the Grand Drag-Race. Was there anything at all in this set that I needed? Not that wasn't everywhere else in LEGO. And boy were the colors in this set BRIGHT after the color-change that said "Gray is not gray, and neither is Brown truly brown." Along with the baby-knight in powder blue, useless wall sections, non-horse horses, well I just can't recommend it to anyone. Truly a barf-inducing set. I'm embarrassed to own two copies. :oops:
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