4290 Pirate Ship

[Sir Gareth]

So here it is at last my final review of the new pirate theme the new Pirate ship 4290.

I like the design of this ship and the lay out of the new sails gives it a great look. I'm not, however that pleased with the colour scheme in particular the hull, I would have liked to have seen it a darker colour, similar to that of the 3940. There's lots of new interesting features with this ship some good some bad, not to many bad ones though.

Ok, so assembly of this ship is fairly straight forward and there's a nice little note on the back of the box warning parents to allow 1.5 hours to complete the task. I haven't fully assembled my ship because I don't want to damage anything when it's time to take it apart so I can't test to see if 1.5 hours is an accurate time or not. Before you screw the deck onto the hull you  put a table and hammock into the cabin, there are 7 screws that hold the deck into place and there is no screwdriver supplied for this job. I like the deck it has several different levels to it and has great detail and it's a good size too, plenty of standing room.

[Sir Gareth]

Putting the masts together and fitting them to the deck is basically done the same as the other ships, however the crows nest faces backwards to allow for the top front sail and there is a welcomed return of the ships bell. There are no bottom bars to support the lower sail's to keep them in shape, instead there are 4 rigid bars connected to the corners of the bottom sails that clip onto pegs along the ships sides. There's also no rope used anywhere in the rigging, it's all held together by clips and hooks so it shouldn't take to long to rig the ship.

One of the new features of this new ship is that it transforms from being a nice friendly merchant/royal ship to a well armed Pirate ship. You get an extra set of flags, a large one with an anchor on and a smaller one with a trident and of course you have a fairly normal looking figure head, so you can get close to your prey before you show your true colours. At the top of the 2nd mast there is a cylinder that hides a pirate flag, a rope is attached to this and when pulled down it uncovers the flag that roles it's self out, then you can flip the figure head over to show the skull.

[Sir Gareth]

So now we have those cannons that can be sort of hidden before any attack.

I don't like how these cannons look at the front of the ship, their position is ok, there's 4 of them that's good but I don't like how the cannons frames and wheels match the colour of the deck, it's a pity they didn't use a 3 colour  piece like we see in some of the new figures ( mainly pirates legs). What is really neat about them is how easy they operate, you just pull on the side of the section to raise them and to lower them you pull a small brown latch that drops them back into the deck and a flap closes to hide a gap. This action works really smoothly and it is a great piece of toy engineering, you do however have to make sure that the cannons are in their lowest position for this action to work correctly. There is also a cannon at the rear, again this can be hidden, the cannon is on a small flap that sits on top of a trap door over the cabin. You have to make sure that the cannon is turned to one side parallel to the rear of the ship, tilt it up and towards the front of the ship, open the trap door and drop it into the cabin where it sits on top of the table.

Now some bad news, these cannons are rubbish when it comes to firing the new missiles. Only 4 of these cannons held the missiles in place, the 5th one just will not allow the missiles to lock in so I can't use it. Despite this I waged war on David's Mega Bloks ship the Black Pearl that has similar firing cannons and missiles, a few minutes in and another one of my cannons refused to load and fire correctly, the missile just made the end of the cannon. Then one of the missiles it's self refused to load in my 3 remaining cannons and shortly after, another cannon could only manage to fire a very short distance. So I was left with 2 good cannon's that loaded ok and had a good firing range, none of David's cannons failed at all so the battle was lost, Mega bloks cannons out did the Playmobil ones, very disappointing.

[Sir Gareth]

Again the figures are very well done great print and plenty of accessories for them and there are also 2 more of those weapon holding sashes. I have however found that the grey Pirate has the wrong colour arm, his hook hand should be grey with a black hook and not black with a grey hook. There are some unusual looking provisions with this ship though, I'm on about those strings of sausages you get with this set.

Finally in my opinion the best part of this ship is the plank, oh yes you get your Pirates to walk the plank how cool is that, there are two flaps one on each side of the ship that lower and the plank sits under a small grip. I was really excited when I found this and I have had lots of fun springing my pirates off it, yes it does work just like a diving board, launching your Pirate into the air before he hits the table top.

[Martin Milner]

Great review, thanks Gary!

It's odd about that "wrong arm", it certainly looks odd the way it is and you'd think they'd notice something quite that wrong and get it sorted. I have one of those "wrong arm" pirates that I got in a job lot off eBay, and thought someone must've customised him, badly. they did take his cool hair and leave me a regular spiky blond instead.

The ship colours are wierd, and it's a shame the guns go wrong. I rarely try to fire my Playmobil cannons, but I'm sure millions of kids do and they're going to be very disappointed if all the guns malfunction this quickly.

1.5 hours seems a long assembly time if there's no string for the rigging - that's be bit I leave till last (or don't bother with at all).

I like the "stealth" idea, and the unfurling pirate flag is a great touch.

Seems like a mix of good and bad in this set - and not enough playtesting.

[playmofire]

Many thanks for an excellent review, Gary.

Maybe the cannon need drawing to Playmobil's attention; possibly you got a poor batch.  I know there were problems with some of the early Roman sets, so maybe there were here too.  A quick line to DS about the problem should get you some new ones.

I like the new rigging idea.  In fact, when I've been struggling to rig the 3550s I had and the 3940, I often thought some system like this new one would be a good idea.

The new figures are very attractive, as you say, and the photos you've taken of them are really excellent.

[Rasputin]

I to have been having trouble with the cannons in my 5807 & 5808 sets . the cannon balls do not latch in, and the overall mechanism feels cheep. I am planning on switching the cannons to the old style as they are still available here .

In reference to the color of the ship . Now that somebody has it for real, it is nice to here that my initial reaction to the bad color scheme was not to far off. There was quite a discussion about it when the first pictures came out on Playmoboard. 

[Richard]

In reference to the color of the ship . Now that somebody has it for real, it is nice to here that my initial reaction to the bad color scheme was not to far off.

Great review, Garry!


Regarding your comment, Rasputin ...
Rotrock shared his 4290 based custom HMS Repulse over at GW-PC ... Click HERE and HERE and also look at the attached pictures ...

[Rasputin]

Now that make  a beautiful ship  . I know it does not appeal to the glitz and glamor or kids play but i would rather have my boys play with the modified ship any day.

thanks for the pictures 

[Tiermann]

Thanks for the review Garry. I don't really have room for the big ships so I have been skipping them. I wonder if they haven't tried to make this one just a bit too complex.