6249 - Pirates Ambush

Rating:
Pros: Good source for brown walls
Cons: Structures aren't solid; Suspension bridge was a neat idea but it falls down when you don't want it to unless you move the bridge rods to extend further into locking bricks
Contents: 155 pieces including 3 mini-figs
Price: $19.99 - Discontinued
Reviewed: 16-Jul-1997
Reviewed by: Joseph Gonzalez

Hours of work on the rusty lock prove fruitful as the device springs open and drops into swampy water. Already up to his knees in the mire, the imprisoned soldier works the door slowly open. He steps on a bar of the door and swings his tired body up to the second floor and carefully works his way onto the swaying bridge that leads to the main guard shack and possible freedom. Alligators below snap dangerously close at the soldier's feet. The slightest misplaced step will send him over the railing and into a terrible death. The mere thought sends shivers down his spine, and then he sees him. At the other side of the bridge, the toothless grin of a pirate smiles back at him with the pirate's hand on a trap-lever to the bridge. A few more steps would bring safety, but that is no longer an option. With a last breath of hope, the desperate prisoner lunges into the air as the gnarled hand of the pirate drops the lever and the bridge falls into the swamp.

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Recent Pirate projects have included combining sets to come up with larger models and while I originally never intended to pick up the 6249 Pirates Ambush, the set looked like a good purchase for parts and it has not dissatisfied me in that aspect.
The 6249 is a small bay or inlet-based structure of two buildings joined by a booby-trapped suspension bridge. Neither of the buildings is very sturdy but I liked the idea of spanning them with a bridge. One structure is a three-level defense tower with a cannon on the second floor roof and a prison cell on the first floor. The suspension bridge crosses from the second story of this tower to the roofless top of a small hut.
Two pirates defend the small fortress from one Spanish soldier in a row boat (the pirates also have assistance from a hungry alligator).
The only unique pieces that stood out to me were the wide-leaf plant element and the net which is used for the bridge. While the plant pieces look kind of cool on the boxes, sadly they don't stay stuck very well to regular bricks. They are the same flexible plastic that green flower bases are made out of but for some reason they keep falling off. Another flaw with the set was that the booby trap bridge doesn't lock in place very well (a slight modification without extra bricks solves this problem, though).
A brief overview would state that while the principal structures are not very stable, the pieces included make the set worth buying (I think three or four of these sets alone could build a good small size fort).