So who are the Pirates?

Arrrrrr Pirates was the fourth Lego theme released, with sets actively produced between 1989 and 1997. However, similar to my own Lego hiatus, the Pirates eventually returned to the toyshop shelves in 2009 with rereleases of old sets combining the Pirates style with newer Lego elements including upgraded mini-fig facial expressions. 2015 saw Pirates relaunched with 6 new sets building on the well-known Pirates style and storyline with new building techniques and prints.[i]

The Pirates storyline loosely follows that of Caribbean legends. Focused around badies - the pirates and the Caribbean protectors - the imperials. British redcoats, French bluecoats and the Spanish Armada and Conquistadors were the inspiration for the imperials. While the pirates remained relatively constant in design and story, there were several different imperials. The imperial guard replaced the imperial soldiers, before the imperial armada replaced the guard in the year before the hiatus.[ii]

1993 saw the introduction of a neutral party, the islanders, between the pirates and the imperials. However, islanders held both pirates and imperials captive.[iii] A number of sets also included skeletons, of both the imperial and pirate variety.

I have excluded skeletons in my analysis given the difficulty of distinguishing whether a skeleton is male or female. However, for the other Pirate mini-figs, it was relatively easy to distinguish given the existence of either beards or red lips on all pirates.

Despite the popularity of the Pirate sets, there is a rather dismal gender ratio. In my analysis, there were 18 female mini-figs compared to 266 males. That equates to 1 female for almost 16 male mini-figs

in the Pirate Lego sets. When I only looked at the 16 Pirate sets that contained at least one female mini-fig. The ratio dropped substantially to 1:4. 

However, this does mean that 66 Pirate themed Lego sets do not include a single female mini-fig. This sends a very strong message. Girls are not Pirates. In reality, a Pirate isn’t necessarily a desirable profession, particularly given the Caribbean Pirates really only existed centuries ago. It can also be difficult to determine what a Pirate even is. 

But this shouldn’t stop a child’s imagination. And it doesn’t stop a boys imagination within Pirate Lego. Boys are given the opportunity to play, to dream, and pretend to be a Pirate or Imperial soldiers from centuries ago through their own gender. Girls aren’t sent this same message. By the very lack of female mini-figs the message is given that in order to dream, to imagine and play with Pirate Lego, they have to do so through male mini-figs. As a man. As a boy. Girls can’t follow maps to find the treasure, protect their ships from invaders through their own gender. It equally sends the message to boys that girls can’t be Pirates, nor can they imagine, dream and play in Lego Pirate land.

But what about the relationship between mini-fig genders and other factors such as the number of mini-figs in the set and when the set was released. There is no strong relationship between release date of Pirate sets and the percentage of female mini-figs. The ratio in 2015 for all Pirate sets released is lower than the ratio in mid-1990s. However, the ratio for Pirate sets with at least 1 female mini-fig is slightly is highest for the most recently released sets in 2015.  

One interesting relationship, is the one between the total number of mini-figs in a set and the percentage of female mini-figs. There is rather strong negative relationship. The more mini-figs in the set, the smaller the percentage of female mini-figs. This is driven by, that regardless of the number of mini-figs in a set, the number of female mini-figs is basically constant at 1.

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[i] Information from Brickipedia accessed 18 January 2016

[ii] Information from Brickipedia accessed 18 January 2016

[iii] Information from Brickipedia accessed 18 January 2016