2004 Easter Egg Pirate Playmobil Set 4915 Review Capsule

Known as an "Eggstra" in some fan circles, the Easter Eggs come every year to delight those who can find them and annoy those who can't. This Pirate has no known name, but he includes a companion monkey, a sword, and a gun. $4.99 at Hobby Bench, worth it if you can find it.

Introduction

The Pirate is a a nicely tanned and tatooed man of the seas. He's out looking for booty, or plunder, or whatever the PC term for stolen goods taken from people forced into the oceans might be these days.

He started showing up in March of 2004 and we predict he'll be all but gone from all brick and mortar establishments by the end of May if not sooner.

Figure

Like a lot of Playmobil figures, there's not a lot to the sculpt but the character is defined by his paint and accessories.

The tan skin color seems to be getting more common in pirates these days, and it makes for a nice, diverse crew of scurvy dogs swabbing the decks of your collection. The outfit is unique and the watermelon pants are odd to say the least, but I guess when you're at sea stealing stuff you'll take the pantaloons you can get.

The figure has a pretty nice level of decoration, in many cases better than the norm for these figures. The skull tatoo is a really nice touch. There's a tooth hanging on a necklace, as well as some sort of red jewel, which means there's a lot of paint on this guy. The downside of the paitned details is that they could scratch off, so you should be careful with this and other newer figures. Playmobil figures tend to be pretty durable, though, so no matter what it'll probably take some serious toddler thrashing to scrape the paint off of the figure.

The sculpt is pretty standard stuff, with the booted legs and all. There's a torn plastic vest and a couple of snap-on wrist pieces in addition to the hat, but aside from that it's a pretty standard Playmobil figure.

The main highlights of this pirate, making it unique above all others, is that aforementioned tatoo and his monkey. More on that below.

Accessories

In addition to the wrist pieces, there's a hat, gun, sword, and monkey.

Despite his appearance in the picture, the rubbery, brown/orange monkey does have two ears. The Playmobil designers opted to make him a little rubbery which makes it easy for him to cling to more things than a hard plastic simian may be able to do. His tail can hold on to a few things, like the barrel of the gun or a pirate's hook. It's a solid design, but the color leaves something to be desired. Some paint would have been nice, but given the kind of plastic, may have proved difficult.

The gun and sword are really nothing new, but are solid, good accessories. As is the hat, which we believe the pirate refers to as "macaroni."

For a low-cost individual pirate toy, you get a good selection of stuff in the egg. The only thing missing is a holster for one or both of his weapons.

Packaging

Set 4915 comes in a green egg much like previous Easter Egg releases.

Also included was a flyer showing the other three eggs and other compatible toys that you should buy your child unless you're a bad parent. Or something.

At this time, we aren't sure if we'll be purchasing other sets for review or otherwise. A Victorian woman in a dress looks like it turned out well, with a fairly ornate paint job and an umbrella. A Knight looks like he could have just come back from one of the crusades and has a great paint job and what looks to be a lot of new pieces. The strangest entry is a Girl with Geese, as it's a girl with two geese and a stick. What will she be doing to those geese with the stick? The animals and girl look decent enough, but I swear, she's totally going to wail on them.

Fin

The Easter Egg sets from Playmobil have always been some of the shortest-run and lowest-distribution toys. Our local store doesn't even put them next to the Playmobil, but at the checkout counter instead. Previous issues tend to go for a fair amount of scratch due to their unique nature, and as such, we would advise you to buy one of these now if you like the look of it or the little companion monkey.

$4.99 seemed a bit high to us, and it seems they can be had cheaper elsewhere, but there's nobody else in Phoenix stocking these as far as we can tell. These are essentially glorified "Specials" sets, and Specials typically run from $1.99-$3.99. Factor in the nice packaging and arguably better production values, and you're probably looking at it being a decent set for $4 or so.

Reviewed and photographed by Adam Pawlus
Sample found at a Phoenix area Hobby Bench in March 2004
Reviewed on March 12, 2004.