Lego Castle
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| Sub‑themes | Black Falcons Lion Knights Forestmen Black Knights Wolfpack Renegades Dragon Masters Royal Knights Dark Forest Fright Knights Knights’ Kingdom Castle (2007) Kingdoms Castle (2013) |
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| Availability | 1978–2014 |
| Total sets | 100+ |
| Official website | |
LEGO Castle was a Lego medieval and fantasy theme featuring knights and castles. It was introduced in 1978 until 1997. The medieval theme was then carried on in the LEGO Knights Kingdoms and later LEGO Kingdoms themes. Lego Castle sets were marketed under the LEGOLAND banner until 1991. LEGO decided to change and add LEGO System in 1992, but was dropped after 1999.
Castle is the first Lego Castle theme, and, like Space, is still very popular. 375 Castle (often called the Yellow Castle) is the most well known set from this theme. Often known by fans as "Original Castle", the knights featured unique movable visor pieces, with eye slits, and a crest that runs backwards from the frontward-facing part of the visor along the helmet. These knights also wore a coat of arms (either a tunic or breastplate) over their body. It was not again until 1990 when knights came with movable visors and armor breastplates, as the knights between 1984-89 had solid grill helmets while their "armor" was just a texture on their body. As there were no horse-specific pieces, horses were built entirely of bricks.
In 1984, LEGO released the first Castle sets that had more realistic castles, knights, and colors (such as gray castles rather than yellow) that more accurately depicted the Middle Ages compared to the Classic Castle sets from the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The 1984 castle sets featured many newly introduced pieces and weapons. Examples are: one-piece horse, horse saddles, new knight helmets with fixed visors, feather plumes (there were three types in five colors: red, blue, yellow, white and black), waving flags and bows and arrows. Many of these new pieces would be included in future castle sets. The 1990 castle sets brought a further changes - as knights now had armor breastplates and helmets with movable visors.
The sets that were released during this time period predominantly featured two types of shield illustrations. One shield featured a black and white bird against a black and white background, split down the middle, with a blue or gold border. The mini-figures that were associated with these shields almost invariably had black pants, black helmets, and blue torsos with black sleeves, often with the bird emblem on them. Fans have labeled these sets as "Black Falcons", though the term only appears once in any official LEGO literature (Black Falcon's Fortress), and the sets were never labeled as anything other than "Castle". The Black Falcon's Fortress was known as the Eagle Crest Castle in Canada.
In 1984, the first "Black Falcons" castle was 6073 Knight's Castle. It came with six minifigures; two archers, two spearmen, and two knights mounted on horses. Like the yellow castle, the set featured special hinge pieces that could open up the castle to take a look inside and get at the interior. The Black Falcons were also featured in other sets the same year such as 6021 Jousting Knights and 6030 Catapult. In 1986, the Knight's Castle was replaced by the Black Falcon's Fortress. The overall structure and size of the set was similar to the previous Black Falcons castle, and included the same type of minifigures (including the two mounted knights). The main differences were that the two defense towers had been moved to the front, and were made with more rounded (octagonal) corner pieces, leaving room in the back for a small roofed structure with a yellow Tudor wall. This set was quite unique because it was the first set to include the octagonal corner pieces and the yellow Tudor wall, as well as the only set to have a blue Black Falcons flag.
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