It's also not a particularly well-planned commercial - his favorite set is the Castaway Raft? That thing was what, ? You need to move the bigger items, guys. His favorite set is the island fortress thing!
No wonder video games have been kicking your ass for the last 20 years.
I got the giant island base for christmas one year. Unfortunately, all the other sets I had were the smaller rafts and one-man boats, so I was limited to daring commando raids on the base instead of awesome naval battles.
Either there was some sort of pirate movie in the early nineties for LEGO to tie-in its toys to, or this was the Dark Times before cross-marketing had been discovered. Today this would be the Pirates of the Caribbean set with special Jack Sparrow's Outhouse piece that doesn't fit with anything else.
It was mostly LEGO corporate. They held off on cross-promotion for years and years until they realized they were losing a shitton of money by NOT doing it.
I think the Star Wars line was the first licensed one, and those didn't show up until the late 90s early 00s.
A friend of mine works for LEGO - apparently the Danish dudes who run it basically don't want to make "war toys." They even altered a recent "Dinosaur Hunter" line for international release - the U.S. got guns that shot nerf-like bullets on all the vehicles, while the Euro versions had nets and capture claws and shit.