Minifigs: Harry Cane

Just a short post today--most of my "blogging time" has been spent taking pictures to use this week (and for the next batch of Aquazone Breakfast News), and I have a few non-blog projects on the go.

However, while this post may be minor, this minifig isn't--at least not in my LEGO-verses.



Harry Cane was one of the Adventurer gang released originally in 1998 in Egypt, and he stuck around for their second year, 1999, in the Amazon. As his pilot hat with goggles and bomber jacket indicate, he was the team pilot, and each set he came with in the original two Adventurer lines included an aircraft for him to fly. My Harry Cane came with the balloon in 5988 Pharaoh's Forbidden Ruins, and his inclusion was a *big* part of why I wanted that set. I already had the three other "good guy" adventurers, both of their "bad guy" rivals, and the even-badder Pharaoh in my first Adventurer set, 5978 Sphinx Secret Surprise.

To judge by his abbreviated backstory--Harry had none in the 1999 issue of the Mania Magazine, although the other returning Adventurers did--and by the fact that he was not back with the three others in 2000 when they discovered the Dinosaurs. In fact, his slot on the Adventurer team seems to have been taken by Mike (who because was not a popular character in my LEGO-verse, I assure you), the "token cool kid" character. Nor did Harry reappear in 2003 when Johnny Thunder, Dr. Lightning, and Gail Storm were rebooted (albeit the latter two had different names) in the Orient Expedition line.

Still, Harry Cane was never a secondary character in my LEGO games. Admittedly, he was the co-star and Johnny was the star of the Adventurer games, but Harry was no second fiddle. The fact that he was the Adventurers' pilot somehow morphed into him being among my most proficient pilots of... well... anything. Stick him in an X-wing, and he'd fly as well as my Luke Skywalker; stick him in a race car and he'd take first; stick him in a seaplane and he could take off and land on the desert sands.

Nor were these heroic feats the limit of his awesomeness. In many respects, Harry became the "voice of reason" character among the Adventurers, while Johnny was the rash optimist, Gail Storm the dour pessimist, and Dr. Lightning the timid worrier (we'll not speak of Mike).

As a final note regarding Harry's "awesomeness," it certainly didn't hurt that while I have 5 Johnnys (see this post), 5 Gails, and 3 Dr. Lightnings, I only ever had one Harry Cane. I did eventually acquire a second head on Bricklink, but he serves in my Unitron fleet away with my Space and that was long after the Great Take-Apart.