The adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, most famous for his Kon-Tiki expedition, has a small role in this movie as one of the pirates. He was on a vacation in Barbados when this movie was shot and was among the tourists who where asked to be extras in the film.
This film is very loosely based upon the book "Pippi in the South Seas" ("Pippi Långstrump i Söderhavet" in Swedish), which was the third and final Pippi book. The book took place on the fictitious South Pacific island, Kurrekurredutt Island (which Pippi's father Captain Efraim Longstocking had been ruling as its chief; the now-friendly natives were originally cannibals, who were since converted by the captain, and now only hunt wild animals). In this adaptation, Kurrekurredutt is written out altogether, and the new setting is a pirate town on the island of Porto Piluse (called "Taka-Tuka-Land" in the German version; "Taka-Tuka-Land" is also the name of Kurrekurredutt Island in the German edition of the books). The two antagonist pirates Blood-Svente (Jarl Borssén) and Knife-Jocke (Martin Ljung) may have been reworkings of the pirates Buck and Jim, the villains of the book.
Inger Nilsson was rumored to have suffered from terrible homesickness while filming in Barbados, as she hated being far away from home.
For the German version of the original 13-episode Swedish TV series (Pippi Långstrump (1969)), this feature film was divided into four episodes. These would be Episodes 14-17, and the collective name of the 4-part story arc was titled "Pippi and the Pirates" ("Pippi und die Seeräuber"). Additionally, this four-part TV version also features plenty of scenes deleted from the final film, added to pad up the running time of each episode. (See "Alternate Versions.")
This was the first of two original motion pictures in the Pippi Långstrump (1969) series (not counting Pippi Meia-Longa (1969) and Här kommer Pippi Långstrump (1969), which were compilations of the TV series).