CP5670

Lego Quality Reference

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"Bionicle" joints, specifically the U joints. I have used those things since throwbot/slizer era. Here is something strange, The slizer ones' cross socket break very easily. Specially the black ones, I think I have broken all of the silzer black U ball joints already. The good thing is that even after that cross socket breaks, they are still fairy usable by using the side sockets...

However, the ball socket of the slizer era is remarkably more resistant than the bionicle ones. Specially the most recent equivalents to that piece have gotten cracks from just playing. For example, One of the joints used in Skirmix's hip, has cracked just from posing it a few times a week... Many other of my ball joints from bionicle era have cracked already, since it is the ball socket that gets ruined, they become unusable.

As I have been focusing more on the minifig side for years and haven't build extensively other than the initial build of a bought set, I don't have any broken bricks. I haven't noticed any stress fractures either, except for one white brick that fits in a new Kingdom's white horse. I don't know if it came with the set to use when the horse isn't wearing a saddle, or if I pulled it from my collection.

As for Bionicle, I cringe every time I pull apart the ball and sockets. It sounds like a crack every time. Nothing has broken so far, but I can't help but feel like the next one will be the break. And this is coming from someone who has confidence in Lego product quality.

In my 20+ years of collecting (even in the dark ages I bought a set here and there), the only problems I've had with quality have been discoloring and loose minifig joints. My brother and I were rough Texas boys with our toys, so Lego vehicles found their way outside in the elements often. We broke some pieces, but it was from hard wear and tear and mean cousins! :hmpf_bad:

As for the minifigs, I am constantly exchanging body parts. I have noticed that most of my 80's and early 90's torsos have loose arm holes. Many of the legs from that time period are also loose; again, probably from constant switching. I can live with that because that's not so much a quality issue. I mean, they can't last forever if you play with them enough. One thing I just thought of: some arms (it always seems to be the white of light grey ones) crack from the hand to the elbow. I guess it's from switching in different colored hands, but it only seems to be those particular colors.

In defense of China (hee, hee), I think the new minifig series aren't that bad. The difference is noticeable, but I haven't had any problems yet. Where some people have complained in other threads about the legs being too loose, I've found them particularly hard to pull apart. I actually gave up on pulling the legs off a leg assembly from one of the new ninjas and dug up an older pair of legs to use. I was impressed as I am a very strong individual. :laugh: I guess smell doesn't loosen lego like the old story goes! :sceptic:

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What do you think about the two dark red colour? Corse, we know just one, but we can see two types: a lighter and a darker one. I think it is a colour quality problem of lego elements. :hmpf_bad: . I prefer the dark ones, but For example the 1x2x5 Dark red brick's colour is awful, isn't it? :wacko:

I have seen this problem in the new pearl gold elements too (not the chrome ones)

You can see the two types of the one dark red colour on this picture:

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/borda/MyTown/2008/RailwayStation/drts05.jpg

(a hungarian AFOL's creation :sadnew: )

I hope you can understand me :blush:

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What do you think about the two dark red colour? Corse, we know just one, but we can see two types: a lighter and a darker one. I think it is a colour quality problem of lego elements. :hmpf_bad: . I prefer the dark ones, but For example the 1x2x5 Dark red brick's colour is awful, isn't it? :wacko:

I have seen this problem in the new pearl gold elements too (not the chrome ones)

You can see the two types of the one dark red colour on this picture:

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/borda/MyTown/2008/RailwayStation/drts05.jpg

(a hungarian AFOL's creation :sadnew: )

I hope you can understand me :blush:

It's a common issue across multiple colours. In my own collection, I mainly see it in orange and brown, while Clone 'O Patra hit it while reviewing Toy Story's Army Men set:

4192700303_1bc8f7b2c3_o.jpg

It gets talked about a lot but there doesn't seem to be much that can be done about it.

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That's just wrong.

I think that the only thing we could do is to stop buying LEGO until this gets fixed. Good luck with THAT :).

Edited by vexorian

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That jeep looks awful. I've got two of those sets and the colour variation in the greens is nowhere near that bad. The curved slope bricks look ever so slightly different, but only up close if you're looking very carefully.

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I have the same issues on the Army Men jeep, but it's not quite so extreme. That 1x2 handle plate looks horrible, although I think the camera flash in that picture is making it look worse than it really is.

/\

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That's just wrong.

I think that the only thing we could do is to stop buying LEGO until this gets fixed. Good luck with THAT :).

I have generally cut down on my Lego set purchases since 2007 and only buy large sets under some kind of discount these days (typically the ones at Brickfair). The bad quality is something I take into account when deciding whether a given set is worth buying or not. A set today has to have better design and a higher parts-to-price ratio than it did 10 years ago for me to buy it.

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I've got a few comments:

1. I've heard lots of complaints about the colour quality for Army Men on Patrol, but I'm happy to report that the greens in my copy that I got a couple of weeks ago are flawless. No variation is the green across the different types of parts.

2. I picked up a 7938 Passenger train a week and a half ago and noticed that the red 1x1 bricks looked horrible. There were about three shades of red ranging from nearly translucent, to kind of sickly pinkish red. The other red parts in the set looked fantastic though.

3. I can't believe that I'm complaining about clutching power being too strong (especially in this day of age), but here I go. I got my Pig Farm and Tractor today, and I'm very happy with the quality of most of the parts, but I found that the trans-clear cheese slopes had ridiculously strong clutching power. After attaching the slopes to the appropriate pieces, I attempted to align them better but they would not budge. Usually cheese slopes stick a little bit when you first attach them, but once you rotate them a bit then can easily be adjusted or removed. These trans-clear ones however could not be rotated or removed by hand. I eventually had to use a pair of pliers to separate the cheese slopes.

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3. I can't believe that I'm complaining about clutching power being too strong (especially in this day of age), but here I go. I got my Pig Farm and Tractor today, and I'm very happy with the quality of most of the parts, but I found that the trans-clear cheese slopes had ridiculously strong clutching power. After attaching the slopes to the appropriate pieces, I attempted to align them better but they would not budge. Usually cheese slopes stick a little bit when you first attach them, but once you rotate them a bit then can easily be adjusted or removed. These trans-clear ones however could not be rotated or removed by hand. I eventually had to use a pair of pliers to separate the cheese slopes.

I have the same set but haven't had that problem, so it's not that wide spread.

Good to hear about your good greens in the Army men jeep, that's more or less

the same as mine.

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I got a 5984 and 5985 a few days ago. The set designs are excellent but the whites are all over the place, even among pieces of the same type. The white 1x2 plates in 5984 came in about 4 different varieties, ranging from the deep, rich white of the 1990s to the translucent, Megablok-style white of 2007. All of them had the semicircular markings on the bottom, indicating that they had all been produced after 2007 and were not just leftovers from earlier production batches.

3. I can't believe that I'm complaining about clutching power being too strong (especially in this day of age), but here I go. I got my Pig Farm and Tractor today, and I'm very happy with the quality of most of the parts, but I found that the trans-clear cheese slopes had ridiculously strong clutching power. After attaching the slopes to the appropriate pieces, I attempted to align them better but they would not budge. Usually cheese slopes stick a little bit when you first attach them, but once you rotate them a bit then can easily be adjusted or removed. These trans-clear ones however could not be rotated or removed by hand. I eventually had to use a pair of pliers to separate the cheese slopes.

Although most bricks have a weak grip these days, there are definitely some exceptions like this piece. I think the older transparent cheese slopes have a much more firm grip than current ones.

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You already mentioned the Code Pilot was vulnerable. I think the Mini-motor included in that set suffers from breakdowns as well. I could get mine going with pliers, but after some years of not using it I had the same problem. When I was able to get it in motion again, it's performance was very weak, almost useless in 8479. I tried it with a normal battery box, but it didn't move at all. After this the inside smelled very bad.

On the internet I've read more people suffered problems with this motor. My own barcode truck was from 1997, so maybe only the first year(s) there were problems, According to Philo's site, a new motor with the same shape was released in 2002, which was different in the inside, so maybe this new version didn't have any problems

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I've heard of a few cases of problems with those motors too, but I recall it was actually the later 43362 motor that most people were complaining about. Mine are all the older 71427 variety and have been fine. (I have a 1997 copy of that set too)

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I picked up the 8096 Emperor Palpatine's Shuttle today but came across some bizarre pieces. My complaint is regarding the 6x12 wedge plates (both left and right variations). Half of them are the normal hard/shiny plastic that one would expect, but the other half have matte backs and feel softer. My best description as to how the backs are is by comparing them to large baseplates - not as dense or shiny as smaller plates. I'll see about taking some pics in the morning for archival purposes and posting them here.

Edit - I recently picked up the 10188 Death Star and had the same issue with the plates. Here are some pics:

The piece with the matte backing is on the left, the normal glossy one on the right.

black_plates.jpg

Again the bizarre piece is on the left and the normal on the right. This picture also allows us to see that the one on the left has round tubes, while the normal one has tubes that are more of an octagonal shape.

grey_plates.jpg

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I recently bough a 5893, and I am quite disappointed...

Built the main maodel, and when I disassembled it, I noticed cracks and wierd bird leg like markings on the side of bricks.

I havent had problems like this before, and I don't know what to do... takes the fun out of building :(

Did not take photos of all the broken parts..

imgp9505.jpg

imgp9503.jpg

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Thanks for posting these pictures.

I picked up the 8096 Emperor Palpatine's Shuttle today but came across some bizarre pieces. My complaint is regarding the 6x12 wedge plates (both left and right variations). Half of them are the normal hard/shiny plastic that one would expect, but the other half have matte backs and feel softer. My best description as to how the backs are is by comparing them to large baseplates - not as dense or shiny as smaller plates. I'll see about taking some pics in the morning for archival purposes and posting them here.

The matte wedge plate looks very strange, and just like Megabloks. :thumbdown: I haven't encountered any such pieces yet, but it can't be a one-off problem if all the left plates in the set are like that. It's possible that TLG has changed the material of those pieces for some reason, but still has old stock of the other sided plates that are being included in sets.

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I recently bough a 5893, and I am quite disappointed...

Built the main maodel, and when I disassembled it, I noticed cracks and wierd bird leg like markings on the side of bricks.

I havent had problems like this before, and I don't know what to do... takes the fun out of building :(

Did not take photos of all the broken parts..

I've noticed that "Bird leg" crack in a lot of my bricks. As far as I can tell it doesn't go all the way through, and I haven't had too many (1 or two, and admittedly they had been stored in less-than-ideal conditions) break from it. The curved parts and the plates seem to break a lot also....

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The matte wedge plate looks very strange, and just like Megabloks. :thumbdown: I haven't encountered any such pieces yet, but it can't be a one-off problem if all the left plates in the set are like that. It's possible that TLG has changed the material of those pieces for some reason, but still has old stock of the other sided plates that are being included in sets.

I've encountered those pieces on the TIE Defender 8087-1.gif.

Didn't know what to say... some were OK, some not. I didn't complain to LEGO because I figured it was just how they were doing it now... unlike the recent POTC Isla de Muerta fiasco, where they showed the new coins on the box and you got something completely different, there was really no way to complain about "false advertising."

I also figured they are concentrating more on the "visible" or "appearance" side and cutting corners on the backs... obviously a terrible approach, if true, when you consider how the piece is used to construct the TIE Defender "wings," and that you never know now people will use the part.

I need to learn to complain more.

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Thanks for posting these pictures.

The matte wedge plate looks very strange, and just like Megabloks. :thumbdown: I haven't encountered any such pieces yet, but it can't be a one-off problem if all the left plates in the set are like that. It's possible that TLG has changed the material of those pieces for some reason, but still has old stock of the other sided plates that are being included in sets.

It's not a difference in material-- it's almost certainly just a mold difference. A material difference would change the appearance of the part from all sides, not just the back. Something people often forget is that molds are responsible for the surface finish of a part as well as its shape. This is probably also part of the reason why collectible minifigure parts are less shiny than other minifigures-- as has been mentioned often, the collectible minifigures use almost exclusively new molds for their body parts.

Your other observation about TLG probably having a surplus of parts from the opposite, older mold which they're trying to get rid of is probably the correct reason for the inconsistency of "right" and "left" wings, though,

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Are the licensced minifigures different quality from official minifigures? I noticed that the current katanas clips into ninjago hands effortlessly, but for my prince of persia minifigs, they have to be forced and always get scratched up.

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Half of them are the normal hard/shiny plastic that one would expect, but the other half have matte backs and feel softer.

I've noticed the same thing on a number of black 2x4 plates. The top and sides are glossy, the underside is not. It seems to be that the material has "frozen" differently on the topside and underside.

As long as you don't expose the underside as part of your MOC that's OK, but otherwise, it's a major bummer.

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I apologize for a bit of thread necromancy but I have have a Huge issue with quality. Has anyone noticed that their minifigures crack on the sides over time? A good portion of my clones are now cracking and I just want to know why this is. Thanks guys!

Heres an example-

5959315117_38f98a8c0a.jpg

Euro 034 by JPS97, on Flickr

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I am just curious, do you take them apart a lot? You know play with them in wargames etc?

Are they in the sun a lot?

I think it is odd they are cracking like that. I am sorry for your collection having that issue. :sad:

--

Edited by Daniel's Dad

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I am just curious, do you take them apart a lot? You know play with them in wargames etc?

Are they in the sun a lot?

I think it is odd they are cracking like that. I am sorry for your collection having that issue. :sad:

--

Well thanks for getting back to me. Only a few mini figures have this problem right now thankfully. I have never taken any of my figures apart for anything. I set this up once in a while and mabye pose them really quick but thats it. They are only taken in the sun when i take them out, then I put them back in my closet when i'm done with em. Thanks again!

-JPS97

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3. I can't believe that I'm complaining about clutching power being too strong (especially in this day of age), but here I go. I got my Pig Farm and Tractor today, and I'm very happy with the quality of most of the parts, but I found that the trans-clear cheese slopes had ridiculously strong clutching power. After attaching the slopes to the appropriate pieces, I attempted to align them better but they would not budge. Usually cheese slopes stick a little bit when you first attach them, but once you rotate them a bit then can easily be adjusted or removed. These trans-clear ones however could not be rotated or removed by hand. I eventually had to use a pair of pliers to separate the cheese slopes.

So, this response is nearly a year late, but I notice no one else mentioned this: transparent pieces are made of a different kind of plastic (polycarbonate as opposed to ABS), which makes the pieces clutch a lot more strongly. (This became abundantly clear when I tried to separate the stack of seventeen 1x2 transparent plates in my Fallingwater set.)

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I have an issue with sticker quality. Quoting a post that I made a while ago in another thread, regarding set 3366 Satellite Launch Pad:

I bought this set a couple of weeks ago the first day I saw it on the shelves in my local toy store. After I built it it's been sitting on my table, and yesterday I noticed that the stickers that go on the sides of the two satellites are peeling off. It seems the edges don't want to stick to the round piece they're attached to, the stickers want to even out and not be bent. Anybody else have the same problem? If it's not just my set (which I suspect it isn't) then I have to say I'm very disappointed at TLC for making bad quality stickers. It's bad enough that they don't want to make printed parts, but if they can't make proper stickers, either, they're heading in a very wrong direction.

This is the sticker in question (this picture is from the review and the sticker is freshly applied so it hasn't started to peel yet):

3366_review_7.jpg

I don't know if this is a problem in other sets as well, but it's a STICKER, for crying out loud. It's designed to do one thing: Stick.

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I have an issue with sticker quality. Quoting a post that I made a while ago in another thread, regarding set 3366 Satellite Launch Pad:

This is the sticker in question (this picture is from the review and the sticker is freshly applied so it hasn't started to peel yet):

I don't know if this is a problem in other sets as well, but it's a STICKER, for crying out loud. It's designed to do one thing: Stick.

Yeah, stickers on 2x2 or 1x1 round parts usually don't like to stick. I generally approve of stickers in a lot of situations, but this is one of a few places where I wish LEGO would stop using stickers unless they can fix this problem.

The phrasing of your last sentence made my day, by the way. :classic: Couldn't have said it better myself.

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