12 replies to this topic

[gingerling1980]

Are these the only current items made by Lego that use cheap plastic?

[The Yellow Brick]

What minifigures are you talking about. Please be more specific on what your trying to ask us or we wont be able to help you .

[Sinner]

In any case it's in the wrong forum so I'll move this to general...

[Etzel]

Here we go again, "cheap plastic".  
It's slightly different, not necessarily worse quality (and we don't know if it's cheaper than the regular). It's used in various minifigs including Kingdoms Battle Packs, Magnets, Vintage Minifig Collection and the Collectible Minifig series.
Some people think the difference to other minifig parts are annoying and some don't.
If you want to avoid these kind of minifigs and are unsure if the set you're interested in contains those, I suggest you look up the review of the set here on Eurobricks and read through it. That information is important to some AFOLs and therefore it's almost always included in the review.

[SpiderSpaceman]

you guys always say "magnets"...

every magnet pack I've ever bought was a set quality batch.  the one fig out of like the 4 star wars packs I got that was a tiny bit "cheap" was chewbacca, and he was still fine.

now my cousin got the same pack a little later and the Vader was definitely a little off.  there i could see "ok the print's a little sloppy, here's the arm imprint thing"  but mine was full quality.

vintage figs and the clown collectible fig (loose leg) have a good bit to be desired - even the rest of the collectibles (though I'm very satisfied with them, I can't say there wasn't a momentary "eh they're not as hard and glossy ")


Oh to the original poster, I just bought the atlantis scorpion set.  that seems like the result of a bunch of bad batches and "see what you can make with all these low quality parts" - but the model makes up for it

Edited by SpiderSpaceman, 06 September 2010 - 07:15 PM.

[Derek]

Etzel, on 06 September 2010 - 01:35 PM, said:

Here we go again, "cheap plastic".  
It's slightly different, not necessarily worse quality (and we don't know if it's cheaper than the regular).

I'm sure Lego wouldn't spend more money to make a subpar quality product...

[Peppermint_M]

If I presented you with a brick minus any LEGO markings, you would decry it as a clone brand part. If you are presented with a 100% Lego Minifig with a Lego logo printed under the arm, you decry it for some confusing reason...

It is all the same idea, no fakes when the arm is branded.

[mikey]

Peppermint_M, on 06 September 2010 - 11:04 PM, said:

If I presented you with a brick minus any LEGO markings, you would decry it as a clone brand part. If you are presented with a 100% Lego Minifig with a Lego logo printed under the arm, you decry it for some confusing reason...

It is all the same idea, no fakes when the arm is branded.

The 'Collectable MiniFigure' are quite obviously manufactured with a different plastic, at no point has anyone described these as 'fake'.  Although many have noticed a "difference" when compared to the type found in sets.  The difference consists in the colouring and 'feel' of the plastic.  The position of a logo, or the lack of a neck mark, is irrelevant to the quality of the element.

[SpiderSpaceman]

Peppermint_M, on 06 September 2010 - 11:04 PM, said:

If I presented you with a brick minus any LEGO markings, you would decry it as a clone brand part. If you are presented with a 100% Lego Minifig with a Lego logo printed under the arm, you decry it for some confusing reason...

It is all the same idea, no fakes when the arm is branded.

You know I'm not saying the arm marking is a problem.  I'm just trying to go with a factual approach.  the ones that are complained about are the ones with the markings.  I was only saying "there is a difference and I know it.  I'm familiar with both set minifigs and collectible minifigs, and the one's I've found in magnet sets have mostly been set figs, but not all"

If we're discussing quality we need to go with facts.  not just
Member A: It's not so good...
Member B, C, D, E: aw man.
Member F: it's good!
Members B, D: hooray, "A" was wrong!
then the secondhand discussers go present the "good/no good" as fact everywhere.

I mean if somebody had done a definite comparison, like  "The collectible figs feel like the minifig backpack material"  that would have helped me understand without my own experience.  I can't get that from everybody violently presenting opinion as fact.

My last post is a mix of opinion and fact. "arm markings are on the figs that use different plastic" is a fact

[Derek]

Peppermint_M, on 06 September 2010 - 11:04 PM, said:

If I presented you with a brick minus any LEGO markings, you would decry it as a clone brand part. If you are presented with a 100% Lego Minifig with a Lego logo printed under the arm, you decry it for some confusing reason...

It is all the same idea, no fakes when the arm is branded.

There should be no argument of weather or not the arm branding means "fake" Lego, in fact, it's because it's Lego is why it's so annoying. It's just annoying as longtime buyers of Lego to be given a lower quality plastic, especially in things as awesome as the collectible figures.

The thing is is that if it has the underarm printing, then it means it's the lower quality plastic, and NOT the shiny ABS that has given Lego it's outstanding quality for decades.

To be quite honest, if I didn't care about the physical quality of Lego bricks, I wouldn't mind Megabloks.

And that says a lot.

[Brickdoctor]

Derek, on 07 September 2010 - 04:00 PM, said:

There should be no argument of weather or not the arm branding means "fake" Lego, in fact, it's because it's Lego is why it's so annoying. It's just annoying as longtime buyers of Lego to be given a lower quality plastic, especially in things as awesome as the collectible figures.

The thing is is that if it has the underarm printing, then it means it's the lower quality plastic, and NOT the shiny ABS that has given Lego it's outstanding quality for decades.

To be quite honest, if I didn't care about the physical quality of Lego bricks, I wouldn't mind Megabloks.

And that says a lot.

Exactly. LEGO is still LEGO even if it's not made of the same stuff as original LEGO- we just don't like the fact that our LEGO is not as good as it used to be. Personally, the quality's not much of a problem to me. I don't buy the Kingdoms or Pirate Battlepacks, and my experiences with the Ewoks and Tauntauns are far from disgusted or annoyed. A couple years ago when the whole 'China Manufacturing' thing started up, it was a problem, but nowadays, everyone complains about the quality of Chinese made magnets and BPs, when, in fact, they usually don't even see the 'Components made in ... China' statement on the set boxes.

[Aanchir]

Derek, on 07 September 2010 - 04:00 PM, said:

There should be no argument of weather or not the arm branding means "fake" Lego, in fact, it's because it's Lego is why it's so annoying. It's just annoying as longtime buyers of Lego to be given a lower quality plastic, especially in things as awesome as the collectible figures.

The thing is is that if it has the underarm printing, then it means it's the lower quality plastic, and NOT the shiny ABS that has given Lego it's outstanding quality for decades.

To be quite honest, if I didn't care about the physical quality of Lego bricks, I wouldn't mind Megabloks.

And that says a lot.

Actually, even though so far the arm molding is present on sets from the Chinese facility (which happen to have the allegedly "cheaper" plastic), LEGO has stated that they'll be transitioning to producing only the ones with the arm molding in the near future. The Chinese facility just seems to have the most up-to-date molds, the same way they have the most advanced printing (all the complex parts like the Rock Monsters, Toy Story fig heads, Space Police alien heads, and Atlantis mutant warrior parts seem to come from the China facility).

I haven't owned any of the parts with supposedly lower quality (I say "supposedly" because while it's obvious the parts are different, it's a matter of opinion whether they're actually worse), but to be perfectly honest I think it's partly hype. Yes, they look and feel a bit different than other LEGO parts. But that's been a problem plenty of times before LEGO even began Chinese production (trust me, whenever a quality issue surfaced in the BIONICLE fan community noobs would immediately assume that it was because "LEGO is produced in China"-- somehow assuming that Chinese production was an adequate explanation for any and all quality errors).

Notably, when I first received this set in 2005, the parts within the set were ridiculously inconsistent. One could easily separate the yellows, whites, reds, and some other colors into two distinct groups based on which were "milkier" and which were more solid and glossy. So the problem clearly didn't start with Chinese production. It's possible that it's just because the Chinese facility is the newest, and that the problem will go away over time. But LEGO seems to pay attention to inconsistencies and try to amend them, so while it may take time it's not as though LEGO's decided to just "give up" on quality and consistency.

[JaseTJ]

The plastic really isn't lower quality, it just looks worse because it's more... see-through-ish. If that makes sense. So yeah, it's annoying, but hey, Legos are Legos.