Tire material change

[CP5670]

I haven't seen this posted anywhere yet, so I figured I would start a thread on it. It looks like TLC has changed the material they use for small tires to something much better. I got a couple of the city sets from S@H yesterday, namely the recycle and cement trucks, and they both have a new wheel material that feels like the normal rubber used on larger Technic wheels, as opposed to the gummy and slightly sticky material they used in the past. The gummy wheels were the reason that many bricks that came packaged with them seemed to have an oily residue out of the box. This seems to have been a relatively recent change, since I got a few things late last year (the ambulance for example) and they still had the gummy wheels. The gummy substance has been an issue since 1997 and it's great to see that they have finally moved away from it. *y*

These were actually my first purchases among the 2007 City stuff and I was very impressed by the sets themselves. I used to think the late 80s to mid 90s were the best years for the city/town theme, but I think some of these new sets are better in almost every way and feel like they were designed by fans. Unfortunately, the brick quality is still a problem, probably more so than in the stuff I got a few months ago. As usual, many (but not all) of the white, yellow and red pieces look slightly translucent and faded, while blue, black and both blays all look fine. The red in particular looks like a distinctly different color from all my older red, more like a brownish red. I thought it was in fact a different color, but Peeron says it's supposed to be the normal red.

At least to me, it's really obvious which bricks were produced in TLC's Denmark facility and which ones were made by Flextronics, who evidently have no clue what they're doing with certain colors. :-P Another thread here said that TLC is buying Flextronics' Czech plant outright, which is good to see, but it has certainly taken them a long time to do anything about it. I don't know if or when we'll be seeing any positive effects from that move.

I was going to hold off buying this stuff until they had these issues sorted out but didn't want to risk having them discontinue anything (and couldn't resist getting the large crane and some other stuff they had on sale; the crane is still a good buy at $50 despite these issues). It's a real pity that there are all these quality problems going around these days. I would be buying many more of the current line of sets if I knew I was getting uniformly high quality bricks, which Lego used to have quite a reputation for. :-( The Technic bulldozer is one set I definitely want to pick up, but I don't want to pay full price on it if it's likely to contain the faded pieces.

I also bought a small amount of stuff from PAB and interestingly, those pieces all look great. Maybe that stuff is still coming out of TLC's own facilities.

Edited March 5, 2008 by CP5670

[kill will]

I also bought a small amount of stuff from PAB and interestingly, those pieces all look great. Maybe that stuff is still coming out of TLC's own facilities.

Yes, it is. If you look at the return adress label it's from denmark 8-

[hewkii9]

Well, this news is good, although I've never had a lot of sticky situations with these- most of my wheels are from X-Pods and one Dino Attack set. The Dino attack wheels felt kinda slimy at first, though.

[CP5670]

Yes, it is. If you look at the return adress label it's from denmark 8-