Dark Red Bricks

[Cylo]

Hi all,

A lot of my dark red bricks seem to be fragile and one even just split clean in half. I'm wondering about the reason of all of this and does it still happen with the bricks of the new sets?

[Johnny1360]

It is well documented in numerous other threads that Reddish-Brown pieces are more prone to breakage than others. 

[AmperZand]

18 minutes ago, JarJarBonks said:

A lot of my dark red bricks seem to be fragile and one even just split clean in half. I'm wondering about the reason of all of this and does it still happen with the bricks of the new sets?

When I modding a set a few years ago (see picture), I was going to use some dark red cheese slopes. Almost all of them split just by being put on a stud! In the end, I came up with a better design that didn't use any cheese slopes. But I wasn't particularly impressed with LEGO's quality on that occasion. I haven't had that problem with cheese slopes in any other colour.

   

[Cylo]

Just now, AmperZand said:

Almost all of them split just by being put on a stud!

That must be very frustrating!

[Mylenium]

It seems all sets after 2014 should no longer be affected by it. The way I understand it, it actually was an auxiliary substance used to control evenness of the pigment distribution that caused this and LEGO no longer are using it.

Mylenium

[Stash2Sixx]

So far, for me, Dark Red, Reddish Brown, and Pearl Gold have been the fragile ones.  I've heard that the problem has been resolved as well...time will tell.