New Broken Lego Pieces

[ZeLuiz08]

First, I apologize because I don't write English very well.
I live in Brazil, a tropical country, where it is very hot most of the time, I collect Lego since I was 5, with my first lego having been the Harry Potter key chamber and the Philosopher's Stone, after that I bought several legos, i practically haven't stopped buying lego since then, besides when i was 8 years old i inherited my older cousin, his legos from the 80s and 90s, so i have legos from the last 40 years. And it is important to comment that he and I have always been very careful with everything we do (me even more).
I am currently 22 years old, I am a collector in general, not only lego, but lego has always been a hobby for me, I always liked to try to improve the new sets I bought using the pieces I already had, something extremely normal, already that this is the grace of lego. I am commenting this so that you know that my pieces have always been in constant use, and I have never seen anything break.
My pieces have always been stored in plastic boxes, plastic bags, some for some time in normal plastic bags.
But since 2018, several pieces of clip started to break over time, the point is that I realized that pieces from about 2010 onwards that started to break at the same time as the most recent pieces, for example a piece from 2010 that was used several times without breaking, broke along with one from 2016 that was used very few times. And when I refer to clip pieces, they are of different colors.
In 2018, Lego made a statement about the brown pieces that were breaking very easily, so I believed that they were also referring to all the pieces because many people were complaining about the clip pieces. At the end of 2018, lego launched a new line of Harry Potter legos, and since I’ve always been a huge fan of the saga, I’ve always loved lego and have a special affection for legos from Harry Potter, because it was my first lego, I I just needed this collection, and since then I've bought just about everything from it, I have Hogwarts complete.
Now to my unhappiness I realized that the pieces of clips from the 2018 Ford Anglia rear view mirrors are broken and one of the clips from the roof of Hagrid's cabin too, which cabin was launched last year.
What is impressive is that legos from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s are perfect, the ones that are breaking are the new ones. Until when will Lego ignore this?
OS: Today I realized that some gold pieces are breaking as much as the brown ones from before 2018.

[koalayummies]

1 hour ago, ZeLuiz08 said:

What is impressive is that legos from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s are perfect, the ones that are breaking are the new ones.

Those bricks are almost indestructible but the clutch power is a little too strong for today's safety considerations IMO, especially if they're left assembled for a long time. Some kids would just have too much trouble pulling them apart even with a separator and its been discussed here how TLG has adjusted the clutch power over the years to find a sweet spot between strength and removability. I used to pull pieces apart with my teeth as a kid in the early 90s, marred many a plate doing that and couldn't have been good for teeth even if they'd eventually fall out and be replaced.

That said I think the quality of the bricks today is much better than those older pieces; even if as an MOCer who regularly assembles and dissembles just about everything I occasionally damage a piece and toss it. Was just talking in another thread how certain colors from certain years seem a tad more fragile but admittedly I think all of my damaged pieces are user error.  Not saying that's the case with your pieces though as I have seen a number of pictures around the web of reddish brown clip pieces broken.

[ZeLuiz08]

@KoalayummiesThe point is that the clip pieces are breaking themselves just by leaving them assembled, and some pieces like the brown ones just fit in normally burst, I have a picture of the golden pieces, but I don't know how to post here.

[koalayummies]

32 minutes ago, ZeLuiz08 said:

@KoalayummiesThe point is that the clip pieces are breaking themselves just by leaving them assembled, and some pieces like the brown ones just fit in normally burst, I have a picture of the golden pieces, but I don't know how to post here.

Yeah so not even assembling/disassembly. Have you tried contacting Lego? I'm sure you could get replacements for free, I know it'll take time to get them but Lego has been fantastic with customer support in my experience. Sorry that's happening.

[ZeLuiz08]

2 minutes ago, koalayummies said:

Pois é, nem mesmo montagem / desmontagem. Você já tentou entrar em contato com a Lego? Tenho certeza de que você poderia obter substituições de graça, sei que levará tempo para obtê-las, mas o Lego tem sido fantástico com o suporte ao cliente em minha experiência. Desculpe, isso está acontecendo.

Lego sends pieces that break, but it doesn’t matter if they send pieces that will break too, as I said pieces released last year are breaking, and not every piece that lego has available, they need to solve the problem of once for all.

[MAB]

LEGO just sends replacements to deal with it. Most parts don't break but some will. Trying to correct the some that will break is probably impossible and so they just replace them if they break.

[Vindicare]

9 hours ago, ZeLuiz08 said:

Lego sends pieces that break, but it doesn’t matter if they send pieces that will break too, as I said pieces released last year are breaking, and not every piece that lego has available, they need to solve the problem of once for all.

It’s not an across the board problem. It could’ve been you got a bad batch(speaking of the light grey clips in ‘18 Anglia). I just checked mine & they’re fine. And I bought & built it day one & haven't disassembled it since. You’re safe ordering replacements. 

[ZeLuiz08]

There are several clip pieces from several sets from several years, if it were an isolated case I would be fine with that, I am not trying to discredit the lego, I am really sad about it and unsure of continuing to buy.

[Hagane87]

Your topic made me sign up because I have exactly the same issue.

I recently talked with Lego's customer service about this because the amount of broken clips (among other things) in sets from the last ten or so years became WAY too rampant despite not really playing with them much and having them mostly on display or in storage. It turns out that this IS a common and well known problem for Lego which they're already on that has nothing really to do with faulty batches, temperature changes or simply not handling the parts properly.

Apparently the issue is more of a mix of the clip's geometry and the used plastics which can't really handle the stress put onto the clip over time when connected. The nasty thing is that the cracks don't develop from one day to another but slowly start tearing the clip apart so even if it appears that you never had any cracked clips it doesn't mean that some of them aren't cracked - it just means that those hairline cracks are still small enough to not be visible and, for now, don't really make a difference in terms of clutch power.

Interestingly, digging through my older sets from the 90s and early 2000s I noticed that some pieces with clips like Aquazone armors and those 2x2 flag pieces part no.2335 actually WERE made of softer plastics that prevented or at least reduced the chance of cracking to the point that even now, 20+ years later, they're stil A-okay.

Another indication that it seems to be mainly plastics-related is that clips aren't the only pieces that develop those hairline cracks but also multiple other ones like 1-stud wide parts (even including stuff like part no.6005, 6091 and 92946), minifig forearms, heels and torso sides, Mixel sockets (for some reason this only seems to affect part no.14418, though ), the clips on the hinge base part no.3937 etc. do so, too. Probably the most baffling one I had was a simple 2x2 slope brick from the TLM2 spacemen set that cracked on the side.

The whole issue is even finding its way onto the boxart by now and you can see that the torso of the Nya figure on the box of the Ninjago Monastery Training set 70680 has a nasty crack on its side below the arm.

Edited November 14, 2020 by Hagane87

[ZeLuiz08]

@Hagane87 EXACTLY, I don't understand why Lego and so many people ignore these things.
I get very sad whenever I see a broken clip, because I don't know how many more will break too.