Instructions

[Mithrandir]

Yeah... maybe this is a topic for a new thread, but I've been kind of frustrated with Lego instruction manuals lately in general. Besides being printed kinda dark, their color printing is WAY off. This might not have been a problem when Lego only came in seven or eight colors. But now with all the varying shades of blue, light grey, dark grey, sand blue, sand green, etc...... often I find myself staring at a piece, brow furrowed, trying to figure out if it's a black or a grey piece I should be looking for.

I guess you could say it adds to the challenge or is part of the Lego experience.... but personally I think in this day and age it is just sloppy quality control.

Yeah, I've noticed some major problems with instructions lately:

1) The difference between black and grey. Sometimes I'm 50% through a model, run out of grey pieces, and wonder "what the heck?", and then realise that I should have been using Black. For some odd reason, a lot of instructions show grey to be DARKER than black! Argh!!!

2) Transparent orange vs transparent red. This is a major "ARGH!".

3) The new chrome pieces comming out are wonderful. Except when you're trying to figure out if they're telling you to use a chrome piece or a white piece or a clear piece. ARGH!!

4) I guess they tried fixing the black problem in the new Batman sets, but that ended up bad, because you can't even see the individual pieces in the instructions unless you're using a 900-watt bulb :-P

Just so this post doesn't appear to be 100% complaining, I'd like to congratulate Lego on putting part inventories in all the instructions lately. Bravo! :-)

[Kikuichimonji]

I've noticed the difference between darkbley and black is often near impossible to see. Very annoying...

Same story for the pearl colors. The Wookie Attack had small cones in pearl and grey. I thought my set was missing a pearl cone, only to fiind out (after like, 15 minutes) that I'd used a pearl one where I should've used a grey one...

[xwingyoda]

Very nice greviances Mithrandir ;-)

I would add a point though: sometimes, they don't tell you at the right time where to apply stickers. That is really annoying, so I disemble the part to apply it (easier than on the model itself ;-) ).

*yoda*

[natelite]

Well, I have problems when they use a dark background. For eg, the villians exoforce comes with dark background. I can hardly tell which brick they use much less the color. when i get older i can see myself having to use a magnifying glass just to see properly or maybe switch to use the online pdf version and bump it up 300%.

[xwingyoda]

The instructions on the Batmobile set are just unreadable !! Me eyes hurt now :-P

They should put the part needed in white with a legen or something !!

*yoda*

[captaintau]

Yes, lots of instructions have started to fox me. I think for me it started with the V-Wing. The background practically gave me an epileptic fit.

It seems in some sets, the "instrction" colours and "actual" colour vary. Some interpretation is needed, like "where the instructions show *this*, it means *this* . Yes, greys and blacks being the biggest problem. It never used to be like this. Have they starting using a new printing company?

[jonfett]

I have recently found it hard to distinguish between dark grey/black and light grey/white. The thing I hate in some instructions is when the building is focusing on a sub-construction part of the model for a few instructions and then they keep adding pieces to the main model at the same time.. I always miss these out! :mad:

Jon.