Is it common to find a plastic bag torn open in a new set?

[nana]

I just opened two brand new set, 10257 Carousel Set and 10255 Assembly Square. Their boxes are in perfect shape and sealed well. Both of them have a plastic bag (numbered 5 and 6 respectively) already torn open. Many pieces came out and were scattered around in the box. Is this common nowadays?

This never happened to me before, but the last time I built a large set was 3 years ago. I am worried that these sets may be incomplete. Thanks.

Edited April 4, 2018 by nana

[deraven]

I seem to recall having that happen once with a set in the past... but that's over a few decades and hundreds of sets, so definitely not common.  Were these sets you're talking about from the same source or shipped/handled the same way?  If you haven't already dug deeper into them, I'd get all the loose pieces and whatever are left in those open bags out and run through each step for those bags in the instructions (just setting aside the pieces for each step, not building) to make sure everything is there.

If not, you might have something fishy going on... I'd look first to make sure you still have the minifigs.  I'm somewhat familiar with 10255 offhand and that last bag has the AFOL and baby, as well as a printed tile with a version of Cafe Corner which might be the unique elements someone would snatch, if any.

[Littleworlds]

This sounds quite dubious. It never happened to me and I would check the contents for missing pieces. Its usually Minifigs people are after and the creator expert sets don't really have rare ones, but you never know what people find valuable. I guess the boxes themselves looked unopened when you got them?

[Bricked1980]

This has never happened to me personally but I'm pretty sure I remember reading a review for Assembly Square a while ago where the reviewer mentioned one of the bags was open inside the box. I wonder if it could be an issue with these sets and the particular factory they use to produce them.

[Blondie-Wan]

I think it might have happened to me at some point over the years, but it definitely isn't common. That said, since you say their boxes "are in perfect shape and sealed well", I'm assuming it's something that happened at the factory. We all know that for all their virtues, LEGO isn't perfect, and if it's possible to get an occasional defective (or missing, or just plain wrong) part (or instruction booklet), I don't think it's flatly impossible to have some sort of fault with the bags. It does seem deeply strange that you'd have it happen with not one but two different sets, though, opened back-to-back.

How were the bags torn - were they clean separations of seams, or the plastic just tearing, or what?

[dr_spock]

Where did you obtain those two sets from? 

[Vindicare]

I’ll echo about missing parts/minifigures. I bought, what looked to be, a sealed 70909 Batcave Break-In. But all the minifigs & penguins were gone. The seals looked fine, I cut them open same as always. But upon closer inspection, they taped over them, misaligning ever so slightly. 

[nana]

21 hours ago, deraven said:

I seem to recall having that happen once with a set in the past... but that's over a few decades and hundreds of sets, so definitely not common.  Were these sets you're talking about from the same source or shipped/handled the same way?  If you haven't already dug deeper into them, I'd get all the loose pieces and whatever are left in those open bags out and run through each step for those bags in the instructions (just setting aside the pieces for each step, not building) to make sure everything is there.

If not, you might have something fishy going on... I'd look first to make sure you still have the minifigs.  I'm somewhat familiar with 10255 offhand and that last bag has the AFOL and baby, as well as a printed tile with a version of Cafe Corner which might be the unique elements someone would snatch, if any.

Thank you for your tips! Thanks everyone.

 It was super easy to check the open bag from 10257 because it mainly contains a few kinds of bricks of a large amount. It was relieved to find it was complete. I saw enough minifigure parts in other bags, too. As for 10255, it is not very easy because some kinds of bricks belong to more than one bags numbered 6. I don’t have time to check all bags numbered 6. I did see the AFOL, baby and that printed tile in other bags.

When I put bags from 10257 back to the box, another bag was broken and bricks fell out. To my surprise, I found more tiny cracks on that bag. No wonder the first bag was open in the box. I have built more than 10 modular buildings and many other big sets. This never happened to me before.  

The bag from 10255 is open in the middle. It looks to me the bag wasn’t sealed well in the factory. The glue isn’t at the right place to stick two pieces of plastic together.

I bought one set from Walmart. The other was from Amazon. Now I think none of these two bags was opened by humans. They were open in the box during handling and in different ways. I happened to buy these two sets with some defective bags. The chance is very small so I was worried at first.

 

 

Edited April 5, 2018 by nana

[deraven]

Glad to hear it sounds like your sets are complete.  If you want to go the extra mile, it might not hurt to send an email with that info to Lego so their quality control folks can take a look.  They'll probably want the location of the Walmart you bought from along with a production code from the boxes.

Happy building!  

[LEGO Historian]

I hate to even bring this up but.... what other surprises will some of you find in the distant future.... when you open what you thought were SEALED sets....  

[ks6349]

 

On 4/6/2018 at 4:43 AM, deraven said:

Glad to hear it sounds like your sets are complete.  If you want to go the extra mile, it might not hurt to send an email with that info to Lego so their quality control folks can take a look.  They'll probably want the location of the Walmart you bought from along with a production code from the boxes.

Happy building!  

Yes you are right. Every one of us should report to Lego whenever there is any problem in hope of pushing Lego to improve their quality control. Also to find out ways of preventing parts of new sets from being stolen and then it is resealed perfectly

[lego the hutt]

I recently received a tantive iv that i ordered from Shop at Home.  The outer shipping box was perfect but the lego box had creases and 2 of the bags were open inside.

I can't think of another time that the plastic bags were open inside the box but it has probably happened at least a couple times over the years...

[ks6349]

Report to Lego. Every single report is also an effort to change the world

Edited July 23, 2019 by ks6349