Forestmen shield print quality

[jodawill]

I was looking at my forestmen shields the other day, and I noticed that the print quality is significantly poorer on some of them. I've included a photo below. The photo isn't the greatest, but when you see it in person, the one on the right looks like a dot matrix image, just like the old boxes. I know these shields were produced for both the Forestmen and Dark Forest themes. I'm not completely sure which one is older, or whether prints of both quality were produced at the same time.

Only one of my shields has a clear print, and I only have one Dark Forest set, so this makes me think that the original Forestmen theme might have included the poor ones. But I have a Lion Knights shield from the same time period, and the print is very sharp.

Does anyone know about the history of this part? When and why did they produce poor prints?

[SirBlake]

I’m sure it ranges like a lot of manufacturing does. Kind of like the “don’t buy a car that was built on a Friday” thing. I don’t have any dark forest stuff, but do have all of the original forestmen sets and the shields are crisp prints. I got them when they were new, so I know their origin. 

[natesroom]

it actually reminds me of when the print is worn and starts to fade also.

[jodawill]

2 minutes ago, natesroom said:

it actually reminds me of when the print is worn and starts to fade also.

Well, that could be also. Does it actually wear into a regular pattern? Maybe the material they used for the stamp held more ink in some spots?

[Something_Awesome]

7 hours ago, jodawill said:

I was looking at my forestmen shields the other day, and I noticed that the print quality is significantly poorer on some of them. I've included a photo below. The photo isn't the greatest, but when you see it in person, the one on the right looks like a dot matrix image, just like the old boxes. I know these shields were produced for both the Forestmen and Dark Forest themes. I'm not completely sure which one is older, or whether prints of both quality were produced at the same time.

Only one of my shields has a clear print, and I only have one Dark Forest set, so this makes me think that the original Forestmen theme might have included the poor ones. But I have a Lion Knights shield from the same time period, and the print is very sharp.

Does anyone know about the history of this part? When and why did they produce poor prints?

People get upset when I say this, but the factory in Mexico is the culprit. Jang on YouTube consistently says in his reviews how he never gets proper printing on the dome heads of his astromech droids. This is not the case with astromech droids that come from the European factories. I pointed this out to him and he said he was aware that this is nowhere near as big an issue with prints from Europe. If you want to see for yourself, watch early reviews of Star Wars sets (before release). The American reviewers are typically reviewing a set sourced from Europe (check the box art on the review to be sure it's European). If it's a European set, the astromech droid will have properly aligned printing. Then watch reviews post release where the set is from Mexico. The astromech's printing will be quite crooked.

This phenomenon is no different with Toyota. My Toyota was built in Japan. Compare it to a Toyota built in Mexico. Huge difference in QC.

Edited July 24, 2022 by Something_Awesome

[SirBlake]

Was there a factory in Mexico in 1989?

[Rattlebricks]

Speaking of different factory... What about dark red print on some of the forestmen torso? Some of them is dark red , some is normal red...  I suppose they're produced in different factory aswell?

Edited July 24, 2022 by Rattlebricks

[Cyberfounder]

Wolfpack also sufferd from this, some shield and torso prints are more clear than others. Even recent tthemes like Kingdoms have this problem, mostly in the chess sets.

There was a review about the kingdoms chess set that pointed this out very well.

 

[Ecclesiastes]

The new ones aren't that much better. I've already asked LEGO service to provide three new ones, bad printing on corners, discoloration and so on. Some friends of mine had the same issue. 

[GeoBrick]

6 hours ago, SirBlake said:

Was there a factory in Mexico in 1989?

According to this article, only since 2008.

[Something_Awesome]

13 hours ago, SirBlake said:

Was there a factory in Mexico in 1989?

Probably not. But still useful to know that the Mexico factory has more QC issues than the European ones.

[jodawill]

9 hours ago, Cyberfounder said:

Wolfpack also sufferd from this, some shield and torso prints are more clear than others. Even recent tthemes like Kingdoms have this problem, mostly in the chess sets.

There was a review about the kingdoms chess set that pointed this out very well.

 

That seems like a different issue to me. My camera wasn't able to pick up the details, but it doesn't look faded; it looks like it was printed with an injket printer. The image of made of a bunch of small dots (like a comic book) instead of being a crisp printing. Were the wolfpack shields dotted or were they just miscolored or faded?

7 hours ago, Ecclesiastes said:

The new ones aren't that much better. I've already asked LEGO service to provide three new ones, bad printing on corners, discoloration and so on. Some friends of mine had the same issue. 

That's too bad. I've opened two of the GWPs and all of my shields look great. Maybe I'm just lucky. Or maybe you are unlucky.

[SirBlake]

I went back and looked at each and every vintage forestmen shield I have, and sure enough, one of them has the same moire pattern on it. Almost like it’s low res. Your eyes must be a lot better than mine. Even with my reading glasses, it’s tough to see it and it’s surely not enough for it to bother me. 

[jodawill]

4 minutes ago, SirBlake said:

I went back and looked at each and every vintage forestmen shield I have, and sure enough, one of them has the same moire pattern on it. Almost like it’s low res. Your eyes must be a lot better than mine. Even with my reading glasses, it’s tough to see it and it’s surely not enough for it to bother me. 

Well, I'm near sighted, so it's very obvious to me. I did a double take just now though because I noticed that the graphics are actually different! Isn't the one on the left identical to the 2022 shield? I might have used the wrong one in the photo, but it appears to me that both of these are old brown.

[SirBlake]

7 minutes ago, jodawill said:

Well, I'm near sighted, so it's very obvious to me. I did a double take just now though because I noticed that the graphics are actually different! Isn't the one on the left identical to the 2022 shield? I might have used the wrong one in the photo, but it appears to me that both of these are old brown.

My new ones have a tiny black outline around the green field and the nose hole is different on the stag. 

[jodawill]

1 minute ago, SirBlake said:

My new ones have a tiny black outline around the green field and the nose hole is different on the stag. 

Yeah, I forgot about the outline. They are quite a bit different. Bricklink doesn't note any variances among the old shields, but to me, they appear to be printed with completely different equipment. I kind of wonder if the moire pattern was actually printed from digital equipment in the '90s and the original was clearer because it was made from a stamp. I can't think of any other explanation for this.

[SirBlake]

2 minutes ago, jodawill said:

Yeah, I forgot about the outline. They are quite a bit different. Bricklink doesn't note any variances among the old shields, but to me, they appear to be printed with completely different equipment. I kind of wonder if the moire pattern was actually printed from digital equipment in the '90s and the original was clearer because it was made from a stamp. I can't think of any other explanation for this.

My one shield that was wonky is on a vintage Forestmen’s Hideout and I have no reason to believe it has been swapped with a different one. I built it in 1988 and played with it, but I left it assembled and can’t see why I would’ve swapped those shields around. The newest vintage forestmen set I have is from 1990

I'm willing to bet it’s more likely an original production error, like from a printing plate that wasn’t properly saturated with color. The plate itself could have a subtle texture to it to aid in saturation, but run out of ink and that’s what you get. I’ve spent some time around printing presses, and that is a thing. Not sure how TLG did it back in the day, but on a press that does paper, the normal method includes starting the press and adjusting things until the print is perfect, and in the meantime you’re printing dozens/hundreds of less-than perfect units. That’s just overage that is accounted for in the process, and it’s up to somebody to weed out that first bit of bad printing. Human error could certainly lead to some of the bad stuff getting through. 

[jodawill]

21 hours ago, SirBlake said:

My one shield that was wonky is on a vintage Forestmen’s Hideout and I have no reason to believe it has been swapped with a different one. I built it in 1988 and played with it, but I left it assembled and can’t see why I would’ve swapped those shields around. The newest vintage forestmen set I have is from 1990

I'm willing to bet it’s more likely an original production error, like from a printing plate that wasn’t properly saturated with color. The plate itself could have a subtle texture to it to aid in saturation, but run out of ink and that’s what you get. I’ve spent some time around printing presses, and that is a thing. Not sure how TLG did it back in the day, but on a press that does paper, the normal method includes starting the press and adjusting things until the print is perfect, and in the meantime you’re printing dozens/hundreds of less-than perfect units. That’s just overage that is accounted for in the process, and it’s up to somebody to weed out that first bit of bad printing. Human error could certainly lead to some of the bad stuff getting through. 

That seems like a reasonable explanation. What do you think about the differences between the noses and mouth? Different plates?

[Triceron]

Same, I just checked and one of my shields is like that.

I'm not sure which it would be, but my guess would be it's from the Dark Forest Hemlock Stronghold since it's equipped on the mini from that set.  I have another Dark Forest set's shield, Bandit Ambush, and that one is fine.  I also have an original Forestmen shield from the Castle Mini pack which is fine too.

[SirBlake]

1 hour ago, jodawill said:

That seems like a reasonable explanation. What do you think about the differences between the noses and mouth? Different plates?

Could be that, could be the same plate that’s wearing out. 

[woodford86]

This reminds me of the archery targets, of the dozen or so I have probably half of them the middle ring is off center; the other half are perfectly aligned. They would have all come from Blacksmiths and 3/1 Castles purchased direct from Lego North America.

[iragm]

On 7/24/2022 at 2:16 AM, Rattlebricks said:

Speaking of different factory... What about dark red print on some of the forestmen torso? Some of them is dark red , some is normal red...  I suppose they're produced in different factory aswell?

I would love to get an answer to this.  I have about 20 of the red guys and on around half of them, the red is closer to dark brown.  On one of the bright red ones (one I have had since childhood), the red is a bit worn away and there's white underneath.  I wonder if there was supposed to be a coat of primer that was missed on the dark red ones?  I know nothing about printing, just curious why so many of my forestmen are like this.

[natesroom]

when you print red on green you have to have a spot white below. It looks like on some of those torso's they missed that white spot coat.

[SirBlake]

43 minutes ago, natesroom said:

when you print red on green you have to have a spot white below. It looks like on some of those torso's they missed that white spot coat.

Yup. Could have been a running change during production. 

[Rattlebricks]

I see some China seller selling the new version of the shield in large quantities, I wonder if its legit?