Lego Quality Reference

[fred67]

Reddish-Brown and Dark Red are notorious.

[AFOLguy1970]

I have been rebuilding a lot of sets since we moved and now have some space to display them.  Several broken parts have been noted, and the majority of them are indeed reddish-brown.  Instead of throwing them away, I now keep them in a plastic bag.  

[Capparezza]

On 7/9/2018 at 5:18 PM, Capparezza said:

I am currently not at home and cannot claim any replacement yet. But I will inspect the other clips when I'm back, just to make sure there are no whitespots which would indicate future problems with these parts. If you are interested how many replacements I get, I can report back?

Sorry for quoting myself, but as I recently had time to contact LEGO via their support homepage, I can now state the following:

- On the support page, you choose the set you need a replacement part for

- You can adjust the amount of parts you'd like to request (it would be logical to me that LEGO restricts it to the amount of parts used in this specific set, but haven't tested)

- LEGO will either get back to you with questions or ship you the requested amount of replacement parts

 

I have checked all the reddish-brown clips on the Ship-In-A-Bottle. So far I have 2 broken ones, the others show no sign of stress marks / white spots.

 

@jonwil So, as you might already have read here, indeed the brown parts seem to be susceptible to breaking.

[anothergol]

On 7/10/2018 at 9:14 PM, LEGO Historian said:

I don't have the time to read thru 9 years of info... but just a few things....1)  the whole UV light issue and yellowing of parts... every take a yellowed white brick and put it into a sunny window for a few months.  Guess what happens to it?  It turns pure white

Really? What'd be the logic? I've never read of this happening. Plus I've had dolls that have been yellowing behind a window in a room I wasn't really using, for enough years that they would have had the time to de-yellow already, but they didn't.

 

On 7/10/2018 at 9:14 PM, LEGO Historian said:

3) red and blue parts from before 2000... I have not seen them with color issues.  I have over 100,000 parts from the 1970s thru 1995... and see no color variances like we do with parts today with the colorization process happening just prior to molding.  From 1963-73 red and yellow parts were darker because of adding Cadmium to the red and yellow dyes, but not since.  Some color changes are more likely due to yellowing.  And of course prior to the 1970s.... Cellulose Acetate was used before ABS plastic, so the LEGO colors were different than with ABS. 

When I bricklink blue used parts, I always know I will end up with 2 very different blues. Can't be yellowing here, because it's always the same 2 blues, not lots of shades of it. There has definitely been a change in blue at some point, & obviously I haven't Bricklinked so many pre-73 parts.

 

[jonwil]

On 8/5/2018 at 1:58 AM, fred67 said:

Reddish-Brown and Dark Red are notorious.

I have dark red 1x1 round bricks that have suffered damage. And a pair of broken dark red wheel arches that I need to replace in my next Bricks & Pieces order.

 

[fred67]

@jonwil In my Fire Brigade, every single dark red 1x1 tile broke when I tried to apply it.  It frankly looked like they were too small, based on the way they were damaged (they all cracked in half from a corner to the opposite corner).

Now people will suggest I was somehow doing it wrong, that I'm just a ham-handed moron, and I might think the same of someone else if it weren't for the fact that I could go into my own collection of parts, pull out 19 red 1x1 tiles, and happily place them all without breaking a single one.

So there is definitely a quality control issue there.  It's difficult to think that it was a mold problem, despite the fact they seemed just a bit too small.  They definitely had to be more brittle, and perhaps weren't cooled properly.  I don't know - but I do know that it seems to be a particular problem with these colors.

Oh, and for the record, it's the one and only time TLG totally failed me - they said they would replace them (I sent them a link to the picture I had of the broken pieces); when I never received them (like a month later), I called back and they claimed the parts were on the way.  I never got them.  I never pursued it, as the time I wasted on the phone with them was worth more than the parts themselves.

 

[anothergol]

I just got Lego's new color in set 75215: medium bluish grey.

[Timoonn]

 

[zux]

It might be just colour inconsistency.

[JackStone]

Does anyone else ever have problems with 15712 or similar bricks? They tend to break real easily when I use them a couple of times. 2555 never had this problem and those bricks look a lot sturdier as well. I had to send Lego a couple of requests for replacement pieces for these in the last months. 

[Robin_IV]

On 8/11/2018 at 11:31 PM, anothergol said:

I just got Lego's new color in set 75215: medium bluish grey.

Depending on the BrickLink entry for this set the part shoud be Light Bluish Gray ->.

On 8/12/2018 at 1:59 PM, JackStone said:

Does anyone else ever have problems with 15712

I use them since years and I do have no issues. They only break at my case when they are old and brittle.

The yellowing effect itself has normally no effect on the quality of bricks. It's a chemical reaction of the colours in the material. But Bricks that lie in the sun evaporate plasticizer which leads to that they lose their flexibility and break easily. This process is happening over the time anyway but is heavily accelerated when exposed to the sun.

[Capparezza]

On 8/12/2018 at 1:59 PM, JackStone said:

Does anyone else ever have problems with 15712 or similar bricks? They tend to break real easily when I use them a couple of times. 2555 never had this problem and those bricks look a lot sturdier as well. I had to send Lego a couple of requests for replacement pieces for these in the last months. 

I'd wager they know about problems with that part by now. My 2 replacement clips for the Ship-In-A-Bottle arrived yesterday...

[anothergol]

4 hours ago, Robin_IV said:

Depending on the BrickLink entry for this set the part shoud be Light Bluish Gray ->.

..that was a joke

[Robin_IV]

1 hour ago, anothergol said:

..that was a joke

My originally reason to say that was because I thought you got a discolored brick in this set. I know that there is no colour medium bluish gray. -.- But I should have mentioned that. My fault

[anothergol]

22 minutes ago, Robin_IV said:

My originally reason to say that was because I thought you got a discolored brick in this set.

Oh I did (& only half were this dark, the others were proper LBG), but I know that Lego has no such official color

[Robin_IV]

Ah ok.

I heared some time ago in a video that it is usual in the brick modling process, when they change the colour from one mold that it could be that the new colour used is slightly different in the first hundreds molds until the old colour is completely out of the machine. Normally they try to throw away this output but of course there are always slipping some parts trough.

It seems that Lego is putting such parts in their smaller sets. I have bought two days ago the Set Pencil Pot. I had to recognize that I contained two different white tones. Especially the Brick 1 x 6 and the plate 1 x 6 where slightly darker. :D

[anothergol]

19 hours ago, Robin_IV said:

I heared some time ago in a video that it is usual in the brick modling process, when they change the colour from one mold that it could be that the new colour used is slightly different in the first hundreds

It normally should look stripy & wavy, though. Hard to imagine the newly injected plastic mixing so well with the old one.

No, from what I understand, Lego was using pre-colored granules before 2000, now they mix to create their own colors. They're simply sometimes mixing wrong. Wrong ratios.. or maybe their base colors aren't reliable.. or they simply don't mix well enough.

[Johnny1360]

I notice shading difference quite often, most recently with that stunt bi-plane on the 2x4 red slope pieces on the leading edge of the wings. It was very significant. Also seems to happen with the yellows and blues a lot. 

[Robin_IV]

17 hours ago, anothergol said:

Hard to imagine the newly injected plastic mixing so well with the old one.

Here are a few examples:

They call it "marbled bricks".

Heres the video I have talked about when they change the colour:

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

And heres another interesting vid from TLG itself. They also metion when they mix the colours.

 

15 hours ago, Johnny1360 said:

stunt bi-plane

Do you mean 31076?

Edited August 16, 2018 by Robin_IV

[Johnny1360]

Yes 31076 Daredevil Stunt Plane, it was so bad I actually swapped out pieces with one's in my bins. 

[vermontcathy]

On 7/9/2018 at 9:27 AM, Johnny1360 said:

Seems like half the time I read about broken LEGO elements, it's reddish-brown, makes me wonder why this color so often, what are they using as pigmentation? 

Several months ago I splurged and bought a NIB Medieval Market Village. A LOT of reddish-brown pieces felt very tight when putting them onto other bricks, and many cracked - I could hear it as I connected the bricks. Very sickening feeling, especially since this was such a splurge for me to buy. I'd say about 40 pieces cracked, almost all were reddish brown, but also ~8 out of the 10 dark red curved pieces making up the bed. Almost all had a footprint of 1x1 or 1x2, although when I recently made an alt build from the set, a 2x6 reddish brown plate cracked. Cracked isn't even an accurate word for it - in many cases, pieces broke off, like the whole side of a 1x2 plate. I started a chat with Lego CS, and at first they said they wouldn't replace pieces from sets bought on eBay and I said I'd never been asked in the past what store I bought sets at, when reporting a problem. I also said that I'd heard reddish brown was notorious for cracks, and they then agreed to replace the pieces. Luckily they are all still made & available, though CS and I had to track down some new/changed part numbers.

The set was new & sealed, but did smell a little odd. Not like smoke... but something. Everyone's home smells differently, I suppose.

Also, CS had me tell her the seal codes on the tape seals. Interestingly, each end of the box had different seal codes. On one end, it looked like one seal code was placed over another.

[Robin_IV]

I would never buy such sets on Ebay. There are so many frauds out there. I would not take that risk. It's not worth the money imo. And as we all know Lego uses 4 identical seals for their boxes. ^^

[vermontcathy]

4 minutes ago, Robin_IV said:

I would never buy such sets on Ebay. There are so many frauds out there. I would not take that risk. It's not worth the money imo. And as we all know Lego uses 4 identical seals for their boxes. ^^

Well since the set hasn't been sold at S@H for over 5 years, there's no other way to buy it - stores don't have it any more. Where would you buy it, if not eBay?

It's authentic Lego. I have no doubt whatsoever. And it would be a bit too detail-oriented for counterfeiters to copy Lego so closely that THEIR reddish brown bricks crack frequently, as well :)

Also, WRT different seal codes on either end of the box - it's not unheard of:

https://community.brickpicker.com/forums/topic/13669-different-seal-code-on-1-box/

 

[Robin_IV]

E.g. BrickLink.  On Bricklink there are many sellers who buy professionaly sets and resell them in the original brown Lego shipping box. So you have to buy sometimes at least two or three.

Like this one. He has a Min buy of 100 000 CZK (one hundred thousand) which are roughly 4 400 dollars.

I didn't mean other Brands witch frauds. I mean seller who sell sets as new when they aren't and reseal them or used but with old heavily bad parts (like in your example) or parts which he has added from other sources and not the original set which could be even older and worse. If he would take care of parts and store them accurately it would not be such a disaster that bricks break like glass. And even then he must make it clear in the product information for the buyer that bricks might be like cookies.

[vermontcathy]

5 minutes ago, Robin_IV said:

I mean seller who sell sets as new when they aren't and reseal them or used but with old heavily bad parts (like in your example)

The pieces were in a sealed box, in sealed polybags. They weren't used parts. It seems like you're having trouble believing that 1) new pieces (though manufactured 6 or 7 years ago, and sealed in a box for that time) can break upon first use, and that 2) a box can have a different set of seal codes on one end, and it's still new & sealed - that it came from Lego like that. (here's another thread that talks about the double tape seals: https://community.brickpicker.com/forums/topic/3530-questions-about-box-damage-and-tape-seals/?do=findComment&comment=519468).

Now, it is possible that some other aspect of how the set was stored contributed to the pieces breaking - temperature, humidity, etc., esp. since it had a smell to it (not unpleasant.. maybe smelled like incense). But the colors that cracked were colors known for cracking. I believe the set was NIB and that it came from Lego with the different seals. 

And sorry, the set was enough of a splurge - I'm not going to buy "at least 2 or 3" of the set I want, so that I can get it in the sealed brown shipping box.