Color variations

[Rodion]

I loved Lego when I was a kid, but I started pursuing other hobbies when I was 12. After more than fifteen I have recently gotten into Lego again and one of the first things I noticed is that a few colors appear to come in several different shades. When I studied the parts for my Super Star Destroyer (10221) and the BrickLink orders that recently arrived I noticed several different shades of light bluish grey and dark bluish grey. They came straight out of the box, so I assume they haven't been exposed to sunlight, and I haven't accidentally mixed them up with old grey parts. I assume the batches of paint Lego uses are not all identical. How hard can it be to do a quality check on paint? I mean, the different is quite noticeable if you ask me. I don't recall this being an issue two decades ago. Then again, I was just a child at the time. Am I the only bothered by this? I'm actually considering replacing some parts via BrickLink (and then I will just have to hope that I will receive the proper shade)...

[Lego Otaku]

Starting in early 2000, LEGO stopped using pre-colored pellets and got one generic milky-white pellet plus a bunch of colored dyes so they could make whatever color they needed. This also had the side effect of inconsistent color variations. I've seen this in yellow and dark red as well.

Good luck replacing them, the newer colors (light bluish-grey, dark bluish-grey, "new" dark red, etc) were not available before the change.

[opn2]

Edited September 27, 2014 by opn2

[m0dulo]

I was interested in white pieces until I spent about 15 seconds at the PaB wall. There were definitely two different tints of white. I've bought about two big containers per week this summer and noticed variations among several hues, too.

[VintageLegoEra]

Me too...one of my new sealed set came with off-white color and not pure. I thought this is due to humidity or storage. I wrote to LEGO and they sent me all white parts and guess what, they too have these off-white color. So I concluded it is a new mold LEGO used.

[opn2]

Edited September 27, 2014 by opn2

[Modelmaker]

I worked in a plastic injection factory years ago (most boring job ever). we had to mix the white pellets with the coloured ones to get various shades. The coloured pellets where very strong so the average was around 50 white to one colour. The hoppers leading to the injection machines looked to be filled with mostly white with just a speckle of colour. But the problem was some of the colour pellets where slightly larger and heavier than the white ones and they used to rise in the hoppers and had to be remixed back in. If they where not remixed the part being made would get lighter and lighter until it turned white. I'm sure now a days the machines have better mixers in the hoppers but whenever I see my bricks not matching i automatically think "mix the hopper"

Btw the last parts i made in that factory where VHS tape bodies, so that'll give you a rough idea how long ago it was

Edited August 5, 2014 by Modelmaker

[VintageLegoEra]

I worked in a plastic injection factory years ago (most boring job ever). we had to mix the white pellets with the coloured ones to get various shades. The coloured pellets where very strong so the average was around 50 white to one colour. The hoppers leading to the injection machines looked to be filled with mostly white with just a speckle of colour. But the problem was some of the colour pellets where slightly larger and heavier than the white ones and they used to rise in the hoppers and had to be remixed back in. If they where not remixed the part being made would get lighter and lighter until it turned white. I'm sure now a days the machines have better mixers in the hoppers but whenever I see my bricks not matching i automatically think "mix the hopper"

Btw the last parts i made in that factory where VHS tape bodies, so that'll give you a rough idea how long ago it was

great info.

Thanks for that....

in my case,,,i noticed in one set,,i have 3 types of the white shades....there you go:

- the tile 1x1---more tan in color

- The tile 1x2--little better than 1x1 tile

- The 1x4 and 1x8 tiles---better than above..

most i am suffering is from the 1x1 tile....

so can you confirm these tiles were having the same issue with you?

regrdas

[Roger_Smith]

Never noticed it in white, but my Pet Shop has two very distinct shades of sand blue mixed together, and in Palace Cinema I got a couple of light bley clips that were actually somewhere between light bley and dark bley in color.

Doesn't really ink me, though, as color variations occur in nature aswell.

[Faefrost]

To quote one of my earlier TLDR posts on the QC slipping thread. (Just to avoid typing it all out again) The greater variation in color is not because of slipping QC. It is a small sacrifice deliberately made in support of a much broader and much more beneficial production innovation. This happens all the time in manufacturing. Yes something may not be exactly the same as it was. But the change is because the new process lets them do so much more. With greater flexibility, greater volume, and a broader more feature rich range of product.

Just to help slay one myth. There is often a difference between a business seeking to go cheap or cut costs. And a business innovating for efficiency. The change from pre colored pellets to the color injection system a few years back was not Lego seeking to reduce costs. At least not entirely and not on the front end. It was actually a massive capital expense. Like many production innovations it has some trade offs. Many many benefits, and a few negatives to weight against.

Yes with the new dye injection system color consistency between batches is not quite the 100% it used to be. There may be a hair more variation, most typically under really bright or specific lighting conditions. Yes this will bother some classic AFOLs who demand 100% perfect color matching. But for the rest of us, well guess what, the new system has had a huge impact on us, in a good way.

By streamlining the supply chain and giving themselves direct color control on the factory floor it means that color changes are much much easier in production. No longer do they have to fully redo a factory line to change color. No longer are their color options limited to the finite storage capacity of what colored pellets they have on hand. This means they can easily run smaller batches of more colors as needed. Look at classic sets and themes. Especially space. Notice how fairly rigid color pallets were within the theme? Part colors were produced in bulk and then used across the theme. Now contrast that with some modern themes. Look at Galaxy Squad or Chima. Notice how they no longer have the same color limitations. Color is used for identification, art direction and story, but you can have a much broader application. Instead of classic good = blue! grey trans yellow! bad = black! yellow trans red or similar! each character or clan or faction can now be carrying their own distinct color pallet within the same theme! during the same production and release cycle!

The new system also means that Lego does not need to stockpile parts as deep as they used to. They can now move to a more as needed production model. This actually benefits us in a number of ways. It keeps costs to us down, broadens the number and types of sets we see yearly. It allows stuff we never would have dreamed of in 1987. It allows more colors in a given set. This is all a good thing for us.

A little bit of the margin of color quality was decreased in order to permit a much more flexible system with strong benefits for everyone from Legos owners to the kids happily playing with the bricks, but no, "Quality" Must be slipping, because someone can see a minuscule difference between 2 yellow bricks under a bright light. It's a trade off. It's a deliberate trade off to our benefit. It's just like photography. Classic Kodak Kodachrome has a much better color saturation then any digital camera or image. Yet digital still overtook and displaced it because the overall benefits to the photographer were so much better than that one single data point or observer impression.

Your old daisy wheel printers provided a much sharper typeset than modern ink jets. The ink jets are 20% of the cost of the older ones. Faster. Quieter. And can do things never even dreamed of before like true color photo printing. But the Daisy wheels are better because they have a sharper letter K. They never should have rolled out or allowed the ink jets to go forward until they could produce a K as sharp as the Daisy Wheel. This is basically the sort if thing we are talking about here.

[opn2]

Edited September 27, 2014 by opn2

[dr_spock]

In my last Pick A Brick cup, I can see slight variation of light bley 1x4 bricks. Not as bad as the PAB cup of yellow 1x4s but it is still visible under the store lights. Opportunity to design a better color mixer for LEGO, anyone?

Daisy wheels are amateurs. IBM Selectric typewriter balls provided better print too and you can type on 5 part copies with 4 sheets of carbon paper in betweeen.