Subject:
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Re: Variations in dark blue color.
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.color
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Date:
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Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:59:28 GMT
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Viewed:
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8210 times
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In lugnet.color, Ross Crawford wrote:
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What would you like LEGO Group to do about the quality? They no longer
manufacture plastic parts. They have contracted with a third party to
manufacture parts who would try to pass as many parts as they can. LEGO
might, by contract, be obliged to allow certain percentage of less than
acceptable parts to pass. Not to mention that parts are being made in 3
countries by companies not accustomed to LEGO’s high level of quality.
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This is misleading. The following is a statement from the LEGO Community
Development Team:
“Product safety and product quality are factors of the utmost concern for the
LEGO Group and have been so during our entire 75 year history. In order to
ensure product safety, we make sure that safety is in the design. This means
that our product safety experts are involved in the designing process. The
majority of all LEGO bricks are still produced in Denmark and more than 50%
of all LEGO owned mould machines are located in Billund, Denmark. The rest of
the LEGO owned mould machines are placed at external suppliers in Hungary and
Mexico.The final packaging of LEGO products is conducted in Denmark, Hungary,
Poland, Czech Republic or Mexico. At the moment the LEGO Company purchases
only approx. 3% of the entire element volume in China. E.g. some electronic
elements, most parts which are individually packaged in plastic bags and
textiles are purchased in China. Our products are tested both by ourselves
and our suppliers, and in some cases also by external auditors (this applies
to China). We use very special raw materials and we thoroughly control that
the received materials are in accordance with our specifications. Due to
legislation in EU we have to state on the box in which countries the
individual parts contained in the box are manufactured.” LEGO Community
Development Team – 30.01.2008
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Ross,
Thanks for this! I appreciate someone representing the truth of what’s going on,
and I admit my statement was over generalized. I would like to point out two
things though. Mold making and parts making are being moved out of Denmark. LEGO
Group stated this at the BrickFest PDF in 2007 in one of their presentations.
They have slowed this move for two reasons sales and profits are back up and
demand for parts makes moving production prohibitive at this point. The second
point I would like to make is that even if you had your production, regardless
of percentage, in China, Denmark, Czech Republic or wherever, color differences
will occur. Molding plastic in different climates with different suppliers and
different techniques will all cause these differences. The only way to prevent
these variation would be to mold in one factory at one location. Clearly, LEGO
Group is NOT doing this.
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I still question the assertions people make about reduced quality - I still
have many of the bricks I purchased in the late 60s and 70s, and they have
colour differences, the edges don’t line up exactly, and stacks of the same
number of bricks are different heights. I would contend that the quality is
NOT decreasing, it’s just that we, as adults, notice the differences much
more than we did as kids.
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I agree with you. I do not believe that quality is different than it has been in
the past or that it is getting worse. Color variations are small issues in my
book, SORRY to those that think otherwise. But the problem Mike H. mentioned
which I saw personnaly was not a failure in making a part but in manufacturing
and building the mold. Clearly, there was an orientation to the plate and
placing them in one direction caused the edges to line up. Orientating them in
the other direction, alternating, caused a noticeable hang over from part to
part. I cannot believe this was the result of the workers in Denmark, but since
the part came from a common mold, one they must have many copies of, I suspect
that it was manufactured out of Denmark by those of a third party company with
less experience in making LEGO part molds or it failed to be tested to LEGO
Groups high standards and it snuck by.
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I have a collection that is probably pretty average around here, 100-200K or
so, and I have only had:
And all parts were replaced without question by LEGO Australia. I think
that’s a pretty good record.
ROSCO
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Agreed. I am constantly amazed as I open set after set how consistent these sets
go together as planned and without issue. The only recent issue I had was a 7893
set I opened last year that had three engines (43121) instead of 4 and a strange
bionicle part of the same color. Clearly, the Bionicle part was in the bin of
parts when the machine counted it as the 4th engine. LEGO Group sent me an
engine and a nicely worded letter after a call to customer service. DOES ANY
OTHER COMPANY DO THIS?
And before everyone thinks Playmobile is so great quality wise. I have nephew
that received the same Pirate set for Christmas one year from two different
family members. Not only was the pirate ship a different color variation from
each set, but the people (figures) were shades of different color too. I dare
say that color variations go un-noticed because no one buys more than one set or
they just don’t care.
Todd
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Variations in dark blue color.
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| (...) This is misleading. The following is a statement from the LEGO Community Development Team: "Product safety and product quality are factors of the utmost concern for the LEGO Group and have been so during our entire 75 year history. In order to (...) (16 years ago, 12-Feb-08, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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