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When I came home from reading week one of the first things my younger brothers
did was tell me how ugly and blue the new dark gray was. They came and showed
me the new light gray on my brother’s mini imperial shuttle, and my brother had
already replaced the blue/gray “binocular guns” with older dark gray binoculars.
Adult Lego fans are not the only ones who will be disappointed with the colour
change, however they may be the only ones who will express their concerns
directly to TLC. Children who are upset by this change will likely only tell
their parents, who may respond by buying their kids something different for
Christmas next year, but will probably never pass the messag on to TLC.
Growing up I was always looking for small sets that contained the pieces I
needed to replace the ones I was missing from my other sets. Back then would
have been even more disappointed about the color change then than I am today.
At least now I have replaced all the missing pieces for most of my old sets, and
I can find the color of brick I want on ebay and bricklink (markets wich are not
available to kids). I have been playing with Lego for as long as I can
remember. I got my first castle for my 6th birthday and was completely
thrilled. After a few days I took it apart and began building other things with
the pieces. A couple years later I tried to rebuild it, my instructions had
fallen apart and most of the booklet had gone missing. I managed to reconstruct
the castle using only steps 1-6, 41 & 42, the box, and my memory. Once in a
while I would take a closer look at the box, and try to see if there was any
thing I had not built quite right. By the time the missing part of the
instructions was finally found, (about five years later) I had the entire castle
assembled correctly with the exception of about a handful of pieces. It was not
until last year that I was finally able to replace the last of the broken pieces
for that set. If a colour change had of occurred when I was younger I would
have been extremely upset, and would have probably lost all hope of replacing
the broken and missing parts from my favorite sets.
I realize that not all kids care whether the colours match as much as I did, (I
rarely ever built anything that did not have matching colours, and if I did it
would not stay together long). But it is the kids that do care about matching
colours who build modles that amaze other childeren and cause them to begin to
get into lego. Most of the kids I played with growing up were inspired to start
building and playing with lego after seeing my collection. Once I had a friend
follow me home from school just to see what lego can do. Kids who don’t care
about matching colours will be much more likely to use other brands anyways, as
they cost half as much.
As a fan of classic castle I do not like the new colours of gray because they
are too blue, and do not look as realistic as the older greys. However my main
concern is that they do not match the old pieces. If they were blueish all
along I don’t think any one would have been bothered by it. This change was a
terrible mistake, you are upseting (and in some cases losing) your biggest
customers, without any gain whatsoever. If anyone from TLC would have bothered
to look at ebay sales, they would have noticed that customers were not
dissatisfied with the old grey colours. Instead bulk auctions of a single
colour of bricks usually sell for twice as much when the colour is grey, (I
noticed this before the colour change was announced on bricklink).
I, and so many others have invested so much time and money into Lego collections
in the old colours. This change will make it verry dificult for us to expand
our collections. PLEASE BRING THE OLD LEGO COLOURS BACK! I would much rather
be able to get the peices I want from the local department store, reater than
having to pay much higher prices on bricklink and ebay to buy peices that are
compatable with the collection I have been Accumulating for almost my entire
life.
Sincerly:
Daniel Walker
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In lugnet.lego, Dan Walker wrote:
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As a fan of classic castle I do not like the new colours of gray because they
are too blue, and do not look as realistic as the older greys. However my
main concern is that they do not match the old pieces. If they were blueish
all along I don’t think any one would have been bothered by it.
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Not necessarily true. The entire LEGO color pallete leans well towards the warm
side of the spectrum, including colors that you wouldn’t immediately think of,
like green and white (this probably has something to do with the fact that
natural ABS is actually beige). The only colors that I can think of that don’t
lean at least a tiny bit in the warm direction are the various blues (not
counting teal/turquoise/aqua/whatever), black, violet, some of the silver
shades, and the new greys. Consequently, the new greys (esp. dark-grey) look
odd with almost every other color. And when a color can actually manage to
clash with white, you know something is seriously wrong with it.
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I think they're just refusing to admit that one of the reasons for the color change
is that they use recycled ABS now for some grey and black (as noted in various
articles on the web). Since they seem to LOVE the color blue (ever notice how much
blue is in tubs/buckets? For a couple years, well over half the plates in them were
blue), I propose that they found that the recycled dark "grey" was heavily tinted
blue, and they decided to pass it off as a choice, rather than something they were
forced into by the recycling process. I'm sure it's cheaper to just spend some time
making excuses for the color, rather than spending money on dyes to correct the
color shift.
Purple Dave wrote:
> In lugnet.lego, Dan Walker wrote:
> > As a fan of classic castle I do not like the new colours of gray because they
> > are too blue, and do not look as realistic as the older greys. However my
> > main concern is that they do not match the old pieces. If they were blueish
> > all along I don’t think any one would have been bothered by it.
>
> Not necessarily true. The entire LEGO color pallete leans well towards the warm
> side of the spectrum, including colors that you wouldn't immediately think of,
> like green and white (this probably has something to do with the fact that
> natural ABS is actually beige). The only colors that I can think of that don't
> lean at least a tiny bit in the warm direction are the various blues (not
> counting teal/turquoise/aqua/whatever), black, violet, some of the silver
> shades, and the new greys. Consequently, the new greys (esp. dark-grey) look
> odd with almost every other color. And when a color can actually manage to
> clash with white, you know something is seriously wrong with it.
--
Tom Stangl
*http://www.vfaq.com/
*DSM Visual FAQ home
*http://www.vfaq.net/
*Prius Visual FAQ Home
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Great conspiracy theory, but I think it would be too difficult in practice to
get the same amount of each color in each batch of recycled ABS - otherwise
you’d have variation in the new colors from batch to batch.
Oh, wait, haven’t we seen that in the purple in the Knight Bus?! You may be on
to something!
James Wilson
Dallas, TX
In lugnet.lego, Thomas Stangl wrote:
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I think they’re just refusing to admit that one of the reasons for the color
change is that they use recycled ABS now for some grey and black (as noted in
various articles on the web). Since they seem to LOVE the color blue (ever
notice how much blue is in tubs/buckets? For a couple years, well over half
the plates in them were blue), I propose that they found that the recycled
dark “grey” was heavily tinted blue, and they decided to pass it off as a
choice, rather than something they were forced into by the recycling process.
I’m sure it’s cheaper to just spend some time making excuses for the color,
rather than spending money on dyes to correct the color shift.
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--
Tom Stangl
*http://www.vfaq.com/
*DSM Visual FAQ home
*http://www.vfaq.net/
*Prius Visual FAQ Home
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In lugnet.lego, James Wilson wrote:
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Great conspiracy theory, but I think it would be too difficult in practice to
get the same amount of each color in each batch of recycled ABS - otherwise
you’d have variation in the new colors from batch to batch.
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It’s not as difficult as it sounds. Well, assuming your recycled material
maintains a consistent color (clearly, that’s not happening). Plastic colors
are minutely fine-tuned, so as long as you know the specific color of the batch
(a lot less difficult for LEGO bricks than the wide variety that might be seen
at an extrusion shop), and the weight of the total batch, you can plug those
numbers into an equation to figure out exactly how much of what colors to add to
the recycled material to make it match the color that you intend to recycle
into. Except black. That’s a lot simpler. Just add a bunch of carbon and call
it good. You’ll never see the old color through the black, and carbon has a
very consistent look.
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Oh, wait, haven’t we seen that in the purple in the Knight Bus?! You may be
on to something!
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If cross-color recycling is the heart of this problem, as they actually get
experience in doing so (assuming they realize there’s a problem), it should help
narrow the band of color variation, but it might never go away completely until
they figure out that the combination of replacement colors and inconsistent
colors is seriously hurting them. Truthfully, with the advances that have been
made in mold design (such as sprueless tooling), and the claims on how few parts
get rejected, there shouldn’t be a huge amount of material that actually needs
to get recycled. Unfortunately, the bulk of what there is will probably be the
flame-colored bricks that happen between color batches, which not only is
impossible to determine exactly how much of each color is involved, but it’s
also a lot harder to find a suitable color to recycle it into. Black is the
goto color, but there’s a limit to how much recycled plastic you can use before
the product gets brittle enough to crack under stress, and the molecular chains
in injection molded plastic are already shorter than they are for extruded
plastic, so you need to keep the recycled content lower than you would for
something that’s going to be sheet-formed, like the thin baseplates.
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Have you guys called the LEGO S@H service? I talked over half an hour with a
lady from LEGO and filed a complaint regarding the new colors. She said that
they knew of the situation but they didn't get many complaints. I think that if
more people call to complain about this issue, they might consider this a
serious issue and go back.
Also, I asked for them to replace my new colors with parts of the former color.
They of course said no, so I said I wouldn't buy any sets with the new colors
and asked for a complete list of the sets I want to avoid. Someone is supposed
to call me back with more information on this. I also think you should all do
the same. It's a bit 3vil, but if we flood them with such demands, they will be
overwelmed with pointless work to do just because they changed the colors and
they might see this as a bad thing for the company. A color change back to the
right colors would therefore be good for them.
I propose we work as a team on this issue. I know many (most?) people are upset
with this stupid decesion of changing our beloved grays and brown and it's time
we show some attitude to TLG.
Terry
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In lugnet.lego, Terry Prosper wrote:
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Have you guys called the LEGO S@H service? I talked over half an hour with a
lady from LEGO and filed a complaint regarding the new colors. She said that
they knew of the situation but they didn’t get many complaints. I think that
if more people call to complain about this issue, they might consider this a
serious issue and go back.
Also, I asked for them to replace my new colors with parts of the former
color. They of course said no, so I said I wouldn’t buy any sets with the new
colors and asked for a complete list of the sets I want to avoid. Someone is
supposed to call me back with more information on this. I also think you
should all do the same. It’s a bit 3vil, but if we flood them with such
demands, they will be overwelmed with pointless work to do just because they
changed the colors and they might see this as a bad thing for the company. A
color change back to the right colors would therefore be good for them.
I propose we work as a team on this issue. I know many (most?) people are
upset with this stupid decesion of changing our beloved grays and brown and
it’s time we show some attitude to TLG.
Terry
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Yep, you put it to the man, dude. Yah! 30 minutes of pure righteous “3vil”
fury where it will do the most good: Customer Service!
Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! (devil fingers) They are keeping you down,
brother! They are keeping your children down, my brother. They are keeping
all the children down all my brothers!
Attica! Attica! Attica! Attica! Attica!
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