 | | Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| Hey all, Got a lovely selection of holiday loot thanks to my sweetie-pie, and after building the sets I have some impressions. The sets are: Mars Mission # 7695 MX-11 Astro Fighter Town City # 7991 Recycle Truck SpongeBob Squarepants # 3830 Bikini (...) (16 years ago, 30-Dec-07, to lugnet.reviews, FTX)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) ::snip:: You raise an interesting point about the box art on the Bikini Bottom Express: at what point can it be considered false advertising, since the included model so obviously deviates from that pictured? On boxes of cereal, for example, (...) (16 years ago, 31-Dec-07, to lugnet.reviews, lugnet.dear-lego, FTX)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) Indeed, they do! I raised this issue in a previous post when commenting on this set which I'd purchased: (URL) the picture, the front wheels are shown turned to the left, which is physically impossible as they are fixed on the model. I really (...) (16 years ago, 4-Jan-08, to lugnet.reviews, lugnet.dear-lego, FTX)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) One issue may be the application of orange paint on a different material. We all know LEGO elements are made of ABS. However, windows are not made of ABS, they are made of polycarbonate(PC). As PC and ABS are different materials, application (...) (16 years ago, 4-Jan-08, to lugnet.reviews, lugnet.dear-lego, FTX)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) The same "color issue" is visible on the grey (and presumably red although I dont own any of those) porthole pieces from the Santa Fe Super Chief set. (16 years ago, 4-Jan-08, to lugnet.reviews, lugnet.dear-lego)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) Perhaps it is due to Flextronics not having the quality control that Lego did. Why they moved production to Juarez Mexico is beyond me. Perhaps very cheap labor, less than $2.00 an hour might be the reason. Shades of overseas clothing sweat (...) (16 years ago, 5-Jan-08, to lugnet.reviews, lugnet.dear-lego, FTX)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) (Note that I don't know, and that I'm not wearing my Ambassador's hat here). I would guess that costs are a major consideration, and that the NAFTA has had a bearing on this - keep in mind that the USA is LEGO's biggest market. (...) Well, (...) (16 years ago, 5-Jan-08, to lugnet.reviews, lugnet.dear-lego, FTX)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) The USA is the largest market only in the sense that we barely buy more total product than Germany since the debut of the LEGO Star Wars line. Germany still has the highest per-capita sales by a massive margin, and the EU (which was comparably (...) (16 years ago, 5-Jan-08, to lugnet.reviews, lugnet.dear-lego, FTX)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) I live in El Paso and that is the wage in Juarez, or less. I would doubt that it is too international. Nothing is made in the US, Germany, England, New Zealand, or Australia. Though some things are made in China. I would say that the (...) (16 years ago, 5-Jan-08, to lugnet.reviews, lugnet.dear-lego, FTX)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) Well, they do... you provided a list above - "Components made in Denmark, Austria, Hungary, Mexico and the Czech Republic". Now, I'm guessing that the first two (at least) are not really cheap labour markets - but I could be wrong. (...) Well, (...) (16 years ago, 5-Jan-08, to lugnet.dear-lego, FTX)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) Remember that they were originally planning to move production to China. Reportedly there were two main considerations with abandoning that idea. The first was that there was an intense backlash concerning quality issues (which would only have (...) (16 years ago, 5-Jan-08, to lugnet.reviews, lugnet.dear-lego, FTX)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) Is it? I knew it couldn't possibly be ABS (due to the fact that natural ABS has a translucent milky-beige color, and clear ABS is supposed to be EXPENSIVE), but I'd always thought it was acrylic due to how easily the transparent parts used to (...) (16 years ago, 5-Jan-08, to lugnet.reviews, lugnet.dear-lego, FTX)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) Well, yes... that's why I called it the biggest market. (...) IIRC, LEGO regards the various EU countries as seperate markets. It certainly has different distribution strategies between them. But I could be wrong. Cheers Richie Dulin (Please (...) (16 years ago, 6-Jan-08, to lugnet.dear-lego, FTX)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) You are right. For example, S@H doesn't ship to the Czech Republic. (Is it a bureaucratical issue? Is it a trade-off for lower taxes?) The prices also differ among countries. (16 years ago, 6-Jan-08, to lugnet.dear-lego, FTX)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) That's all true, but the underlying fact is that they still sell more total volume to the EU than they do to all of North America, and between the US and Canada there is more geographical area involved. In other words, even though distribution (...) (16 years ago, 6-Jan-08, to lugnet.dear-lego, FTX)
| | | | | Re: Four sets reviewd, but only one good one, so be warned!
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| (...) Hungary has Flextronics Duplo operations. Not sure what they make for System sets. In the CR - printed parts, manual assembling and packaging Austria - I'm not 100% sure, but I think they make the plastic cans (and again, I think this is made (...) (16 years ago, 11-Jan-08, to lugnet.reviews, lugnet.dear-lego)
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