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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Tue, 12 Feb 2008 23:06:07 GMT
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Viewed:
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8264 times
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In lugnet.color, Ross Crawford wrote:
> 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.
It's dropping-- not by huge leaps and bounds as people might lead you to
believe, but it's dropping. But there's not much I can say other than "it's
worse than it was before". I compare elements molded in roughly 1999 to elements
molded today, and there's a difference.
The color variations are probably the worst offenders, though. The differences
in heights, etc, really don't seem that severe to me, although I can tell the
difference when I'm looking for them. The color variants are bad though.
Sometimes individual elements are darker on one side than on the other.
With dark green, for instance, I bought a bunch of 1x4? bricks from my local
PAB, and built a wall out of them. It was interesting because the bricks formed
a very distinct pattern of variation, where all the lower right corners (or
left, whatever) were lighter than the bricks adjacent to them. Wasn't just one
or two, but the pattern repeated throughout the entire wall (maybe 80 bricks or
so).
> I have a collection that is probably pretty average around here, 100-200K or
> so, and I have only had:
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> * 2 <http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=102288 badly molded
> bricks>
> * 1 incorrectly packaged set
> * 1 <http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/x1144 part> that fitted loosely
I've had 12 sets containing errors with a ~540K collection.
They used to be amazingly good. But errors have increased in frequency so much
that I started needing to keep track. I used to know every single mistake I had
ever received in a Lego set, and could recite them for you instantly because
they were so memorable. Now I find I'm forgetting all the sets that I've
purchased that contained errors, so I've made a list that I'm maintaining.
This data isn't perfectly accurate with respect to *exactly* how many sets I've
purchased per year (some of these were used when I bought them, so they weren't
MISB), but it's increasingly accurate until you get to about 1996, after which
point I'm not sure I've ever bought a used set, so it should be perfectly
accurate for my collection. Anyway, ignoring the stuff I *know* isn't valid
(pre-1980):
Year - #Sets - #Mistakes - % Errors
1980 - 1 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1981 - 5 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1982 - 2 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1983 - 6 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1984 - 22 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1985 - 12 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1986 - 24 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1987 - 26 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1988 - 10 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1989 - 11 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1990 - 14 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1991 - 34 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1992 - 19 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1993 - 38 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1994 - 27 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1995 - 30 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1996 - 41 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1997 - 79 - 0 mistakes - 0%
1998 - 112 - 1 mistake - 0.89% (broken elements)
1999 - 173 - 2 mistakes - 1.15% (missing element, broken element)
2000 - 353 - 0 mistakes - 0%
2001 - 156 - 0 mistakes - 0%
2002 - 218 - 0 mistakes - 0%
2003 - 179 - 0 mistakes - 0%
2004 - 228 - 1 mistake - 0.44% (missing element)
2005 - 109 - 0 mistakes - 0%
2006 - 100 - 4 mistakes - 4% (missing elements)
2007 - 85 - 2 mistakes - 2.35% (missing elements)
2008 - 23 - 3 mistakes - 13.04% (missing elements, malformed element)
Technically, there were 6 sets I purchased with mistakes in 2001 (would make it
3.85% error rate), but these were all Guarded Inn's, which were initially
packaged with the incorrect horse (Indian printing on it instead of plain
white). That was an error, but not strictly a packing error, omission, or broken
element. Plus, I bought 4 of them *knowing* (and with Lego knowing) that they
contained the error, so it would definitely be wrong to count those 4 against
the track record. That'd bring it to 1.28% if you wanted to count those.
Not included are some elements that ... "broke" in normal assembly, such as some
2003 1x2 tiles that had a hairline fracture down the short end when being
assembled onto hollow studded elements. I've noticed this a few times since, but
it's so difficult to see that I haven't really kept track of these sorts of
problems.
I also recall that a friend of mine received an incorrect element in a 1987
(could've sworn it was 1988) copy of the 6990 Monorail Transport System. At the
time, I was amazed at hearing this because I had nearly 100 sets total, and had
never had an error.
DaveE
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Variations in dark blue color.
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| (...) I believe I read somewhere that the ABS pellets are now transparent, and color is injected during the moulding process? Whereas before, the pellets came colored prior to being used. I could be wrong though. But as for the color variations that (...) (17 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
| | | Re: Variations in dark blue color.
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| ::snip:: (...) ::snip:: I'm sure that packing errors are devastating to kids (who start a model but can't complete it), but I don't mind so much, in light of how I received at least 2 bags of extra parts with my new Town Plan! It seems that (...) (17 years ago, 13-Feb-08, to lugnet.color)
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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 (...) (17 years ago, 12-Feb-08, to lugnet.color, FTX)
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