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Subject: 
Re: A good LEGO anecdote, and a bad one (A warning about buying Monster Studios sets)
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.general
Date: 
Tue, 27 Aug 2002 20:39:05 GMT
Viewed: 
483 times
  
In lugnet.general, A. Mark Wilburn writes:

Right after I built the lovely Ep II Speeder chase set, I wanted to crack
open the Dracula set and see the figs "in the brick". But there weren't any.
In fact, more than half the pieces were missing in it; All the minifigs, all
but 2 pieces of the cart. No coffin. Didn't even have all the pieces for the
3 structures in the set. It came with 3 polybags, all burst and leaking
pieces. The box itself was *sealed*... it's one of the newer boxes where you
have to rip along perforations and basically damage the box in order to open
it, so it's not as if it could be re-sealed. It had never been opened; from
the looks of it the bags inside burst before they were put in so all the
pieces leaked out.

I took it back to Zellers, telling them this was clearly LEGO's fault and
not theirs. They still took it back, and let me swap for another copy of the
set. I could've dealt with LEGO directly, but I wanted my vampire now and
didn't want to wait 6-8 weeks.

In 27 years of collecting LEGO, I'd purchased *one* set that was missing one
piece (UCS X-Wing)... and that was missing such a common piece it wasn't
worth bothering LEGO about (I have tons of 3 long dark grey axels with
hollow stud on the end). One piece missing out of hundreds of sets over that
time span. (I did watch a friend open up a Blacktron Battrax when we both
bought them waaay back in '89, and he was missing a 3x1 30 degree slope. But
his Battrax also came with a lot of spare 1x1 black plates... enough for him
to approximate the missing slope. My Battrax was complete though).

But missing all the major pieces, and I think about half the pieces overal?
In a sealed set? I was so frustrated the night I opened the Vampire's Crypt
set that I had to build the Spider-man studios set just to see if everything
was there (especially Spidey himself). Like the Speeder chase set, the
Spider-man set was complete.

That's when I realized the Vampire Crypt set was part of the newest slate of
releases... is this the level of quality control we can expect from LEGO
now?!??!?!

I had a similar experience a couple of weeks ago. I was purchasing a blue
soccer bus at KB. The box seemed kind of light, but it was the last one on
the shelf, and it was sealed.

The guy at the checkout counter noticed the lightness and asked if I wanted
to open it up - I agreed that was probably a good idea. When we got it open,
the box was nearly empty! Probably 80% of the pieces were NOT THERE.

Needless to say, I didn't make the purchase, but I agree - something is
going on with TLC's QC.

- Paul



Message is in Reply To:
  A good LEGO anecdote, and a bad one (A warning about buying Monster Studios sets)
 
The Good: I was with some friends at Toys R Us, and they had one of the Hasbro Ep II Zam Wessel speeders on sale (it was complete and intact, but no packaging). It was only $4 (down from $18)... can't go wrong with that sort of discount, right? I'd (...) (22 years ago, 27-Aug-02, to lugnet.general)  

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