Minifig Quality

[Doctor Sinister]

Has anyone else had any problems with Minifig legs recently? Two sets I've bought this month contained Minifigs with legs that slide right off - without much (or sometimes any) assistance.

My "Mutt" character from a new IJ set has a left leg that seems to keep working itself off of its joint after only one or two bends of the hip.

Dr. S.

[Jipay]

I didn't have that problem with the few recent sets I purchased. Maybe it's time for you to call LEGO and get replacement parts ?

[Athos]

I haven't noticed it, but I haven't done much playing with many of the new figures recently.

Steve

[Flatfoot Thompsen]

That hasn't happened to me.

[alex54]

I've got the same prombel in the 2006 advent calendar. My city worker lost one of his leg when I put hime sit down. I called the consumer service and send me new legs and hips which work well!

[MacK]

Luckily, this hasn't happened to me (yet), but a few of the recent legs I've gotten weren't fully attached, there was a small gap between the legs and the middle part of the hip. I hope Lego quality improves soon .

[Darth_Legois]

No this has not happend to me (yet) only my older sets that i have with minifigs are doing this but only like 2-3 of them.

[zero1312]

No this has not happend to me (yet) only my older sets that i have with minifigs are doing this but only like 2-3 of them.

Yeah, a few of my older ones too, but that's going too happen anytime if you're playing regulary

with them.

[Zarkan]

Nope, haven't noticed a problem. And I constantly take my minifigs apart to make new ones, just as I do with any new sets I buy.

[Batbrick]

I have this problem with a few figs, one of the legs will slide off the attachment point gradually when turned.

Batbrick Away!

[MagPiesRUs]

I havn't noticed, although there has been a gap between the leg and the attachment part on a couple of my IJ Germans.

[JimBee]

i havent had this problem with any new sets/figs... but it has definatley happened to my old ones. it happens when take the hands from arms, arms from torso, and hips from legs. TLGs intention was for only the torso, legs, head, and hair to be separated, so the the parts stated above (especially the hands) get loose after changing tem so often. for example, on of my fig's hands got really loose, and now i cant touch it without the hand falling out.

[Lt. Veers]

I havn't noticed, although there has been a gap between the leg and the attachment part on a couple of my IJ Germans.

I noticed that on mine, too!

[Brickmaster]

This happens to me eventually after I take off my legs (to interchange hips to get desired color palette).

Eventually they just slide off so easy, from the hip's little 'bump' that keeps the legs on, the easiest solution I found was a *small* drop of glue, then once dried, then just move the leg, and it will be resistant again, or you can cut a little notch, forcing up some resistance when you sliced. I don't really suggest either of these methods however.

Best would be to just order some new ones, or use other ones.

[hollisbrick]

Yea this happened to my Indy MF in the bike chase. The legs seemed to be sliding off by itself But i will be getting the new smaller indy set soon so not to worry!

[concreteasflesh]

For me its been the 2008 line that has really grown in quality regarding appearance, theme and expression but has seemed to slip in quality of parts.

Ive bought recently 3 Impulse Knights and 2 of them have the loose leg problem. With little effort of wiggling they come right out.

I have a simple solution for the problem. Hungary. Since 2007 Ive heard and seen that Hungary has built and produced Lego parts and have a factory as well. Big Problem. I dont know how many Hungarians there are on this forum, but I know I am of direct decent, both my parents being Hungarian. I lived for 4 1/2 years in Budapest and I know that Hungarians are one of the biggest short cut, easy way out cultures in the world I have seen. So I would not be suprised at all if more faulty parts are being produced from the beautiful country. I think it would be wise to have the knowledge of what parts, pieces are being produced from which Lego factories and I think it would be a good issue solving step for the company.

[CP5670]

For me its been the 2008 line that has really grown in quality regarding appearance, theme and expression but has seemed to slip in quality of parts.

This has been going on for well over a year now. TLG is coming out with tons of great sets these days, but the crappy, megablok-like quality of many bricks is the main reason I've hardly bought any of them.

I haven't heard of Hungary as a production site for this stuff. Mexico and the Czech Republic have been brought up before. The bad part is not so much the factory locations as much as the fact that they're run by an entirely different company, Flextronics, who clearly doesn't have the same quality standards that TLG does. There was some report a month ago that TLG had taken notice and had plans to buy out Flextronics' facilities entirely, but I don't know if anything ever came of that.

I haven't had this issue with the minifigs specifically, but the Flextronics pieces in general don't connect together quite as firmly as the TLG ones, so it wouldn't surprise me.

I think it would be wise to have the knowledge of what parts, pieces are being produced from which Lego factories and I think it would be a good issue solving step for the company.

I've been keeping a mental list of such parts myself and avoid buying certain things off Bricklink unless the seller is mostly carrying parts from pre-2007 sets.

Edited May 4, 2008 by CP5670

[Svelte]

I haven't noticed any issue with legs, but in the recent Speed Racer sets and the Indy 4 sets, I have noticed an issue with minifig heads - with some of them (not all), once placed on the torso are fixed really, really tightly and became extremely difficult to turn or remove. Surprising as other ones in these sets work just fine.

[General Zen]

I have noticed some problems with the leg printing on my indiana jones figures. They look somewhat faded and printed at the wrong angle. However, I have noticed that minifigure legs are a lot more stiff. They can barely budge sometimes and take a while to break in. I can't complain though, it sounds a lot better than having them fall off!

[darkrebellion]

This happen to me the last year. I bought the minifig AT-ST and when I open and start building it I notice that the AT-ST pilot legs become to fell I leave this problem there and I am lucky and a friend give me the same set for my birthday and this time with good legs for the pilot .

Edited May 5, 2008 by darkrebellion

[AmperZand]

Here's something I posted over at CC a while back:

One of my classic dragons had a loose wing so I used a trick to stiffen the joint that I picked up from the Stikfas forum. I haven't found the trick mentioned here at CC so I thought I'd pass it on...

If you have a loose LEGO joint, separate the parts and apply a thin coat of varnish to one of the joint surfaces. Which surface, 'male' or 'female', depends on the size and type of the joint. For loose hands, for example, apply the varnish to the 'male' part; for wings, the 'female'. Allow the varnish to dry completely and gently re-assembe the joint, easing the component parts together. If the joint is still loose, carefully separate the parts again and apply another coat. Allow to dry and try again. Repeat the process as many times as necessary. One or two coats will usually do it.

Satin varnish is best as it's the closest match to the sheen of LEGO. But it doesn't make that much difference whether you use gloss, matt or satin as the inside of the joint is hidden anyway. My favourite brand is Humbrol - YMMV.

As for poor quality control, I haven't had any problems with legs but I have got some shields from the Castle line that were badly printed. The gold was slightly offset from the rest of the design.

I know that TLC tested production in China though it was on a small scale and the parts didn't go into circulation. TLC was so appalled by the lack of quality control that they pulled the plug on future manufacturing there.

[MagPiesRUs]

I haven't noticed any issue with legs, but in the recent Speed Racer sets and the Indy 4 sets, I have noticed an issue with minifig heads - with some of them (not all), once placed on the torso are fixed really, really tightly and became extremely difficult to turn or remove. Surprising as other ones in these sets work just fine.

This seems to be the case with all of my 2007/08 sets. It was especially hard to get the Dwarf heads off, with their beards and all. Lately I've been twisting the heads around on the torso neck to loosen them up before completely attaching them.

[Svelte]

As for poor quality control, I haven't had any problems with legs but I have got some shields from the Castle line that were badly printed. The gold was slightly offset from the rest of the design.

I've had a lot of shields and horse bardings with this problem with the new castle line. Same with the green dragon head in the Troll Warship. And the wizard's hat in the impulse set.

My question is - is a bad print job enough to request a replacement part from Lego? It's kind of annoying when you buy a set just to stock up on something like bardings and they come smudged or offset badly. On the other hand, I do shell out a fair amount of cash on Lego and so expect a certain standard of quality. I haven't asked for replacement parts because it seems a bit demanding, especially for something like an Impulse set, but what do people think? Are we entitled to expect 100% perfection? What's the threshold where we should complain if something is bad?

As for the heads issue TinyPiesRUs - thanks for the tip! Again it seems wrong that just turning the head on a minifig makes me a bit fearful I'm damaging it if it's really hard to get off. EDIT and OT: I just realised what you meant in my 7627 review thread about my 'new title'. I thought you meant becoming a citizen but now I see what you really meant. That's fab Thanks, whoever is responsible - I'm guessing Hinckley??

Edited May 6, 2008 by svelte_corps

[Axle]

Only to the Doctor in the new(2006) hospital has loose legs for me, but with my Captain Redbeard, his right arm is becoming loose, because of a crack, a 2005 Anikan of mines arm is very spinny, BB from the Life On Mars sets head is very spinny and lastly, the worst of all, my Baron Von Baron/Mr. Hates hook snapped!

Wow, a lot of instances, and only recentley a grey aviator cap the was stuck on one of my minifgs heads finnaly came off! It was on there for 5 years!

his head however, became scratched and the Docotr did not make it there in time to save him, because his legs fell off.

[Ralph_S]

I've had no problems whatsoever with any of the minifigs that I've bought. I rarely do anything with minifigs, so if one of them were to have a leg that wasn't properly attached, I probably would miss it. I did notice that getting the heads of a torso is pretty damn hard, but the solution really is not to press it down completely to its stop. Just a fraction of a millimeter less and it's no problem anymore.

The main quality issue that I see with LEGO is the colour constistency issue, but they're aware of it and the subject's probably been beaten to death.

A very bright note regarding minifigs, also mentioned by a few other posters, is their design. Back when I was a child and played with minifigs, they all still had the classic smiley face and there was one type of hair for male figs and two for females, available in brown, black and red (one of the female hair parts, anyway). Now look at the variety! I'm not a minifig collector by any means. I mainly consider them bits that also happen to be in the box that the parts that I really want came in, but I've got so many different faces and hair pieces and caps and hats and whatnot, that not two of them are the same. I built a few minifig scale MOCs a few months ago for the first time in at least a decade and much to my surprise I probably had more fun building the figures to go with then than I did with the rest of the MOCs.

Cheers,

Ralph

Edited May 6, 2008 by Ralph_S