Cracked / Broken Minifigures!!! Ooooh the absolute Horror!!!

TheBigLegoski

Ooooh NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! The utter utter agony, the horror!!! Why oooh Why!?!?!?!

To my great dismay I noticed that several of my precious minifig's suffer from cracks / fissures in their arms. These cracks /fissures in all minifig's run from the underside of the wrist up to the elbow of their arms.

I handle all my minifig's with the utmost care, very gingerly, in a most delicate manner. Non of them have ever been played with by kids. All of these minifig's I refer to, which suffer from this defect are not older then 15 months, as I only started collecting Lego as an adult in July 2010. All of them were bought new as part of Lego sets, either in local stores, directly from Lego.com, or in mint and sealed condition in sets from Ebay / internet stores (such as Amazon.co.uk), in addition I have ordered some loose NEW minifig parts directly from Lego.com a couple of times.

All my minifig's only figure/pose in the sets they come with when I build them. or alternatively are posed and placed in MOC's, in which I make them stand or sit or put in a walking pose, placing them in interiors or exteriors of these creations. The majority of them usually have props in their hands such as: swords; shields; spears; (cross)bows; hammers; cups; apples; chicken legs (usually at the joint which you can insert in the cooked poultry piece, as the narrow side of the chicken leg does not fit their hand perfectly), croissants etc. Or alternatively are carefully stored / kept in boxes when I don't have them on display.

All of them have nice stiff joints as they supposed to have when new / in new condition. I take great care never to expose them to direct sunlight, as this may discolour and/or may affect them in some other manner negatively. My home is pet and smoke free, and temperatures in my home never exceed 27 degrees Celsius at max at hight of summer and 15 degrees Celsius in winter when a I am away from home and the heating is not up.

I am really disappointed discovering how brittle these Lego minifig's are. I have played with Lego and with Lego minifig's as a child during my entire childhood up to the point when I went to secondary school, and I don't recall from childhood these minifig's being so fragile. Many of the minifig's from my childhood show some wear and tear (as some of them have faded prints on their torso and some of their shoulder and leg joints have also ceased to be stiff/ become wobbly over the years), which is natural as I did so much role playing with them as a little kid. However all the minifig's which I here refer to have not experienced any such ordeals.

I must say I am rather disappointed with the lack of quality pertaining to the wrist joints, and strength of the plastic of the arms of the Lego minifigures. As I am currently checking all my minifig's (of which I at this moment have, I estimate well over 200, not counting old ones from my childhood) and have already discovered a dozen (12) with cracks in their arms! (And I have not checked all my minifig's by far!)


So the big question is are there many other AFOL's here who have also noticed /discovered this?
If so do what do you think of this?

Bustin

If you look at the minifigs legs a lot of them are shipped with stress lines already in the leg at the joint.

akunthita

Yep, new minifigs are notorious for cracks! Ever since LEGO decided to dye their own plastic instead of buying already colored pellets, issues with colors and cracks are very common both on bricks (cheese-slopes, 1x1 bricks, etc.) and minifigs (just like you said; from wrist to elbow, and also back of the legs).

I would suggest that you contact LEGO customer service and complain. The more LEGO fans call LEGo about this the better. They will also send you replacements if you still have your receipt.

I actually prefer older minifig parts because of this. I have never seen these problems with minifigs from the 70s and 80s! Even when well played with!...)c:

vortexdragon

I find that a lot of my really old minifigs had cracking problems in the arms, but that's because they were played with a lot and were from the 80s. What I usually do is just replace the arms, as I keep all sorts of minifig extra parts when I buy some in bulk or buy the parts as necessary. Can't say I've noticed that in my new figs.

StuBoy

I haven't noticed this in any new figs over the past 3-4 years I've been collecting, only one pirate fig from the 90s that I bought off Bricklink suffered from a crack from the waist up to the armpit on one side of the torso. I'd fill out the replacement parts form at LEGO.com, I recently did this for a couple of separate issues that I mentioned in another thread, no clutch on a robot arm part and cracks in a few cheese slopes. No receipt required, parts are on their way! As @akunthita said, the more we complain, the higher up their priority list fixing these problems become.