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Comment by CannisterFlux | Hacker News Reader

Not only the model quality, but the Lego bricks themselves are pretty disappointing too.

If you drop a normal brick on a hard floor the brick is likely to shatter. More models have special parts with narrow waist sections that easily snap. The c-shaped grips that hold poles either warp or snap and become useless.

More and more sets come with stickers rather than printing the pattern onto the bricks like they used to do. Stickers are really lame. They never go on right and peel off at the corners easily, but if you pull them off they'll definitely leave goop behind.

My kids and I still enjoy Lego despite this, but we haven't bought a new set for a long time.

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> If you drop a normal brick on a hard floor the brick is likely to shatter.

If they shatter, they are defective. You can contact Lego[0], mail them the broken piece and get a replacement, no questions asked. Bricks are designed to last a decade with normal play and shattering would be a severe safety risk.

They take this sort of thing very seriously.

[0] https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/replacementparts

> If you drop a normal brick on a hard floor the brick is likely to shatter.

Are they really like that nowadays?

When I was a child they were near indestructible.

Yeah, they are not nearly as good. I've had pieces snap just from having them in a box, rooting through to find other pieces, they must have snagged. And dropping regular pieces on a tiled floor from table height, had the side break! Maybe I was unlucky, but that would've been unheard of back in the 80s.

Uh, are you sure those were Legos? I have tens of thousands of loose pieces and exactly one has been damaged in use (a clip that broke after being walked on).

I'm not sure what happened, but I've never heard of this happening. Are you sure it was Lego and not a clone brand?

I buy LEGO regularly and the bricks I get are very tough. Even dropping entire models I don’t think I’ve had one brick shatter. But it is possible the quality varies.

I've never seen them just shatter. They're not indestructible, but I think they never were. More complex bricks are probably a bit more fragile, though.

I've never seen a Lego brick shatter. I just threw a few of my sons Lego bricks as hard as I could at a brick wall, and they were all fine (but I nearly weren't, as I almost got a few of them back in my face).

If those are actually Lego and not counterfeit or another brand, then it sounds like a defect.

I also can't find any examples of those narrow waist sections you refer to, which makes me think maybe it's a different brand?

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