Thanks for the feedback. We are a small team (3 embedded sw developers) and I am more or less the guy with actually production releases under my belt. I feel my approach has been very measured and very polite to the point where I feel like i am walking on "egg shells" when doing the code reviews.

Show them you get things pointed out in your own code reviews, that it's a team game where everyone is just looking out for each other. That bad code doesn't mean they're a bad programmer, that critique of their code isn't a critique of their skill, that everyone gets blind to the problems in their own code and benefits from a second set of eyes.

within a few days we're going to be trying exactly this in hopes to show how code reviews are not about attacking and instead about helping.