Why use America? Why use Mexico? Because when you are a company of that size, another thing you think about, aside from quality, is being cost effective. Resources are cheaper elsewhere, and with the world as it is (yes the global economy does effect this), you have to take the best route. Otherwise, Lego would be spending more money then they should, and we probably wouldn't have has many unique pieces that we have now.

-Omi

Because People keep buying it. If we stopped buying it, someone else would.

I haven't noticed any change in my minifigures. For companies other than Lego, all they care about is quantity over quality, so they pump out low quality products for cheap. Some companies even deliberately put a cap on the amount of time a product works so consumers keep money flowing into the company by replacing the broken product over and over. It is sad how the world works, but with Lego, quality is what keeps the customers coming, so it wouldn't be like them to worsen the quality any.

Our A/C unit hasn't been around more than 2 years, and its motor had to be replaced. Yet one of my dad's coworkers has a washing machine that's 40 years old and the motor son it works fine.

The thing about outsourcing is that there is a trial and error period. Lego is aware of it and are trying to fix the problems. If they decided to up the quality control from the beginning, Lego sets might increase in price at a faster rate. For a guy like me and many of you that do not have jobs, my pay rate does not increase fast enough to make up the difference as it is. So I'll take the trial and error over the increased prices. As far as battling with Omicron about Chinese plastic.......you guys are on your own, Quickblade is sitting this one out

And that works for me, if Lego can bring the label 'Made in China' out of the realm of low quality, I'll be happy.

@QB: Don't worry, I'm not taking it too seriously; friendly debate is good and fun. This has become a most interesting topic...

@S133: Yep! Boycott is the only thing that will bring them to their senses. When the allegorical kid behaves poorly, you don't reward him by giving him allegorical presents.

You mean like those times when we go off on Comunism?

Won't argue with that.

Allegorical...Hmm, at least you see my point. I think.
edit: Oh I see, that makes sense.

Well, older things are better quality because the techniques that limit how long a product is useful for have only been implemented recently.

Still, I'd be much more loyal to a company that builds things to last but gives them a higher price as opposed to a company that builds thing like they do now. It's just really hard to find companies like that.