Will they fix that neck?! Let's hope so!

It seems Lego is turning into one of these car manufacturers :)

@kfr Let's hope the next Lego Ferrari doesn't spontaneously combust like the road cars.

I want to buy WALL-E (I'm in the U.S.), but this continuing saga makes me hesitant as I would rather wait until they've either fixed the issues or given up trying. :-/

Went to buy from the LEGO store in Manchester yesterday and it was nowhere in sight, now I know why!! :/

At the LEGO store in upstate New York last night I was told that it had just been recalled a second time, and they had pulled stock off the shelves. It's still available at shop.lego.com (US), though...

I bought one after the first recall. The Up/Down motion of the neck is good, but now it swivels freely. I ended up cutting a small piece off a bar and pressing it into the end of the technic connector. Works great now. Everything is friction motion and I can position his head however I want. They might be replacing the blue technic connector with a tan one for the extra friction.

What, seriously?? I bought one of the originals (Europe was unaffected by the floppy up-down hinge joint in the neck), the only problem was that the head freely spins 360 degrees and won't stay posed. If Lego redesign that joint then great, so long as a parts pack is issued. But what on earth is going on with Lego's quality control?

The funny thing is, in the "Great Lego Sets" book, there's an entire section on how sets get produced, and how they have to go through this strict screening process (where entire panels of people inspect them for any problems). According to the book, quite a few models get rejected at this point and don't even make it into mass-production (sometimes the figure is as high as nine out of ten that don't make it through).

But WALL*E made it right the way through, and nobody noticed any of these glaring problems, so now it's recall after recall? That is slightly troubling to me.

I don't quite understand what the problem is, unless they want to fix the free-spinning head - but if that's the case, I can't fathom how they didn't notice that before it was brought to market. So I can't quite get myself to think that's the issue. And I've built the thing without encountering further problems... very strange.

It's worth keeping in mind though, that this is an Ideas set. The development time for these sets is significantly shorter than for regular sets, because LEGO doesn't want it to take too long from the sets are approved to they reach the shelves. So it's no surprise there might be more quality issues with these than other sets, but it's still weird.

Problems or not, I saw it at TRU and grabbed one!

They are still selling Wall E in my country and near impossible to find due to the popularity and very limited quantity. There's definitely no recall done when clearly it's the same set everyone in the world is getting.

My frustration is there's no word after all this time from Lego on what their action is in response to this fault after recalling it a second time. It seems that replacing the joint parts are not solving the issue. Plus the freely swivelling head has not been acknowledged by Lego.

Haven't had any issues with titling the head on the vertical axis, but did encounter the free spinning head on the horizontal. Called LEGO Customer Service about it this past Friday and they said they would send me a kit containing four pieces to resolve the freely spinning head issue and that it would take 7-10 days to receive the parts as they are picked out of their warehouse in Denmark. Other than this and a few styling issues, I'm happy with the set and happy to have it in my collection.

My main issue with the set wasn't the spinning head but the terrible inconsistency in the colour of the yellow elements, and I would have taken it back if I thought another one would be any better. Maybe I did just get one from a bad batch and that's what they're recalling?

@Sly Raskal: That is interesting. I wonder if they will send this kit out to all customers that bought it directly from LEGO.com (as they have the customers addresses), or to save on costs, they will wait for people to complain first before offering to send the solution? Has anything like this happened before and how was it handled by Lego?

@FraserDall: I had no colour issues with my yellow bricks.

I ended up doing Chris McVeighs neck fix. I went to the Lego site and filled out the missing bricks section for all 21 pieces and even though i expected them to cancel the order it went through. I got sent out all the parts for free.

Now my Wall-E has a great poseable head.

You really think LEGO is going to get better quality control over color differences? They've been having issues with that for a while now, especially with yellows and grays and some browns.

As far as them sending out pieces to fix the neck, typically they have waited until the consumer asked about it. An issue happened with the Fire Brigades where an entire bag was missing. You had to phone them for them to send out a replacement. I don't think they would have sent it out to everyone automatically because not every batch had the faulty missing bag scenario.

I still have mine in the box. I was waiting until Christmas, but maybe I should open it now to see if mine is faulty...

@tecjam @Sly Raskal My WALLE direct from Lego's web shop has the loosely spinning head problem. Have emailed to complain. Will see what they say. Failing that I guess I'll try and get Chris' bits for free as @leerock suggests :-)
In the mean time wrapping the top of the black pin in ~2 layers of cellotape gives it enough friction.

I absolutely love the Lego Wall-E and it is a must buy for me. I was at the Lego store yesterday but unfortunately they were sold out.

But boy what a disappointment on the quality control on this one. Big miss from TLG.

When I get it, I will be using @jljohnson814's solution and shall be sticking a bar in the neck pin to add some friction.

This is the response I got from asking about the free spinning neck -

Dear Richard,

Thanks for getting in touch with us.

I’m sorry you’re having concerns about your LEGO® Ideas 21303 WALL•E set. Only the American version had an issue where replacement parts were sent to affected models. The stock here is made in our European warehouse, so is not affected in the same way as the USA model.

Like you, we’re big fans of this courageous little robot and we’ve designed LEGO WALL•E to be as close to the movie character as possible. As you may know WALL•E can turn his head 360 degrees and swivel quickly and easily – that’s why he’s so good at whizzing around the planet and spotting rubbish to collect. 

When you build LEGO WALL•E, you’ll find that the bricks we’ve chosen let him turn his head 360 degrees. This does mean that his head moves quite freely and you might not be able to duplicate all of the poses from the film. We take a lot of care when choosing our bricks to make the best sets possible and we hope you still enjoy the building experience. The design had been checked through and approved by the quality department and our partner Disney. Also due to the“ heavy head” of Wall-E – in some poses of the head the neck will not be able to hold the pose.

I hope that helps to explain how the Wall E model is supposed to work. Listening to what LEGO fans have to say helps us get better and better so I’m passing your feedback on to our designers.

If you have any further questions, or you feel you need extra pieces to make it work, please do let us know, we're happy to help!

^So... in other words... neckgate was intentional? Come on, now, LEGO! "might not be able to replicate all the poses from the film," my foot. He can't pose at all!