Minifigures: normal to have duplicate parts?

[badbob001]

I opened the Series 1 Spaceman and it had two of the clear visor piece. I opened the Series 2 highway police and it had two handcuffs. Is this normal or did I get lucky? Perhaps the quality control was worse for the earlier series since I didn't get any duplicate pieces (yet) in Series 5.

[Mantisking]

I opened the Series 1 Spaceman and it had two of the clear visor piece. I opened the Series 2 highway police and it had two handcuffs. Is this normal or did I get lucky? Perhaps the quality control was worse for the earlier series since I didn't get any duplicate pieces (yet) in Series 5.

yeah, in the first couple series there were duplicate parts.

[natelite]

this trend stopped with serie 3.

[badbob001]

On another website, I saw a content photo of the S1 Space Man and it had two visors as well. Either LEGO thought the visors were easy to break while in the package... or perhaps the (new?) Chinese manufacturing facility was still error prone with very small parts so it was better to give two with the chance of giving one than giving one with the chance of giving none.

[vynsane]

No, generally speaking there are certain pieces that are always complimented by extras in LEGO sets: visors, 1x1 cheese slopes, 1x1 round plates - generally small items that can easily be

• lost by owners
• overlooked by the packaging process at the factory (due to weight variance) or;
• broken

CMFs1 and 2 followed standard LEGO protocol and included extras of these types of pieces (even the Karate Guy from CMFs2 included two trophies in each pack!) As has been stated, this protocol was ignored starting with CMFs3, probably as a cost-cutting measure which was doubly annoying due to the price increase with that series.

[badbob001]

Coincidentally, CMF3 and above require the bag contents to be identify by feel, so I'm imagining stores everywhere filled with people squeezing those delicate parts. I can totally understand if a user loses or breaks a part and LEGO expects them to just buy a replacement pack. But I would be annoyed if a part were missing in packaging. Has there been reports of missing parts from CMFs?