Take a closer look at the shields below. There is a small but important difference (no fakes, they are both LEGO). Do you spot the difference near the center pin holes? The one on the right has no cut-out on one side for the yellow rhotuka pin… And unfortunately this is not just the case for the gold ones. Silver ones are affected as well. Kind of weird.
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Good to know.
Can you demonstrate how far off the fit is?
See pictures. Doesn’t look like much but still quite annoying and technically makes it illegal. The rhotuka launcher also no longer works when it is setup like in the pictures.
Just a guess here, but the reason I’m guessing is that if the legal connections were applied then the ripcord would fall straight down. Indeed it’s also frustrating they would use an illegal connection like that.
Didn’t know the shields also have normal pinhole connections though.
You can take a screw driver, and slowly rotate it while applying pressure to carefully dig in and create an opening. Either that, or if you are capable and have the power tools necessary, you can use an appropriately sized drill bit to carve out the intended indentation. It may look a little rough on the edges, but you can either try smoothing it down by other methods, or ignore it completely due to it being covered up by the rhotuka mechanism piece. As long as you are careful and don’t over-gouge, as what you will be doing can be considered semi-permanent.
Either that, or if you want to be freaky about it and have the skills you can cut it out entirely and glue in another painted piece, like a 3x1x1 round technic beam. Or even flip it over to use the other side, seeing as how yours don’t seem to have the problem on the nonstandard side. But, I’d leave this as an only-if-needed alternative, like if you end up butchering it your first attempt.
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The weird thing is that some do on both sides whereas others have on only one side. The one on the right I got seperately from Bricklink a few days ago. The one on the left came with Iruini (bought in the Netherlands a long time ago). Perhaps that also makes a difference.
Also, this issue seems hardly discussed among fans. When I bought the silver shield off of bricklink I was pretty annoyed and surprised that Eljay never mentioned this particular defect in his Toa Hagah review.
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Obvious bad injection
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I am honestly considering scrapping the shields all together because it is just too much of a risk to buy them (especially because they are so expensive).
Are you able to find somewhere on the shields where they say something like X-01 (Where X is a number)? My theory is that this is based on which position in the mold that was used, thus the “X” should be different between the defects and the ones with a proper pinhole. Edit: actually I just noticed that it’s visible in the image. Both say 2-01, so there goes that theory… That makes this even more bizarre.
As far as if the connection ends up stressing the parts - without the groove being present, the pins of the Rhotuka launcher should be offset exactly so that they’re just shy of resting securely in the groove on the other side, meaning they’re permanently compressed, which may cause deformation in the long run.
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I checked all my rhotuka shields…
…phew they all work.
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Does this mean the hagah shields from europe have the correct pinhole than the ones released in the u.s.?
No I don’t think it makes a difference actually. I live in Europe and I have one or two Hagah shields with messed up pinholes.
I have a 1-01, three 2-01, a 3-01, and two 4-01, none of them have this issue.
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Is it possible that this defect is the reason for this correction to the instructions?
edit: I’ve just tested this with one of my shields that has this error (all silver, weirdly) and putting the shield on backwards like this does allow the spinner to launch as intended. Normally, the spinner just stays on the pin on the defective shields.
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Wow, good catch. That honestly seems pretty likely.
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When was that correction added in the instructions? It doesn’t show up in the Lego website. Also, doesn’t this beg the question why the hagah sets weren’t recalled? I mean, it’s probably nitpicking, but wouldn’t it be preferable to have the shield set as shown on the canister without the pinhole flaw?
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I found it on the BrickInstructions page for Iruini. Oddly, Norik’s instructions don’t have the correction.
He did come with one though; I was involved in a discussion about this some time back, and someone was able to provide one for Norik that I wasn’t able to find online.
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