Well… In-depth explaination, wall of text.
The squids are dual-molded; the blue-green ones from the squid ammo set use transparent green and transparent light blue. The yellow-orange ones from all the other sets use transparent yellow and transparent orange.
Dual-molded parts are typically not highly consistent. From my memory however, you’d usually get one that is yellow and one that is more orange with each Barraki, but that should just be by pure chance, with an equal chance for each variant. If we take the image provided by TheChronicler as an example, if those were the only variants to exist, you’d have 50% chance that it’d be one of the left three, and 50% that it’d be one of the right ones. Ultimately, this boils down to the most probably scenario being that you’ll end up with one of each of those, but not guaranteed.
The way dual-molded parts work may be best demonstrated with the poisoned Hau Nuva. This mask has four variants that have been noted by the community:
These can be identified by a number found on the inside of the mask. Note that this kind of number exists on almost every part, including the normal Hau Nuva, however, sadly the squids are one of those parts that do not feature any markings on them. These number exists for LEGO to be able to trace which mold the part came from, in case there is something wrong with the part:
- The “design ID”, a string of numbers also found marked inside the mask (in this example, 43853), denotes the design of the mold.
- The second set of numbers is formatted as X-YY - in this case, this will range between 1-01 to 4-01.
– The first number being what is used to differentiate the variants per the picture above. If you think of the mold as an ice cube tray that makes 4 ice cubes. Each of these 4 have different positions on the tray, this is what the number serves denotes.
– The 01 is not very significant, I believe it denoted which mold the part came from, in the circumstance that there are multiple (which there usually aren’t unless you’re looking at very common parts like 2x4 bricks). This does also mean every color of the Hau Nuva, including the dual-molded ones came from the same old.
Why do bring this mask up? The aforementioned semi-consistency in the pattern of the dual-molding. The pattern varries between the parts as the two plastic colors have to travel different distances, based on their position in the mold. Though the number of positions may vary, depending on the size of the mold and the size of the part, this is true for all dual-molded parts, including the masks of the Protectors from G2, and of course, our squids here. While I definitely can’t say there isn’t still some factor of randomization, there should be a number of fairly self-consistent variants of the squids as well. As for which ones are in which set, this is of course still entirely random.
(These positions of the molds are also how they randomized Krana and Kraata shapes, which means this does not apply to Kraata patterns. This is why there are 8 Krana and not 6, because they had the space for 8.)
I like it.