one word FRUSTRATING. We can get angry about major flaws but its difficult to get too excited about minor cosmetic and easily corrected ones.
Ask yourself; I paid $1500 say for a steam engine, It came with a broke off pipe. what's the value of the engine with the broken pipe . . .$1,499.? or $0.0 ?
Perfection is just a word not a reality for handmade toys. And I do think Lionel needs better QA and package design.
With any mass produced and complex assembled toys attaching hundreds of small parts by gluing is bound to have variations that result in too much or not enough adhesion applied or broken tabs from assembling too quickly to make quotas. Again frustrating not excusing!
