Lovely. I'm 95% complete on my seacow. And it was a whole lot of fun! The idea of a pirate ship that is based on fun factor rather than realism (pirate robot, robots that shoots nets, etc) is indeed exciting. Unfortunately mine have the door issue and there are missing pieces and some minor issues with left and right pieces. Hopefully will be able to get some help from the person I bought the set from.

Will drop a picture here once it's done. from what I am reading it looks like the later versions of metalbeard is indeed of better quality (e.g fix door, etc).

For a first lepin set, I am very satisfied with it! Will I buy more? Seriously considering so. I've never put together any construction kit of this scale before (2700 pieces). Don't get put off by it; it's great fun! me and my kid love the end result! Thinking of the next project once I complete the Metalbeard Sea Cow!

I believe this is Lepin's way of 'continuous improvement'. In my package, the majority of the bags were sealed but there were also those that came in the form of 'resealable food bags'. My best guess is based on feedback, any defects or missing pieces are tackled by putting these changes into the resealable bags. My issue with it is, from a customer point of view, this manual activity might lead to 'human error'. And indeed there were some missing pieces in my case. The agony!

One criticism I had is the Lepin manual booklet. It's nicely printed but the glue is not holding the pages back at all. The whole thing comes apart very easily. Probably not a concern for those of you with ring-binded manuals. The paper quality is good, perhaps too good to be held together by glue.

That's interesting. But does the package includes box? I cant seem to trace sufficient details to make a decision.

Might be a daft question, but I've seen reference to GM Klang. What does 'GM' stands for?

And why is that i wonder? is it because now people can shop online for the bricks through lazada, lelong etc or even get them from GM Klang?

From what i'm hearing, these blocks are now widely available on the street

I'm of the opinion that every company should look at end to end supply chain so as not to impact their reputation.

As such, Lepin QC should beef up their effort on missing bricks.

Is it accurate to say that Lepin are fundamentally more at risk of missing bricks or is this something that cuts across all 'compatilble' brick manufacturers to include LeLe, etc?

Anyone can recommend or steer me towards the non UCS millenium falcon and how much? Any difference between the makers of the same product (bela, lepin, etc)?

Good effort!