Is this common, or has this happened to others?  About a year ago I purchased the Darth Vader Meditation Chamber lego set on clearance at Walmart.  It was sealed - definitely.  I finally got around to opening it last night for a build and lo-and-behold I don’t know what the heck was inside.  First of all, no instructions.  Then, a lot of the bags were not Star Wars related, and the pieces in the bags looked old, dented, scratched, etc.  It looks like someone just threw some random bags in there.  I confirmed it was sealed - unless some hacks have figured out a way to reseal a box and make it look like it was never opened to swap out bags and pieces?

Unfortunately, this has been going on for years. I had this happen to me at Target back in 2013 with the 75018 Jek-14's Stealth Starfighter. They are usually after the minifigures and if the "sealed" box was the newer style with punch tabs they are very easily defeated by heating up the box seam and using an exacto knife then resealing it. 

25 minutes ago, AML said:

Is this common, or has this happened to others?  About a year ago I purchased the Darth Vader Meditation Chamber lego set on clearance at Walmart.  It was sealed - definitely.  I finally got around to opening it last night for a build and lo-and-behold I don’t know what the heck was inside.  First of all, no instructions.  Then, a lot of the bags were not Star Wars related, and the pieces in the bags looked old, dented, scratched, etc.  It looks like someone just threw some random bags in there.  I confirmed it was sealed - unless some hacks have figured out a way to reseal a box and make it look like it was never opened to swap out bags and pieces?

You're treating Lego seals as some sort of security device? It's easy peasy to heat gun open and reseal if one has crooked inclinations.

Edited December 6, 20241 yr by Bricklectic

Yeah from other stories and my experience with vipoutlet who supposedly has some tie to walmart, unfortunately this happens.  I purchased a Haunted Mansion from VIP outlet for personal build.  Finally got around to building it about a year later.  The entire box was filled with bags from one of those Walmart XL generic color boxes that we use to see on BF specials.  Seals were perfect on the Haunted Mansion box, but obviously someone scammed the system and screwed me.  Because it was so far from my date of purchase, vip outlet didn't really do much to help.  

Thanks for the reply.  Yes it was the tabbed box.  Wow.