I purchased a Sopwith from amazon on 2/21/14 and the box was beat up but I was going to build it so opened it up and all of the dark green studded elements had white dots on them. They sent me a replacement and I built it this weekend but it had the same issue I tried to cover the white dots the best I could.

So today in the daily deals thread I see that amazon has pulled the Sopwith as "item under review". I contacted amazon and they offered a full refund as they do not have any replacements. Now to the good part, I purchased a Sopwith Saturday at the Lego store at the Christiana mall they had a lot in stock after not having any for a few months to get the MM poly promo. I was going to keep this one sealed. I called lego and they had me check the production code on the seals. It is 05 R4 the same as the code on the amazon box.

The lego rep asked me to open the sealed set from the lego shop with promise of a refund or replacement and the same issue. She is going to call me back tomorrow with more info.

So looks like they had a bad production run. Has anyone else seen this before? If you bought a Sopwith lately check your code.

Yeah, pretty sure these are these injection points.  I took a look at several pieces, and all of them have the dot.  If they were filled with a gate on the side, there would be some sort of mark, but the only imperfection on new pieces is the dot.  If the piece has studs, it's on one of them;  if it's smooth, you can find a little dimple on one of the sides instead.  I also figure that the LEGO logo on studs is also molded.  It wouldn't make business sense to load every single piece up then reset them in a different machine to imprint a logo when the whole thing could be done as one step.  Also, you could level out your machining marks at the edge of the stud, but I don't think you could carve out around the logo/part number on the bottom without leaving some sort of evidence.

 

The kids and I are snowed in today, so we just put together my Constitution Train Chase (my four-year-old keeps referring to it as the Consti-choo-choo).  All of the burgundy pieces and a good share of the brown ones had the white dot.  It looks like the problem is something we get to deal with now, but the dots should fade with some with time (and especially use, if you're one to play with your toys). 

wait... I thought these marks are normal... but was I wrong?

They are pretty much on every single one of the bricks I have... that's where they worked on the plastic, isn't it?

I thought you were talking about the color of the pieces overall, trying to say half of the piece's color was faded. After 6 replies I see you are talking about the "injection mold"? dots. Like everyone else has said, most Lego pieces have these....I've been buying Legos for 20 years and every set has these. I hope Amazon and Lego didn't recall them over your complaint, because it seems like OCD to me. I hope your instruction booklet was folded at exactly the halfway line. (okay, I'm being a jerk. )

No I built mine then read in another thread that amazon pulled them due to multiple customer complaints. Thanks for the diagnosis you remind me of my X-Wife.