>>10472441Lego quality is in decline. It's just passing the threshold where it's affecting their brand goodwill. Not with the common crowd, but certainly with the more cautious or critical of mass-manufacture and business administration. That's the major problem with having such vast manufacturing output. You gotta cut corners to keep pretending infinite growth is viable, and the last 10 years Lego's overhead has gone WAY up so it's only going to get worse. Colors like brown, dark red, and tan have a chance of splitting or chipping. You may never experience problems or you may constantly. It's really down to which colors you plan to build with. If you avoid the aforementioned colors your chance of experiencing problems drops by a hefty ratio. There are other colors with problems like new light gray and such but it's much less common. YMMV.
Off-brands are certainly an option but they're less available and come with their own complications. Even with declining quality, they are still the most consistent building brick in terms of color, and yes, quality. If you choose to try lego I suggest pic related. It's a certified neat little guy with a lot of customization options, the first logical one being knees.