Welcome to the forum armageddonsocks and thank you for your support! Great to hear you're enjoying TerraClips and also encouraging to hear that you picked up a couple of our terrain downloads as well
Sorry to hear about the hiccups. We're keeping a tab on all of these little points of feedback in order to ensure constant improvement on further manufactured runs of TerraClips.
On Clip flashing; I had six boxes of clips to play with for my demo/promo builds. I did have about 4 clips out of the 720 that had some minor flashing in the slot. I just assumed it was par for the course with injection molding. If you've got more than that don't hesitate to send the box back to the store which you received it from if you can't pluck the flashing out manually. It could be just a case of "end of the run" variances as this is the first report I've actually heard about.
On Clip tilt; So, the big thing to keep in mind is that the very subtle tilt created by the little gator bump is actually temporary during the break-in period and very easy to work around while getting through that phase. A gentle push in the opposing direction is all it takes to set the tile or wall section straight. After that, the clips form a natural depression in the material itself and the card is broken in.
The ladders; This is completely a case of the factory dies becoming "de-tuned" over the course of a manufacturing run. The ladders use really small tolerances, so little variances that happen over time to the die while it's cutting through the punchboard can have an effect. What I received worked 100% ok but that was likely because I received a copy that was early in the production run.
Speaking of which I just found a ladder video from early editing (good chance to show how easy it was on my end I suppose):
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