Yes it does dammit! Next you'll be saying we can substitute needed parts with lego!!! The world's going to hell. 
That phrase 'It doesn't affect the play value, folks' is one I have seen several times (or phrases like it) in eBay listings where someone is trying to palm off a load of junk, like a PM house with half the roof missing or a horse with three legs. "My kids have played with it for hours and don't seem to mind that none of the figures has hair". That's because either (a) the parent really thinks letting a child play with c**p encourages their imagination ('When I were a lad, we used to play with an empty beer bottle. By 'eck, didn't we 'ave fun?") or (b) the parent allows their children to be destructive with wonderful but expensive toys and thinks that is an acceptable part of a child's development.
I think it DOES affect the play value if you don't get what is shown on the box (depending on how discerning you are...) or if it is in some other way substandard. My comment was ironic, but irony doesn't always work in text, sorry to have misled you!
And StJohn is right, I think most of Geobra's thinking never gets beyond the idea "It's a toy for children and children won't notice/ don't mind if it is different from what we might have led them to expect and even if they do and their parents take the trouble to complain (which most won't) we can offer them something to replace it..."
