To be fair, a dial string could have slipped off even when production was here in the US.
But that was easily repaired back then.
As these are not intended to be serviceable in any way, they are built under the "Dorito" concept; keep crunchin', we'll make more.
This is probably the normal failure rate, first failure mentioned here. I don't think these radios will turn out to be more failure
prone than any other simillar electronics with large scale integration.