so, the stories on lugnet were true, it seems. i just bought the lego 4492 mini star destroyer set, and verified it. they've changed the color of gray. the picture shown below kinda shows it. left is the new pieces, right is the old ones. the lower right one is clean, it just has a yellow cast from the room light, but in general, the new ones are both blue-ish now. the colors are actually very nice, but they're replacements not additions to the palette, and lego has said this decision is final.
this is as unprecedented as it is annoying for those of us who have a large collection. the dark gray is particularly different; the light gray is more subtle, which is good, since most everyone's light gray collection far outnumbers the dark gray. either way, it's a lot of pieces that are all but deprecated. it's sort of petty, i know, but it really bugs me to think that my collection of proper gray pieces is essentially as large as it's ever going to get. it throws off all my anal-retentive sorting schemes, and they're different enough to make it so you can't mix them together in a structure. and nobody even knows why they did it. rumor has it that it's a cost-cutting measure, indicative of their using a higher percentage of recycled plastic. oh, well. guess i may just have to find a way to dirty up all these new pieces real fast.
you could always dump them all in a bucket of bleach for a minute or two... i am not sure what color you will get, but it will definitely be different.
-jaems