Pieces crack when installed

So I got an unopened box of the older Taj Mahal (10189) from my father. Instead of keeping it unopened and hoping for the price to rise even higher, I wanted to build it. At some point, I encountered an interesting phenomena where these brown pieces crack immediately after installing them. In the video, you can hear the snap of the piece a second or so after it’s been put into its place. Maybe a defect in the manufacturing process? Because there were other quality issues with some pieces...