I'd say I was surprised; but, after a 1/2 year with ours... not so much.
On the bright side, I've found that Topolino is very good with regard to warranty coverage and support after the sale. We're on our 2nd front wheel after a creaky bearing proved to be too elusive to remedy and the 9 speed hard anodized aluminum freewheel body was no match for just a few outings with a Shimano 10 speed cassette (see below).
Just looking at the entire assembly after I pulled it apart after finding a middle sprocket embedded in the freewheel body I didn't feel as confident with regard to the long-term life of the freewheel body and pawls as I did when looking at the guts of our other tandem hubs from Phil Wood (stainless steel), Chris King (stainless steel) or White Ind (titanium).
I've alerted the folks at Topo to our embedded sprocket discovery and it was noted Topolino offers a Shimano 10 speed-specific freewheel body with the deeper splines needed to mitigate the extent of sprocket denting. Not sure if we'll get one of those or just stick with the XT cassettes to limit wear and tear but, regardless, the one thing I've concluded is I'll be limiting the use of our Topolino's to special occasions and will also do more frequent tear-down maintenance on the rear hub guts than I do with our other hubs.
Most of our trials and tribulations are documented in our
Calfee Journal with the exception of the recently discovered freewheel body dings which will be covered in my final, one-year anniversay journal entry that gets penned next month.
Best wishes for a quick turn from the boys in Bethel and a detailed post mortem on the root cause of the failure.