I had gotten a case of 100w a line lifeguards and noticed that 75% of them have crooked arc tubes, otherwise in great condition. They’re close to the outer wall. You reckon the bloke making them that day was hungover or sumthin, or shipping damage? Could this shorten the lamps life?

I think the case got some serious hit. The arc tubes are quite heavy structures, so when the lamps are exposed to huge acceleration, that mass may bend the support wires.
So I may expect there may be cracks starting to form in some lamps, as well as the heat may slightly overheat the outer wall there.
So both performance and life could be affected by that damage.
But you may counteract at least the heat part by operating them with the arctube leaning down, so the outer wall closest to the arctube would actually be below it, so best cooled by the outside air and least heated by the internal convection.

Thank you for that response Medved, I was kinda thinking it was unfortunately as you described since the bulbs were shipped horizontally. Too bad I’m not bold enough to try and bend them back, lol.

It probably doesn’t help that the arc tubes in this design only have support from the base.

Do not attempt to "correct" them, you will cause even more stress there.

Agreed, I’ll just try to orient them as recommended when I do use them.

The PS MH horizontal use lamps we installed in group relamping had a "dip" sag in the arc tubes.

The reason for that was to keep the arc from melting through the arc tube wall. Since arcs like to bow upwards when you run lamps horizontal.

There’s no sag here on these brand new lamps. The internal arc tube support structure is bent to one side.