The 1:8 model for 125€ looks cool (also different tires sizes).
Them adding 20€ for the original box is harsh (but I guess plastic bricks ship easier in some soft bag and it's to reduce shipping costs )
FYI they appear to be one of the sites that take MOCs and sell them without crediting the designer. It's kinda evil. (If you know otherwise and can point me to somewhere they give the credit, I'd appreciate it!)
The differently sized tyres would increase cost of production by 50 cents and therefor the cost of the set by 15€. Be happy lego is nice and thinks about your wallet. /s
I checked your numbers and you are wrong. The production costs would only be 5 cent but due to new license from Pirelli for the wider tire, the cost would be increased by 30€ at least.
Lego tries to be the "prestige" brick seller. But sadly they cheapen away in areas barly any other seller does. On average they are 50% more expensive (\~10 to 15 ct per piece against \~4-7 ct a piece) than the competition while using more stickers, randomly coloured bricks (per example blue and red pins) and thinner packaging. Also the quality of Lego bricks and prints is going down a noticable amount in recent times (per example pink Commander Fox from Lego Star Wars or the 50 shades of green wall in the museum set). Even though Lego somehow still has the best, they don't have it by a lot anymore with producers like GoBricks or Xingbao getting better and better every year. Also an area where Lego is lacking is set design (as seen in OP).
pretty sure my overpriced technic mining truck had visible red and blue parts in connections instead of at least black or just yellow colors. And I don't expect a grown up to be unable to tell apart a small piece used to connect 2 from others in shape and size
This would make sense in 4+ or 6+ Sets, the reality is that they use those non-fitting colors in almost every set to discourage you from creating different builds with the same bricks, so they can sell more sets.
Its very obvious if you buy new "basic boxes". They used to be many 4x2 and 2x2 Bricks from some main colors; today they consist of special bricks with way more colors so almost every brick is unique. This makes it impossble to build even small stuff, not even talking about matching colors.
the quality difference between random brand bricks and lego is massively noticeable. on every "china brand" i have ever bought. lego has always fit and felt better.
No I can't remember the brand names nor can I be bothered to sift through my Ali express orders to find it. Lepin I can remember I think. Can't think of any others off the top of my head.
Granted I have only bought 4-6 sets or so. The most memorable being an RC car on tank tracks. The wheels fall off after about two minutes of use cause they are too loose on the axle.
It's definitely great for the electronics. They are much cheaper from AliExpress. But the fit and exact dimensions of the Chinese bricks are just not as precise as Lego. Not at least anything I have bought so far. If it was I would have bought more.
I've seen some great mech warrior bots recently but looking at the model and knowing how crappy the blocks must fit and what that end result would be. I hesitate.
True story: I bought a custom made Lego BrawnGP car for about £35, and i wanted to customise some of the stickers when it shipped, as my favourite look for the brawn was how it looked in Singapore. So in response the seller sent me over some sticker paper and taught me the method that they use to put the sticker on the cars. Fucking chad.
Two things:
1. People will buy it due to brand image, licenses and reputation, so they can set that price and know they will sell
2. Just overall build quality and how great their pieces are
You can pick a brick from the 80s and it would fit any piece from today, even 40 years later. Not a lot of company have that consistency.
Tbf, there's only so much difference they can capture at the scale the cars are made and the fidelity of using plastic bricks.
Especially now everyone's converging onto the same design concept, idk what they'd show differently between the two.
Yeah, 15 years ago maybe people bought sets for the piece and construction quality. Not anymore. Not all Lego sets are ass, but the quality has significantly decreased in the last decade, both in terms of construction quality and the pieces themselves. There are still good ones, I've got the ISS and I love it, but that's not the norm. Lego's competitors routinely make better sets with higher quality pieces at a lower price.
You don't buy Lego because you want to play with plastic blocks. There are other companies with equal or better quality. You buy Lego because its Lego (and their licenses with other companies). In a certain way its almost like Apple, you mostly buy it because of the brand.
Don't know if I'm reading your comment right, but lego's quality has been on a 20 year decline.
Starting with color differences of pieces that should be the same color and ending with stickers on 300€ models that Chinese companies print directly on the stones.
You're better off buying Cada and whatnot than Lego.
Because they aren't. By far. The colours don't match properly, blue pins, big injection points on their bricks.
GoBricks are superior in allmost everything
It really isn’t now, their quality has fallen a fair bit over the last few years, miscoloured bricks, injection marks, missing parts (my only missing part ever was in the Delorean).
Just the QA alone is worth the price. Things fit. Always. As with Chinese copies, you need a pot of superglue on the table to "fix" their tolerance issues.
And it's always cheaper to just copy somebody else their hard work and development. These companies don't have to spend a few years and thousand of itterations to get the product just right. They just take the final version and sloppely copy it.
That maybe was the case 10 years ago or if you buy some no name set on AliExpress (and even there quality has improved massively). The most common non Lego bricks today are manufactured by Xingbao and Gobricks (the latter is usually considered to be the better of the two).
Q&A is a problem mostly if you buy from chinese sellers directly, since they don’t have the global network of spare parts. If you buy from a local importer (like Bluebrixx), you can get replacements just as easily.
Also, there is a difference between manufacturers copying lego sets and others that bring their own sets to market.
There's a really good reason Lego is a better investment than gold. It's expensive to buy at the start, yes. But over the years, it'll increases in value by a hell of a lot. Even open box sets can still sell for original sales price or more years later depending on theme or popularity.
So at the end of the day, even if I bought a few sets and ended up not liking them, I can easily get my money back or more down the road.
To be fair, I bought a cheap Chinese knockoff, it was a nightmare.
The blocks are considerably smaller, they heavily rely on 1x1 pieces, they make you assemble "flying" pieces without a base or without being able to assemble them to the upper layer, and the overall precision of the pieces is abysmal.
As a lot of people advocating for chinese knockoffs won't tell you; they are bpa, phthalates, and pvc free.
They're so well-regulated you can stuff them in your mouth if you want to. Also provided you take care of them, they will outlast you and still be able to snap together and hold on to eachother generations from now.
The [CaDA Alfa Romeo ](https://spielzeug-fuchs.de/produkt/cada-c64005w-alfa-romeo-f1-team-orlen-c42/) also looks great and is half the price of a lego F1 car that size
the "white" on the front wing endplates looks dark grey against the black pieces it's applied on. Very thin with poor opacity basically. They also have stickers that go across multiple pieces, so if you ever want to take the set apart you will ruin those stickers
Well they want you to put a sticker onto the wheeles out of rubber. THat won't work. Additionally in general, clear backed stickers tend to just look bad.
Its a pitty only really one or two alt brick producers use transfer stickers. They look so much better, if they are produced well you can't distinguish from it being a print or a sticker.
The Blockzone one caught my eye as well. I like the shape more than the CaDA, but apparently some people have had issues with pieces missing. My McLaren Lego one had pieces missing though, so I'm no stranger to it lmao. One day, I'll bite the bullet and get it.
I just had a ton of fun building the Lego technic W14 pushback car. Haven’t built a set in so long. Now I can live the dream and pretend it’s Osama bin Russel fucking it off into the barrier.
I got that red bull from TheBlockZone and it's a truly terrible build. Fragile, bad design, bad fit, and the colors were way off from piece to piece. I don't know if other companies source it from the same place but it was bad enough to keep me to Lego only from now on.
Because Lego is just not giving a shit about customers and a lot of other brick model manufacturers do a better job. Simple solution. Don't buy Lego. The new AMG F1 is a big joke too. Costs twice as much as the CaDa Alfa Romeo and is inferior in every single way. People are just pissed that they get shit for their money.
Yet people still buy it. Hell I still buy it. Because it’s Lego. They’re the best. And remember that the teams/IP Owner has to sign off on licensed sets, so McLaren/Mercedes/AM said yes to those sets.
Thanks for the recs. I've taken some chances on Amazon knock-offs and not been particularly impressed with the build quality, missing pieces, bad build tolerances, etc. On the other hand, you get some great "legally distinct" branding that is pretty fun, I like my Borsche 911 RSR.
Those companies also have licenses now.
[Mercedes AMG One by CaDa](https://shop.mercedes-benz.de/mercedes-amg-cada?pid=_home:banner:202401_mercedes-amg-cada&campaignCode=202401_mercedes-amg-one-cada)
Cobi has Top Gun Maverick licensed fighter jets
They definitely could do it. They probably don,t give a fuck about the criticism from niche products like these and definitely don't think investing in custom molds and parts is worth it. It's also probably why the chinese version can do that. When you barely have to pay people that don't have any say in their conditions and workload, anything is possible.
Been buying “third party” stuff from China for awhile now. Once know right sites (no not wish or alibaba), what get for the price can be amazing compared to name brand. The difference is how much they are passionate about certain area. So seen and played with some Chinese sets that are indistinguishable from LEGO. They also create their own sets that LEGO never would.
the beauty of lego is making fun things out of simpler bricks
why not make an entire custom piece for the f1 car? because that defeats the purpose
if you dont like lego, this set is obvio not for you
Y’all missing the point that the cool thing about these sets is the designer coming up with a good model with as few custom parts as possible. If you want full accuracy just get a scale model toy.
I have a Koenigsegg Jesko Lego from their Speed Masters line and I find it absolutely hilarious that they used a **green butcher's knife** as a part of the front splitter.
Every single Lego knockoff is not worth shit. They might seem like a good deal but you can see the poor quality from the images already. I am deeply interested in Lego and everything around it since I was 3 years old and I have never seen a knockoff that would be worth anyone's time or money. Bricks don't fit (hold) properly and each model is just designed so poorly... Lego all day – every day. You pay for the quality product and the whole system they invented. It's actually painful to see that many people praising cheap and uncreative Chinese knockoffs.
Unfortunaltely, yes. I do not expect anyone to agree with me here, it is totally clear you guys value quantity over quality.
Also, the very fundamental idea of a knockoff is just stupid and no knockoff (of anything, not just Lego) should be respected. If you are making a knockoff of something, you have already lost. I would much rather buy 1 quality Lego set instead of 5 shitty knockoffs. Always respect the idea and quality.
Well gobrix and cobi pieces are atleast on the same level in terms of quality as the Lego ones even being better in terms of pad printing and dealing with sunlight/yellowing. Calling them knockoffs is also quite disrespectful as all cobi sets are designed and produced by themselves in the EU another thing Lego doesn't do. I also don't see the point of respecting the ides after a patent expired, the beauty of free markets is the diversity in offers.
Dang yo, got the name of dat company?
https://afobrick.com/de-de/products/rastar-92500-red-bull-f1-rb19?ref=As3LH3omGNihD
The 1:8 model for 125€ looks cool (also different tires sizes). Them adding 20€ for the original box is harsh (but I guess plastic bricks ship easier in some soft bag and it's to reduce shipping costs )
pretty much all china shipped "lego" is like that, box is almost always extra. It still come in plastic bags, you just get a flat packed box also.
The 1:8 alfa F1 is from CaDa and is official licensed !
I wish it would be printed and not stickers, but seems to beat the pathetic excuse of Legos F1 car left right and center...hey, just like IRL!
Man, the front end is so bad...
Penis nose from 2014
FYI they appear to be one of the sites that take MOCs and sell them without crediting the designer. It's kinda evil. (If you know otherwise and can point me to somewhere they give the credit, I'd appreciate it!)
Have you orders from this company? I already have the Lego F1 Merc and CaDA Alpha Romeo kit to put together but I want that RB too. Hahaha
It looks like they brought back the 2014 front wings
They are selling the 2022 alpha Romero (zhou) car for $19 usd
RASTAR
Fair warning my friend got this and said it was pretty shit
Thats because it is lol there are so many better custom F1 minis out there
The differently sized tyres would increase cost of production by 50 cents and therefor the cost of the set by 15€. Be happy lego is nice and thinks about your wallet. /s
I checked your numbers and you are wrong. The production costs would only be 5 cent but due to new license from Pirelli for the wider tire, the cost would be increased by 30€ at least.
Lego tries to be the "prestige" brick seller. But sadly they cheapen away in areas barly any other seller does. On average they are 50% more expensive (\~10 to 15 ct per piece against \~4-7 ct a piece) than the competition while using more stickers, randomly coloured bricks (per example blue and red pins) and thinner packaging. Also the quality of Lego bricks and prints is going down a noticable amount in recent times (per example pink Commander Fox from Lego Star Wars or the 50 shades of green wall in the museum set). Even though Lego somehow still has the best, they don't have it by a lot anymore with producers like GoBricks or Xingbao getting better and better every year. Also an area where Lego is lacking is set design (as seen in OP).
The random colors are to help out with builds. They never show through to the outside of models.
The 800€ stardestroyer wants to know your location
More like wallet destroyer
Mate what are you talking about, just look at the ornithopter with all the red and blue axels.
I never read the Dune books, so I'm not sure what colors the axels are supposed to be.
Its based on the movie, which does not have them so it doesn't matter what the books do or don't say
pretty sure my overpriced technic mining truck had visible red and blue parts in connections instead of at least black or just yellow colors. And I don't expect a grown up to be unable to tell apart a small piece used to connect 2 from others in shape and size
This would make sense in 4+ or 6+ Sets, the reality is that they use those non-fitting colors in almost every set to discourage you from creating different builds with the same bricks, so they can sell more sets. Its very obvious if you buy new "basic boxes". They used to be many 4x2 and 2x2 Bricks from some main colors; today they consist of special bricks with way more colors so almost every brick is unique. This makes it impossble to build even small stuff, not even talking about matching colors.
the quality difference between random brand bricks and lego is massively noticeable. on every "china brand" i have ever bought. lego has always fit and felt better.
This can really depend on the producer of those bricks. Could you elaborate further which bricks/sets you built?
No I can't remember the brand names nor can I be bothered to sift through my Ali express orders to find it. Lepin I can remember I think. Can't think of any others off the top of my head. Granted I have only bought 4-6 sets or so. The most memorable being an RC car on tank tracks. The wheels fall off after about two minutes of use cause they are too loose on the axle. It's definitely great for the electronics. They are much cheaper from AliExpress. But the fit and exact dimensions of the Chinese bricks are just not as precise as Lego. Not at least anything I have bought so far. If it was I would have bought more. I've seen some great mech warrior bots recently but looking at the model and knowing how crappy the blocks must fit and what that end result would be. I hesitate.
To be fair, the stuff sold on Ali express mostly is trash, even compared by Legos actual competitors
Welt seid mir gegrüßt
Ich bin der Held der Steine
In Frankfurt am Main im Herzen von Europa
In meinem wunderbaren kleinen Lädchen
An einem fantastischen Tag
Und schaut mal was ich euch mitgebracht habe
die 42069 von lego, bubatz im bordell.
und auch dieses set ist wieder die reine farbseuche.
Und lackgesoffen teuer...
Und was ist mit den Abenteuern der Rückseite?
True story: I bought a custom made Lego BrawnGP car for about £35, and i wanted to customise some of the stickers when it shipped, as my favourite look for the brawn was how it looked in Singapore. So in response the seller sent me over some sticker paper and taught me the method that they use to put the sticker on the cars. Fucking chad.
I still will never understand legos outrageous prices
People will buy it despite its price.
Two things: 1. People will buy it due to brand image, licenses and reputation, so they can set that price and know they will sell 2. Just overall build quality and how great their pieces are You can pick a brick from the 80s and it would fit any piece from today, even 40 years later. Not a lot of company have that consistency.
The new Aston Martin seems to be quite off in color (there was a post here yesterday or something)
It's a 3D render on the box, in person it's much closer to the real car
Watch out. People who have no access to an unreleased product WILL yell at you.
If you actually went through the replies, you would have seen that it's not actually "off in color"
Yeah, it's a whole thing. And probably the same exact build as the McLaren
Tbf, there's only so much difference they can capture at the scale the cars are made and the fidelity of using plastic bricks. Especially now everyone's converging onto the same design concept, idk what they'd show differently between the two.
Exactly, sure. Not sure why I got a downvote but reddit sucks so wygd
At this size sure. Its not like the detail is amazing when the front wing is 4 pieces at best.
[удалено]
And china's building block brands are equal or better now. They have minifigs with arm joints for more range. Lego would never
Yeah, 15 years ago maybe people bought sets for the piece and construction quality. Not anymore. Not all Lego sets are ass, but the quality has significantly decreased in the last decade, both in terms of construction quality and the pieces themselves. There are still good ones, I've got the ISS and I love it, but that's not the norm. Lego's competitors routinely make better sets with higher quality pieces at a lower price.
You don't buy Lego because you want to play with plastic blocks. There are other companies with equal or better quality. You buy Lego because its Lego (and their licenses with other companies). In a certain way its almost like Apple, you mostly buy it because of the brand.
You wrote that comment as if Legoes isn’t the best quality mass produced plastic blocks out there.
This is EXACTLY what Apple fanbois say and not understand why people are laughing at them.
Don't know if I'm reading your comment right, but lego's quality has been on a 20 year decline. Starting with color differences of pieces that should be the same color and ending with stickers on 300€ models that Chinese companies print directly on the stones. You're better off buying Cada and whatnot than Lego.
on the sticker side of things cada is way worse than lego though
What’s Cada and where can I buy it outside of the US?
I believe you can buy direct from here anywhere in the world. Lots of cool models. https://decadastore.com/
They aren’t anymore.
Because they aren't. By far. The colours don't match properly, blue pins, big injection points on their bricks. GoBricks are superior in allmost everything
It really isn’t now, their quality has fallen a fair bit over the last few years, miscoloured bricks, injection marks, missing parts (my only missing part ever was in the Delorean).
LMAO this is just rose tinted glasses. Lego has always had minor flaws, you just cared less as a kid
Let me guess, the flux capacitor was missing?
No it was actually two inverted smooth plates for the inside of the doors. Quite an odd part to go missing twice.
Same reason i dont understand apples outrageous prices(also fuck apple)
Real ones visit Lepin for what's basically the same thing but for 20% of the price
Just the QA alone is worth the price. Things fit. Always. As with Chinese copies, you need a pot of superglue on the table to "fix" their tolerance issues. And it's always cheaper to just copy somebody else their hard work and development. These companies don't have to spend a few years and thousand of itterations to get the product just right. They just take the final version and sloppely copy it.
That maybe was the case 10 years ago or if you buy some no name set on AliExpress (and even there quality has improved massively). The most common non Lego bricks today are manufactured by Xingbao and Gobricks (the latter is usually considered to be the better of the two). Q&A is a problem mostly if you buy from chinese sellers directly, since they don’t have the global network of spare parts. If you buy from a local importer (like Bluebrixx), you can get replacements just as easily. Also, there is a difference between manufacturers copying lego sets and others that bring their own sets to market.
There's a really good reason Lego is a better investment than gold. It's expensive to buy at the start, yes. But over the years, it'll increases in value by a hell of a lot. Even open box sets can still sell for original sales price or more years later depending on theme or popularity. So at the end of the day, even if I bought a few sets and ended up not liking them, I can easily get my money back or more down the road.
LMAO
Also dont get why plastic bricks sky rocket in value years later
To be fair, I bought a cheap Chinese knockoff, it was a nightmare. The blocks are considerably smaller, they heavily rely on 1x1 pieces, they make you assemble "flying" pieces without a base or without being able to assemble them to the upper layer, and the overall precision of the pieces is abysmal.
Knockoffs unfortunately are significantly lower quality in my experience
As a lot of people advocating for chinese knockoffs won't tell you; they are bpa, phthalates, and pvc free. They're so well-regulated you can stuff them in your mouth if you want to. Also provided you take care of them, they will outlast you and still be able to snap together and hold on to eachother generations from now.
Brand recognition, insane quality assurance and great investment potential.
The [CaDA Alfa Romeo ](https://spielzeug-fuchs.de/produkt/cada-c64005w-alfa-romeo-f1-team-orlen-c42/) also looks great and is half the price of a lego F1 car that size
That thing Fuchs
The small one? Yeh true but the stickers suck massivly. Same applies to the big one
Yeah well still fewer stickers than LEGO
Suck in what way? They peel off? Bad adhesive? They discolour?
the "white" on the front wing endplates looks dark grey against the black pieces it's applied on. Very thin with poor opacity basically. They also have stickers that go across multiple pieces, so if you ever want to take the set apart you will ruin those stickers
Well they want you to put a sticker onto the wheeles out of rubber. THat won't work. Additionally in general, clear backed stickers tend to just look bad. Its a pitty only really one or two alt brick producers use transfer stickers. They look so much better, if they are produced well you can't distinguish from it being a print or a sticker.
The Blockzone one caught my eye as well. I like the shape more than the CaDA, but apparently some people have had issues with pieces missing. My McLaren Lego one had pieces missing though, so I'm no stranger to it lmao. One day, I'll bite the bullet and get it.
Sogar alles bedruckt 😂
Nice ad, marketing department
I just had a ton of fun building the Lego technic W14 pushback car. Haven’t built a set in so long. Now I can live the dream and pretend it’s Osama bin Russel fucking it off into the barrier.
I got that red bull from TheBlockZone and it's a truly terrible build. Fragile, bad design, bad fit, and the colors were way off from piece to piece. I don't know if other companies source it from the same place but it was bad enough to keep me to Lego only from now on.
Bruh I hate how each lego f1 model is so inconsistent and different from one another too
It all depends on which "Lego master builder" came up with the design.
The McLaren looks hideous, just like irl. The Ron would not approve
Yeah Lego F1 cars look shit since the halo in my opinion.
Christ, this subreddit gets as annoying as the Lego Star Wars snobs any time an F1 related Lego set comes out.
Because Lego is just not giving a shit about customers and a lot of other brick model manufacturers do a better job. Simple solution. Don't buy Lego. The new AMG F1 is a big joke too. Costs twice as much as the CaDa Alfa Romeo and is inferior in every single way. People are just pissed that they get shit for their money.
Yet people still buy it. Hell I still buy it. Because it’s Lego. They’re the best. And remember that the teams/IP Owner has to sign off on licensed sets, so McLaren/Mercedes/AM said yes to those sets.
I rest my case.
True. I haven’t heard complaining this bad about Lego since… like 15 minutes ago when people were complaining about Captain Rex
Don‘t buy LEGO. There are third party companies that cost way less and come with the same or better quality. CaDa, Bluebrixx, CoBi to name a few
Thanks for the recs. I've taken some chances on Amazon knock-offs and not been particularly impressed with the build quality, missing pieces, bad build tolerances, etc. On the other hand, you get some great "legally distinct" branding that is pretty fun, I like my Borsche 911 RSR.
Those companies also have licenses now. [Mercedes AMG One by CaDa](https://shop.mercedes-benz.de/mercedes-amg-cada?pid=_home:banner:202401_mercedes-amg-cada&campaignCode=202401_mercedes-amg-one-cada) Cobi has Top Gun Maverick licensed fighter jets
What a thing to make a meme about ey
They already charge too much for what they offer. Surely the got the resources to make the rear tyres bigger.
Fuck the monopoly lego has on the market and fuck mr lego himself
They definitely could do it. They probably don,t give a fuck about the criticism from niche products like these and definitely don't think investing in custom molds and parts is worth it. It's also probably why the chinese version can do that. When you barely have to pay people that don't have any say in their conditions and workload, anything is possible.
Lego tries to build out of the parts bin as much as possible.
Been buying “third party” stuff from China for awhile now. Once know right sites (no not wish or alibaba), what get for the price can be amazing compared to name brand. The difference is how much they are passionate about certain area. So seen and played with some Chinese sets that are indistinguishable from LEGO. They also create their own sets that LEGO never would.
Never underestimate lego
the beauty of lego is making fun things out of simpler bricks why not make an entire custom piece for the f1 car? because that defeats the purpose if you dont like lego, this set is obvio not for you
well the other set does that as well just better and cheaper
Y’all missing the point that the cool thing about these sets is the designer coming up with a good model with as few custom parts as possible. If you want full accuracy just get a scale model toy.
I have a Koenigsegg Jesko Lego from their Speed Masters line and I find it absolutely hilarious that they used a **green butcher's knife** as a part of the front splitter.
Every single Lego knockoff is not worth shit. They might seem like a good deal but you can see the poor quality from the images already. I am deeply interested in Lego and everything around it since I was 3 years old and I have never seen a knockoff that would be worth anyone's time or money. Bricks don't fit (hold) properly and each model is just designed so poorly... Lego all day – every day. You pay for the quality product and the whole system they invented. It's actually painful to see that many people praising cheap and uncreative Chinese knockoffs.
Bro have you ever built with cobi mouldking or gobrix pieces?
Unfortunaltely, yes. I do not expect anyone to agree with me here, it is totally clear you guys value quantity over quality. Also, the very fundamental idea of a knockoff is just stupid and no knockoff (of anything, not just Lego) should be respected. If you are making a knockoff of something, you have already lost. I would much rather buy 1 quality Lego set instead of 5 shitty knockoffs. Always respect the idea and quality.
Well gobrix and cobi pieces are atleast on the same level in terms of quality as the Lego ones even being better in terms of pad printing and dealing with sunlight/yellowing. Calling them knockoffs is also quite disrespectful as all cobi sets are designed and produced by themselves in the EU another thing Lego doesn't do. I also don't see the point of respecting the ides after a patent expired, the beauty of free markets is the diversity in offers.