anothergol

Yeah it just happened lol. I believe it has to do with me just adding a new MOC. I mean it was just 2 days ago. Ironically it's just when LEGO is starting producing the kind of part my MOC was using (wedge tiles), only it's just 2x2 ones that they have released. Apparently you can't even mention Ali in comments, which is one of the best sources for those parts that LEGO doesn't do. And how is it other brands that are ripping off LEGO when it's LEGO that finally produces 2x2 wedge tiles that all others have had for years? Since I went ALL BRANDS now, that's goodbye Rebrickable for me as well I guess then.

It's frankly not that different, I have (genuine) parts in LBG with more variation than between LBG & old grey. And dark grey.. did not exist for classic space, so..

If you're thinking classic space, new grey is better anyway, it really is the "spaceship grey". I don't think anyone MOCing classic space stuff bothers with old grey. I don't know the story behind LEGO's change to LBG, but I'm assuming it was already "the standard" back then. If you buy a Star Wars kit, generally it comes by default in a perfectly matching LBG. I had read it matches a specific popular Tamiya paint, I don't know more about it. And even in brands that don't match LEGO's colors, LBG generally matches perfectly (except for Cobi!). If you're thinking castles, old grey did make sense but new is as good. Old light grey isn't that far from new and can sometimes blend, but old dark grey is pretty different and doesn't at all. And one may think it's a good idea to mix both for a "dirty" look, but something's just not right when you blend old & new, I've never had luck with that and never saw much where it did look good. And for old parts that don't exist in new colors, well sometimes they do! Other brands have preserved the system better than LEGO has, so you can definitely find old-style 2-3 prong hinge plates in pretty much all modern colors. They even embraced & extended that hinge system (which definitely had advantages). Old-style hinges and roller skates are my 2 go-to parts for extra details, while officially only 4276 ever made it to LBG (& isn't cheap). I've never found the iconic 4476b in LBG though. That's one part that survived over 40 years!

and a good part that you wouldn't get if other brands were protecting their designs patent trolling like LEGO does

I believe mould-making used to be very expensive (because manual), but nowadays it's all streamlined & automated, it's hardly more than 3D design (+ 3D printing for easy prototyping reducing costs even more) & the numbers for LEGO's "expensive moulds" out there only used to be true. A toy company with only 1 line of toys doesn't make a 2 billion net profit when these costs matter, anyway.

not a direct copy this time, but once again only slowly catching up with the competition: The only bloat comes from minifigs. Which is understandable, the minifig is pretty much LEGO's icon and they can sell the same amount of plastic for 100x the price as long as it's in minifig form or related. I don't much care, but what annoys me is that most (if not all) bar-sized parts that we use as "tools", were initially minifig accessories. Meaning they have little annoying details that prevent useful connections (we recently got 7052, which is generic enough, but once again, too little too late). If you've ordered minifig pistols on BL and you've received ones with the sights cut off, that's because some kid found them more useful that way & cut them off. Meanwhile, other brands simply have proper all-purpose bar parts. Straight 2L bars. Corner bars at different angles. But just bars, not minifig accessories. On one hand, you can't "NPU" using those parts. On the other hand, they're simply useful tools. With pure LEGO the game is to find other uses for very specialized parts. With some other brands it's building something out of generic parts. Of course there's the other extreme, like Cobi & Mattel with their extremely specialized parts (except these 2 brands ALSO have good all-purpose parts).

Well I wouldn't be complaining if all these were fights between company lawyers and we were still free to buy from all brands. But that's not the case, LEGO is having sets from other brands seized & destroyed, because they contain an apollo stud (which is kinda hard to just avoid). Not counting that when you order a set, it's nearly impossible to know all of the parts inside. In the documents I was sent btw, there was this bit: The Court of Justice of the European Union recently confirmed in its judgment of 4 September 2025 that the fact that an infringement relates only to some of the pieces of a modular system (building set), the number of which is small in relation to the total number of that system, does not exempt the infringer from injunctive relief and enforcement measures (CJEU 4 September 2025, C-211/24, LEGO / Pozitiv EnergiaForras, para. 66). ...which might be the reason why LEGO is doing that more these days. However, I just took a look at that case, or at least what I could find about it, and it's insane, the parts are not even the same moulds at all! They just have the same functions! https://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2025/09/another-brick-in-wall-there-is-no.html That doesn't make sense to me though. LEGO can't seriously pretend that this: is infringing on this design patent: ...but then also fight in court about how the apollo stud is a totally different beast than the old 1x1 round plate. (& perhaps that brand should simply have made the top studs hollow, I don't know how harder it is to mould that, but this is where other brands could beat LEGO: hollow studs everywhere, MOCers would welcome that)

But "prior art" doesn't annoy LEGO. They just can't register the part, but they can use it. What other brands should do/have done is register the parts, so that LEGO *cannot* use them other than after agreements. It's just a weapon, no one uses it if everyone has it.

Pretty nice Btw if you wanna smooth up the top sides, these do exist (but are sadly not easy to find):

Well they do, if you look at the designs some of them have a long history of attempts to get them invalidated. Like the apollo stud which still has an ongoing one I believe (EUIPO is hard to understand, most of the time it only seems to list events with no details). If you read on the 2 ones on the apollo stud, they argue that the part is more or less the same as the long-expired 1x1 with full stud. Which I don't agree with - I think it's the wrong approach. A better approach would be to claim that the design of the part is purely based on its basic use, that it's more logic than design. + the infamous 2x3 plate case https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-03/cp210048en.pdf & who has LEGO's money to waste on lawyers? I know I could totally have fought against them seizing my imports in court, that would have been a big waste of money that I'd rather spend on finding other ways to get those sets. What does surprise me is that I've tried to find designs registered by other brands & couldn't find much. Even from Cobi? That would be the proper way to annoy LEGO.

Makes me laugh that LEGO complains about rules being unfair TO THEM, and that they acknowledge the loopholes in intellectual property, but in their DISADVANTAGE lol. https://www.lego.com/en-be/legal/notices-and-policies/fair-play If EUIPO even accepted designs like the 1x5 plate in the first place, it's either that their rules are idiotic, or (most likely) it's corruption. Designs that arise from basic logic instead of human creativity should just not be patentable. In these days of AI, there are even debates around what makes an AI piece of work protectable, it normally requires some amount of human interaction. A 1xn plate requires pretty much no human interaction, a basic algorithm can design that. And when you check which designs LEGO has protected, you would think that they protected "creative" parts, like hair pieces or whatever. But no! They mostly protected the most basic & useful parts. If they put so much money into fighting to keep the apollo stud protected, it's so that they can pretty much trap every competitor, since it's such a basic part that you'll find one in pretty much every set out there. It can be fought, though. I've had Sembo sets seized & destroyed because of that apollo stud, while in fact the clone one wasn't an exact copy, it was a perfectly round hole vs octagonal for LEGO (now Sembo sadly does have perfect copies of some still protected LEGO parts [without the branding obviously], while they could have easily introduced some differences). It's fortunate that LEGO mostly bothered with minifig accessories so far and other brands already have a more advanced system, so that the most important parts have already been made. I've never encountered a 1x9 though, but I wouldn't be surprised if it already exists. It's more an "ease of building" decision not to produce them, at the end of the day.

Not really, the problem with LEGO's slopes is that they nearly all use the same "half plate" start, instead of full plate like other brands, and they do this by design (for legacy reasons, since all those slopes started as roof tiles). So with pure LEGO you will always have to go through hoops (not saying it's that complex, but it takes precious room) in other to smoothly chain slope parts, while with other brands you just stack them. Ironically if you search on Ali you'll find a lot of sellers showing that 5404 part on their pictures, except it's actually not a 5404 that they're selling, it's a much more useful version with a full plate start. The only exceptions we have as pure LEGO are arches such as 70681. I think we're way past beyond that, especially when nowadays we fit 2 minifigs inside cars and that's best achieved with an odd length (at least inside). I use 1x5's all the time, and LEGO sets definitely do too. I'm missing 1x5 tiles, which.. yeah.. some brands do have.

Just finished building the UCS AT-ST, and I'm now wondering why I bothered. I mean I had watched reviews and I knew it looked bad, but I buy anything AT-ST anyway. Remember the last time you've built a Speed Champions set and it was full of cool techniques and assemblies in all directions? None of that here! It's not just that it LOOKS almost the same as the 2006 one, the build also feels very dated. I just can't believe 20 years have passed and they release this. It looks like their only models were the 2006 UCS and the toy versions, because it suffers from the same wrong proportions everywhere. They could just have bought a Bandai kit to know what an AT-ST is supposed to look like. It's just big, it's not UCS. Yeah I'm bitter but I love the AT-ST and they had no respect for it. I mean, look at the big Mario kart, it was made with love, it looks great, smooth & modern, and it's not even called UCS. This AT-ST was an intern's side project.

Yeah I don't know about pad printing, but a few years ago when I was asking around for custom UV-printing on LEGO, where centering mattered a lot more than quality for me, I was always replied that they could just not garantee good alignment.

I'm building mine atm, and I'm lucky, the "sound" is only very slightly misaligned. I also have the double nintendo when centered. I'm more bothered by the injection marks on the buttons though, which they of course carefully photoshop out on the marketing material. 10/10 for the design though. Perhaps the more accurate thing LEGO has ever done.