I took a closer look last night at the new cubes
and noticed that under the caps on the centres (which thankfully were relatively easy to remove) there was rivets, not screws, under the caps. This could be good or bad. It's good, because it seems very unlikely that the rivet would work itself out. It's bad because if the spindle breaks then there isn't any way to remove the centre piece from the spindle.

Also the manufacturers have coated the plastic with something which is definitely reducing the friction of the pieces against each other. They are no longer torquing the centres on too tight, probably because of the rivets. The result of all these changes is that the cube is very easy to turn right out of the box, much easier than the original Ideal Toy cubes were back in the early 1980's. These new cubes may last longer as the main reason I saw for cubes failing was the screws would become stripped, and could no longer be tightened if the cube became too loose.

Also the latest cubes have vinyl stickers with no paper backing, and this is a big improvement. So basically the new design gets a big thumbs up, 9 out of 10. If Oddzon ever goes back to screws instead of rivets, and makes replacement parts easily available, then I'll change the 9 to a 10

Mark

Just wanted to partly agree with you, but also wanted to mention the sad los of that lovely 'twang' sound you get when playing with, sorry, 'using' (hehe) the original cubes.