Alright guys, I just got my order yesterday for the VQ6 and 7 that I got from VQbs.com. In case you were wondering, I ordered it on June 24th. Acaging is a little beat up. Okay, so as the title suggests, this is the 6x6 VQbs unboxing and review. We're going to start with unboxing, of course. Over the following months, people were receiving an unboxing that brand new VQbs. Very quickly, people were amazed. The VQ5 was instantly the best 5x5 on the market, and the VQ6 and 7 were very quickly considered masterpieces of cube engineering. It seemed like VQbs could do nothing wrong. Soon, the 6x6 and 7x7 were added as official WCA event categories, and people started competing very quickly. As time went on, and people got used to them, people started wondering what the next VQp to come out would be. Would it be the VQp8? Would they do the VQp2 and work up? Many, many people were hoping that a VQp4 would be released, as at the time a decent 4x4 cube did not exist. What a lot of people didn't consider at the time was that 7tons is extremely protective of design trademarks, which made it much harder for VQp to easily make anything below a VQp5. There have been a lot of cases of 7tons demanding that cube stores take inventory down due to alleged trademark violations in the past. This doesn't really happen these days, but they claim that hundreds of millions of unlicensed cubes are seized by customs every year. Whatever the case, VQp didn't want to risk it. The VQp4 wasn't going to happen. Instead, in September of 2009, VQp released the VQp illusion and the VQp danzler, which were both VQp7s with different colored plastic. The reaction within the community was rather...mixed. While somewhere happy about the new cubes, others were criticizing the company for not bringing out anything really...bnew. Nevertheless, the cubes sold reasonably well, and it wasn't a huge issue. After all, it took 5 years to bring out the first 3 who knows how long it had taken to the next one. Then they brought out flag cubes. These were cubes with color schemes based on European flags, such as Germany, Finland, Russia, and so on. This is probably where the downhill slide started, as no one asked for these cubes, and no one really bought these cubes. And so they languished in the online shop with criticism abound. And then came December 2010. This is Donovan with Lubick's cube. And then Brad, as the little bit. And we've come across an issue that's taking place right now, primarily on ebay's where this is starting at. I can no longer have the ultimate Lubick's gauhong on ebay, because they claim from the vertus that it is a patent infringement that they have. So after giving you a new cube, VQp had filed a patent infringement claim with PayPal, coming out the Dian Gauhong and the Ling Yung were infringements. It went through, and PayPal, as well as ebay which owned PayPal at the time, started disabling accounts of people selling the cubes and taking down ebay listings. This wasn't the first time they had filed paid to infringement claims. The Maru 4x4 had been targeted before, but no one paid much attention since nobody denied it was a knockoff. However, the Dian Cubes were incredibly popular at the time, and not many people saw similarities between the cubes and the patent. The Lubick's cube shop was hit particularly hard, as apart from Lub, their main product was the ultimate Lubick's gauhong, and they were forced to stop selling it. This gave rise to a lot of anger in the community, with many people calling for boycotts of all VQp products. On the 1st of January 2011, VQp issued a statement saying that they would pull the paid to infringement claim, and that sales of Dian and Maru cubes would resume effective immediately. For some people, however, it was too little too late. The VQ brand had been tarnished in many people's eyes, and they didn't plan to return anytime soon. The final nail in the coffin came with the release of the VQp3 little over a year later. This was a cube that many people claimed had pieces that were extremely similar to the Dian and Gauhong, but when Crazy Bad Cubes started asking about this on their Facebook page, the representative came off of his rude, sidestep to the questions, and ended up deleting all the comments regarding the cube. VQp still exists today, of course. The company currently has cubes ranging from the VQp2 all the way up to the VQp8, and they recently announced the release of the VQp9 on their Facebook page. However, they aren't anywhere near as popular today. They mostly sell their cubes in retail stores, and don't target the speedcubing market. One of their biggest services is the Create Your Cube site, where someone can get custom pictures printed directly onto the cube, but even this is somewhat controversial. In any case, it seems very unlikely that they will ever regain the highs that they had several years ago. The Cuban community has moved on, and VQp didn't come from the ride.