For many years, the transition of the legendary PLAYMOBIL® castles from the old Steck-system to the system-x building system was a highly controversial topic discussed over and over again at the internet discussion boards devoted to PLAYMOBIL®.  Ever since 1997, when the system-x building system slowly began to gain ground as PLAYMOBIL®s preferred construction system, the rumors about a system-X castle typically resurfaced in the weeks preceding to the annual toy fair. Yet the Steck-system castles remained untouched until today...
Although the first partial prototypes date back from 1997, it seems that the PLAYMOBIL® development team wanted to take as much time as they deemed necessary to create a series of System-X castles that would at least match their highly acclaimed Steck-system predecessors.

System-X  2.0
The result is on display at the International Spielwarenmesse in Nürnberg, and although you can't disassemble the castle sets there to see of what kind of parts these castle are composed, and how it is put together, it sure looks very solid and easy to put together. The new castles are easier to built, because it is made up of lesser yet larger parts than both the traditional Steck- and System-X building pieces.

One of the eye-catchers in these new knights sets is the very good "corporate identity" of the various knight clans... The Dragon Knights have a fire-spitting dragon as their company logo and an aggressive shade of red as their base color, with some yellow and black accents. The insignia of the Royal Knights is a lion-head and the figures mainly come in a mix of blue, yellow and a dark orange tones.