The Undiscovered Playthings

So I was out and about hunting around for new bootleg toys (found some cool Spidey stuff too!). When I left one of the joints I haunt in my quest for bootleg toys, I actually paid attention to what they had outside their little shop.

Take a look at this cheap ‘tricycle’….

So it’s made of plastic and will probably fall apart pretty darn quickly.  But take a good look at the front of this thing. What’s under that clear plastic bubble???

Heh, Power Rangers baby! That’s what’s under the bubble.

Every time I think those folks who come up with this stuff can’t top themselves, they surprise me with something new.

This thing, I applaud simply for its originality. Hey, when the bike finally gives up the ghost, the kid can take a hammer to the bubble and voila! three action figures to play with.
This is brilliant, simply brilliant.

Here’s a blast from the past. These were posted on the original version of The Undiscovered Playthings. But while rooting around the bootleg toys in my garage, I came across them and figured I give them another look.

Straight from the Phillipine Islands back around 1999(?) are these Star Wars figures that require some assembly.

I received these packaged in a plastic bag with six boxes. The boxes aren’t very big and they are quite flimsy. For those of you wondering, there’s a logo on the box that reads SOGO and this company is located somewhere in Taipei. Hmmmm… how many of you have left me and started googling (or binging) SOGO Taipei in another tab on your browser? Come baaaacckkk!

Below are a couple of shots of sides of the boxes. The boxes I have feature photos of Han Solo or Luke Skywalker. Somewhere out there in some Star Wars collectors hands are boxes of this bootleg toy series featuring a Storm Trooper, Darth Vader and Chewbacca. Unfortunately, those figures aren’t in my hands.  I’ve only got a couple of the good guys.

Here’s Luke Skywalker. You just gotta dig the color combination on this thing.

Now I’ve come across bootleg Lego figures (and you can see bootleg Lego figures at Reasonablyclever.com) and opened up more than a few of them. There was never any consistency in the colors of the figures. So while the box I opened features some crazy orange, white and red plastic. I can almost guarantee that another box will have this same figure in different colors.
Y’know, in the hands of somebody with any kind of artistic skill (I have ZERO skill), they could probably paint this things up so they would look sort of like the actual character.

Okay, that’s it for these things. Time to put them back into the bowels of my garage (and hope they don’t get crushed by some behemoth bootleg toy).

… and why are bootleg toys being made of this character?
Okay, here’s the scoop, I’ve been seeing some toys featuring some cartoon series called Ben 10. Well, I’m an old guy, but not that old. So I Bing’d it and shazam! I learned all about Ben 10. I can tell you all about it, but eh, that would just be too much work. All I will share is that this series is on the Cartoon Network. Which explains why I’ve never heard of this series. Y’see, the only things I watch on the C/N is Family Guy and Robot Chicken.

Anyways, here’s one of the bootleg toy thingamabobs that have popped up. Actually, this really isn’t a bootleg. More like some toy that is just capitalizing on the Ben 10 phenomenon.

So I have no idea if Ben actually rides a motorcycle. But those crazy toy makers in China put him on one. The packaging of this toy is really pretty good. Nice and sturdy stuff with nice bright shiny colors and whatnot.

The back of this box features more ripped off art work and some close up pics of what this thing can do, like Bump ‘n Go, Music & Flash.  Now normally you wouldn’t expect any toy pictured on any unauthorized product to actually match what you find in the box. But low and behold, what you see is what you get. Take a gander below.

Woo Hoo! Cheap plastic bike with cheap plastic figure! See all the holes on the figure and bike? You sure don’t see them in the picture on the box. That’s cuz the toy makers took a pic from the clean side, not the side where they screwed everything together.

Friends, there are stickers galore on this thing! I counted a dozen. The one cool thing is that no two stickers are alike. I would have hated to be the worker at the the illegal toy factory who had to put the stickers on this thing. The suckiness of that job would be on level 10 if you asked me.

So there ya have it folks! The Undiscovered Playthings  premiere of an unauthorized Ben 10 toy. This series is  popping up all over. I grabbed this one because I thought it was the nicest of what I’ve seen so far. But then again, that’s really not saying much.

Here’s a blast from the past! One of the first toys I ever posted on this site way back in the mid 1990s. I actually didn’t ‘review’ the thing. I just slapped a pic of it with a couple of comments. You can find the original pic HERE.
I actually figured this thing was lost to the mists of time as I hadn’t seen it in a long while. But today, while rooting through some of the bootleg toys stashed in my garage, I came across not one, but two of these things.
Heck! I thought I only had one.

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you Super Bat!

Bat ears? Who needs bat ears when we can have some cool antennas sticking out of our mask. Lookie, lookie! We can smash through walls and leave them shattered into little pieces. Of course, is that a look of shock or pain on Super Bats face? We will never know.
Heh, Super Bat sure does know how to strike a pose on his skateboard, doesn’t he?

Now, a view of the side of the box…

The bottom drawing in the pic above shows how the toy is supposed to work.  While up top, there’s Super Bat swinging from, well, he’s swinging from his name. Yes, this bat truly is Super.

Now what kind of toy would a bootleg toy be if it didn’t have any bad engrish splashed somewhere on the package. Behold….!

I got news for you folks. This thing does exactly what is described above. Super Bat goes straight, straight, straight until he hits something or comes to the edge of say, a table. Then he spins away and goes straight, straight, straight until he hits another obstacle. Then, you guessed it, he spins away and goes straight, straight, straight…. Well, you get the idea.
Hey! Doesn’t that bat logo on the box belong on a certain brand of booze? Not that I’m a drinker or anything. It’s just that, well, the bat looks awful familiar. I’m just saying, y’know.

Here’s Super Bat and believe it or not, he’s true to the artwork on the box.

Well, let me rephrase that, Super Bat is sorta true to the artwork on the box. The figure doesn’t have those cool antenna on his head. I think the bootleg toy makers really missed out on an opportunity to make something truly unique. Instead, we get a Batman figure (an unhappy Batman figure by the look of it) with bat ears.
Super Bat is about five inches tall. The guy’s got some articulation on the arms, neck and waist. I’m actually afraid to have Super Bat strike any poses because his limbs are ’sticky’ and I think he might break if I move him around too much.

Now how accurate was the box? Well, even the sticker on the board matches the box art work.

Heck! Super Bat’s board doesn’t come with just one sticker. We even get a SUPER BAT sticker to boot.

Friends, Super Bat is at least 17 years old. Maybe a couple of years older than that. I honestly don’t remember when or where I got him. I don’t even know much I shelled out for him. But this was back in the day when bootleg and knock off toys were built with some kind of quality. I mean, the bootleg toy makers provided a Super Bat toy to the artist (if you can call him or her that) who put together the box artwork.

Heh, I was so stoked to rediscover Super Bat again. I just couldn’t wait to share him with you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to play with Super Bat (provided I have a couple of AA batteries laying around somewhere).

All righty! Time for something Star Warzy! Take a peek at these beauties! No, I’m not talking about the figures. I’m talking about the packaging.  These bootleg toys feature some really colorful backer cards. The cards also littered with plenty of stolen pics from the movies. These cards are so busy, I’m not sure where to look.

The card back features plenty of pics from the movies and pictures of some of the real Star Wars toys that have been released. I’m really digging this packaging. For some reason, this packaging takes me back in time to when all things were possible, including flying through a purple sky filled with field of stars littered with starships.

Of the first two pics up top, the bottom package is pretty beat up. I was digging through a box of bootleg toys at this swap meet and found that pack there. The package was so beat up, I was able to talk the dealer down to a really, really good price for it.
The cards measure about 17″x11″. The card and the bubble are both pretty frail and easily damaged/dented. You get four figures, several weapons and a vehicle in each set. I wonder how many figures the bootleggers had for this series. Both of the sets pictured include a Yoda and Han Solo figure.

Here are some better shots of the figures. I’ll leave out my own commentary. Feel free to fill in the blanks yourself.

I have to admit, finding Star Wars bootleg toys is always a special treat. Why? Because they don’t come around too often. You may be thinking to yourself  “Self, I’ve seen these figures somewhere before”. Well, you are darn tooting right you’ve seen these before. You will have to dig back far into the early days of this blog to find these same figures in some slightly different bootleg toy packaging. Yeah, you’re gonna have to dig cuz I’m not gonna link back to that post. I’m sneaky that way.

Hey Everybody! Well, I’m alive and kicking. Yeah, it’s been a while. But I haven’t forgot the site. It’s just that given a choice of going out and playing or planting my @$$ in front of the computer, well, I’ll take the outdoors anyday.
So today’s post is all about a character that I will not name. Why? You ask? Well, click HERE and for the answer.

So let’s take a peek at these magnetic toys….

So I have no idea if this character that shall not be named is even still being produced. But back in the late 90s, this was one hot item. Now granted, these are magnets, not toys. But believe me when I tell you that there was a bootleg toy line under this name (Politic Pat) that was everywhere! You couldn’t sneeze at a swap meet without tripping over something from the Politic Pat toy line. They were everywhere I tell ya! Everywhere!

Here’s a closer peek at these characters that shall not be named…

Heh, it’s a good thing I’m not naming any characters in this bootleg toy series. I honestly have no idea what these guys (gals?) were called. I’ll give them my own names. From left to right we have Sarge, Kasey and Rat. I didn’t just pull those names out of a hat, y’know. Sarge, Kasey and Rat are the names of pets I have/had.

Here’s a couple more of these nameless magnets…

What the heck is that purple thing supposed to be? Most of you I suppose will recognize the bottom figure. But I’m not saying his (her? its?) name! No, I’m not! I guess I can spell it with dashes in-between the letters. I hope it doesn’t get me in trouble again.

P-O-K-E-M-O-N
I changed my mind, I’m not even going to spell it with dashes between the letters.

Just so we are clear now, these things are not for sale or trade. These are part of my own collection of toys and I am only showing them off to you.  Did you hear me Mr Lawyer-Man?
Everybody, thanks for stopping by. I hope you’ve been having a good holiday season.

Here’s a look at another classic bootleg toy. Yes, it’s on the old site with the over-compressed photos. This is one of my favorite series of bootleg toys. The Super S. Heros robot series. The series includes Superman, Batman, Wolverine and a Power Ranger (or is it a Masked Rider robot?). Today, we’re going to take a better look at the Superman robot.

This robot is a wonderful reproduction of Superman. The robot stands about a foot tall, runs on three AAA batteries and has a sound chip in it that is pretty darn noisy (meaning L-O-U-D! Not just L-O-U-D! Really, really L-O-U-D!!!) once the robot is on the move.

The robot’s clown feet help it keep its balance. The S logo on the robot’s chest is just a sticker that was planted on the front. When I discovered these toys all those years ago, there were only a few Superman robots on the shelf. Of the few that were there, most had the sticker removed (you could see the remnants of the glue that held the sticker). Some were completely bare. I asked the shop keeper what happened to the stickers and he had some behind the counter. He gave me brand new stickers that still had the glue on them.
I mentioned a sound chip. Well, when the robot starts lumbering forward, the sound chip produces the sounds: Halt! Drop your weapon! Fire! Fire! Then machine gun sounds start emanating from this thing. I mentioned that the sound is loud, I really can’t emphasize just how loud it is. It’ll wake the freaking dead. I haven’t seen the movie in a while, but I’m thinking the voice is Robot Cop of the Robot Cop movie fame.
One more thing about this robot, when the machine guns sounds are firing off, the torso starts spining around for a few seconds.  The first time I turned the thing on, it caught me completely off guard. But not in a bad way. It was just a nice little feature that made this thing that much more special in my bootleg toy collection.

This particular Superman has a bit of a Christopher Reeves look to it. Although to be quite honest, the face just doesn’t have enough of a Superman look for my taste. I like my Superheroes to be more manly man type instead of the dolly type displayed above.

Oh Look below! Superman also comes in Krpytonian Green and black. I wonder if they ran out of Superman bodies at the bootleg toy factory and just started sticking Superman heads on any robot body that just happened to be laying around? Well, if that’s the case, then thank you Mr. Bootleg Toy maker for giving me such a wonderful variant on one of my absolute favorite bootleg toys.

I tell ya, they don’t make ‘em like they used to. That’s for sure.

… After taking a short vacation with some friends  to get myself ourselves out of the rut we were in, I’m feeling the juice for this site again. I’ll be starting up the posts again next week.
Thanks to everybody who sent a note or dropped a comment for your support. It was rough patch to go through, but I’m back and the blog will be up and running all over again.

… but I’ve got a really good reason.
Life’s been kicking me in the balls really hard lately. Friend’s have been dropping off left and right the past few weeks. I don’ t mean my friendships are going by the wayside. I mean I’m watching my friends get buried.

Up until recently, 2009 was going on the charts as one of the best years of my life. Then this….

I’ll see about getting the posts up regularly starting sometime in the next week or so.

Here’s another one of my Mexican bootleg figures. I have to tell you, when the toy makers in Mexico decide to make a figure, they either miss the mark completely or come up with something that isn’t too bad.

This one falls into the category of isn’t too bad.

Now this Captain America might already have been posted to the old site. But hey, this go ’round, the pics are gonna be a tad better. So this figure was packaged in a plastic baggie. I kid you not. It’s a baggie that I found Captain America in. It wasn’t even a zip lock bag to keep the freshness in.  I dig the costumer and especially dig the shield.

Captain America looks better in the pic above, no? Yes ladies and gents, the shield can be attached to the hand. It’s actually pretty darn good fit too! I couldn’t shake the shield off no matter how hard I tried. Believe me, I tried really hard. Heh, just kidding. I didn’t bother cuz the shield is as snug as a bug in a run on bootleg Captain America’s hand.
I gotta give the Mexican bootleg toy makers credit for actually putting a star and stripes on this guy. Sure they gave it their own twist. But at least they tried to get points for efort.

What would a bootleg toy review be without a shot of Captain America’s behind, I mean, backside. The figure actually looks much buffer from this angle than from the front. It must be those massive thighs.

Dang! The bootleg toy makers even got the eyes the right color. It’s not too often you see a bootleg toy with eyes that aren’t black. But old Cap has his baby blues going on! Of course, the bootleg toy makers didn’t bother to paint his lips a nice red color. Considering they had red paint available, that’s a complete bootleg toy tragedy.

This figure is actually made out of some pretty darn solid plastic. I wouldn’t expect this thing to fall apart too quickly. Yeah, the paint job’s whack! But if for anybody who makes their own custom figures, this one would probably be a good candidate for customization.
Oh yeah, bootleg Captain America  stands about a shade over seven inches tall. I wasn’t kidding when I said this guy is made of solid plastic. The figure is actually pretty heavy. I could do curls with him and build up my biceps if I was so inclined.