As I draw closer to having almost every Raideen toy ever made, I continue to discover new and unusual bootlegs of the character. This one really blew my mind.

As I draw closer to having almost every Raideen toy ever made, I continue to discover new and unusual bootlegs of the character. This one really blew my mind.

The toy comes bagged and carded, with the card reading "Kaiju Set" in Japanese, although I doubt the set is Japanese in origin. Inside the bag is a backing card with a nice full color illustration of a generic Japanese monster.

Inside you have two toys. Raideen, and a Jet that looks a bit like Mazinger's Brain Condor.

Raideen is Polyethylene - the same material as jumbo machinders, although much thinner and flimsier. It stands about 7 inches tall, and is articulated at the waist and arms.

The sculpt is very homely, clearly done by someone with a vague sense of what Raideen looks like. The rivets molded into the figure are reminiscent of the old Popy vinyls, suggesting perhaps one of those was used for reference.

Paint application is both sprayed on and applied by hand. visible brush strokes can be seen on the shoulders and other parts.

One hand has a closed fist with the shield, but the other hand is pointing out into the distance. With real Raideen toys, this pointed hand is usually accompanied by a clip-on bow, but perhaps the bootleggers were using a loose figure for reference?

The back of the figure has a grooved tab molded into it.

The ship is also blow molded in Polyethylene and this time in two distinct colors. The nose is cast in black, and the body in red.

The molding on this one is rough, possibly an original creation. The ship is reminiscent of the Getter Machines (Eagle and Jaguar) or the Brain Condor.

This piece has a curious protrusion on the bottom of the ship... Hmm what can that be for?

You guessed it, the ship "docks" to the back of Raideen!

The figure cannot stand with the ship docked on the back, but still, it looks damn cool. I love the ability of bootleggers to improvise when they lack crucial information.

This is yet another curious specimen from the world of bootleg toys. Before this one, I had never seen one before, and I haven't seen one since. Good luck finding one.

Brothers should be close, don't you think?

Before we go forward, let's take a quick look back for a minute, shall we?

Since it is the most copied toy in the junior machinder category, I often must reference the Robo Kress bootleg, a toy that was based on an original Japanese toy by Takemi (which unfortunately, I do not own). And if you've been reading for awhile, you may remember a toy made by the same company (Galba) that I condemned as being the worst Combattler V toy ever made. Remember this guy? Our old friend UFO Star Boom?

Well, since the Robo Kress was not an original design, it shouldn't have come as any surprise that neither was the Combattler. And yet it did. This past week, whilst doing my regular Ebay searches I saw this guy in a preview picture and didn't even need to click the auction to recognize the similarity.

Of course, I knew right away that I needed this and sent an offer to the seller, which he graciously accepted. So soon I would be able to unite these two "long lost brothers".

But something seemed unusual to me. In the seller's description, he said the got it at a train station in Japan. Now, I am well aware of cheap bootleg Japanese train station toys (called "zokki") but this just didn't fit the profile. I'd never seen a Japanese toy that looked this....bad. Yet, I had no reason to doubt the seller.

When it arrived, the story would become clearer. There is a sticker on the stomach that says "Combattler" in English and the rest of the writing appears to be in Korean! A-ha! So it's not Japanese after all, but Korean. That makes sense, especially since I've seen a similar style toy from there before. (More on that in another review!) So how did the seller get mixed up? Well, I asked him if he ever lived there as well and he said he did make a brief trip to Seoul as a child and that his dad often went there. So it must've been purchased on one of those trips, brought back to Japan, then back to the US and finally to me! I love being able to trace the travels of a toy like that. It's great to know what adventures a toy has had before settling in your hands.

Combattler here is about 15" tall and as you can see from the pictures above, has more play value than the Italian "Star Boom" version. Both fists can launch (although the left one is missing the spring) and there is a big disc shooter in the stomach (this too, no longer functions). Now, when I say that the fists launch, I mean the entire forearms, yellow and all, not just the black fists. Fortunately, those black fists can actually be turned since it is a separately molded piece held in place by a screw inside the forearm.

The blue feet are also attached via a screw inside the bottom of each foot. The color scheme, while ludicrous, is very appealing in a goofy way. And while there is no "Star Boom" or dot stickers, I think I like these ones better than the knockoff version. At least it's sort of got a proper face.. even if it does appear to still be smiling for some reason.

All lightheartedness aside, I am extremely happy to have added this one to my collection. I consider it an important find, mostly because most Korean toys are those hard plastic bots that we used to cover very often. While interesting and often amusing, those are really not my thing. As a sort of polyethylene junkie, this is a rare find and it's connection to an existing part of my collection only enhances it's appeal.

BONUS!

There's definitely a lot more to discover from Korea. Check out this old magazine picture from a Korean marketplace that was sent to me a couple years ago. There is a rare unknown Taekwon V circled in red, but you can also see a Reideen, a Grendizer, a Robot Keiji K and a Hiyata from Ultraman!

My eyes! They Burn!

I got this bootleg on the same shopping trip that yeilded the Spider Man Adventure hero. However, while the Spider Man was out in the open on a street corner, this one was harder to find.

Bored and looking to score (a bootleg), I wandered in and out of shops in chinatown. Some stores had toys hanging from pegs outside, others just had festive paper lanterns dangling from fading awnings. In between a fish market and a bag shop, a small shop caught my eye. Did I just see what I thought I saw?

Dan and I went in and my bootleg sense was tingling. I was led around by a strange force until we saw them hanging on pegs.

Bootleg Soul of Chogokin Dancouga toys, labeled "Wild Force Chariot".

I wanted one, and Dan wanted one, so we began haggling with the old Chinese lady working there. $25 each she said.... too much. How about if we bought both? Anything?

I think we knocked a few bucks off the total but it took a while - she drove a hard bargain. Were these worth $25 each? Hell, the discovery alone was worth it.

Dan tore his open back at the hotel, but I must resist. I must open mine in a controlled environment, somewhere where I can document it in all of its bootleg craziness.

So I waited. And waited. Eight months later I finally get the chance to open it.

The verdict? It's terrible. But in a wonderful kind of way.

Packaging

If the idea of a bootleg is to make a cheap knock off of the original item, why make the cards so damn big? This card is easily 20 inches tall, twice the size of the figure? Cut that in half and bootleggers can save a ton of trees.

But I digress - back to the package. Wild Force Chariot comes blister-carded on a HUGE backing card. The card features images of the real SOC Dancougar, but the differences are immediately obvious. I like how the bootleggers photoshopped in the bootleg labels onto images of the real toy.

The back of the card features the barely discernible instructions. The warnings are all in Chinese, but a sticker has been placed over a block that has an age warning in Spanish.

Big Moth

Out of the package the toy is already in humanoid mode without the feet animals attached. The toy has been radically simplified, but the transformation is essentially the same. The Big Moth can be transformed into all of his versions - humanoid, tank and animal.

Land Liger and Land Cougar

The two tiger robots are here, and those too are simplified with some awesome decals. Both can also transform from humanoid to vehicle to animal, as well as becoming the feet for Dancougar.

Eagle Fighter

The Eagle fighter, in this case, is totally different. Here it is just a hollow shell, only able to form Dancouga's head, and a crappy bird mode. Oddly, two Eagle Fighters are included with the bootleg.

Combined!

All the parts combine alright, but the final form is sloppy and unrefined - in other words - typical bootleg quality. The plastic feels like brittle styrene, and the paint applications are messy.

The only included weapon is a gun, and parts of the gun aren't included. Also omitted is the giant wing that attaches to the back.

No sword either.

So yeah, it's a pretty horrible toy. But someone had to cover it, to document it, and we are those people.

The metal flecks mean it's Gokin

Sometimes things must be bought, because if not, nobody would believe you when you told them about it. Such is the case with this Gaiking bootleg.

It's like cryptozooloogy for toys.

Lets talk about the card and packaging first. Daiking is sold blister-carded, meaing encased in a vacu-formed plastic bubble that adheres to a card via glue. When this arrived, the glue had dried up, and the bubble was mostly off. The front card art is gaudy, loud and obnoxious - in other words - Awesome.

At the top of the card, in a small yellow box is the phrase "Pla-Gokin" (プラ合金). Below that is the character name - Daiking, likely named to avoid the obvious impending lawsuit.

The "Pla" in "Pla gokin" stands for plastic.

The bottom right has the toy safety inspection seal (no idea if it actually got inspected), and on the left, the logo of the Manufacturer, Toy Pat Co.

The back of the card is just black printed on cardboard, with an illustration of Daiking that looks remarkably inspired by the Shogun Warriors version of the Gaiking Jumbo.

The toy itself is a hideous monstrosity, but I can't help stare at it and marvel at its weirdness. It looks like Gaiking, but it doesn't. It's as if they made the toy based on a drawing by a Japanese 6 year old, without ever actually knowing what Gaiking really looked like.

The material is a smoky clear vinyl infused with large metallic flakes. I guess that's the gokin in Pla-Gokin. The vinyl is thick, smelly, with a slightly sticky texture.

Articulation is kind of a moot point with this, but it has the standard arms and waist movement. The toy stands about 6 inches tall.

Really, it's another obscure funky oddity in the world of Japanese toys. I love the almost folk-art take on one of the most iconic super robots. I am also intrigued about the fact that this appears to be a bootleg made by the Japanese for the Japanese market - something of a rarity. You almost never see these for sale. When they do come up, expect them to sell for a few hundred dollars.

Bigger....better....blow molded..

So maybe the standard size Marusan Godzilla is not your thing. Maybe you preferred the big Bullmark toy seen in Godzilla vs. Hedorah. Well, not to worry, there is a big blow molded bootleg of that one too.

I got this toy at around the same time I got the other one and it's discovery (to me, at least) happened in nearly the same way; it was in the Super7 issue, not noted as being blow molded and I just happened to see it by accident, while searching for more information about the Marusan one, actually. In fact, I found a completed auction for this very toy that ended with no bids and I thought I had missed out. But fortunately, it was re-listed shortly afterwards and I bought it.

This guy is 12.5" tall and articulated at the hips and shoulders only. The legs are a little loose, but not as bad as my Marusan one and the arms hold their positions perfectly. The only problem with the condition of this one is that a lot of paint has chipped off over the years. The eyes in particular are completely missing. I briefly thought about repainting them, but quickly decided against it.

This version is made out of light orange poly for the main body with a darker orange for the arms and legs, but there exists another version that is all dark orange. Interestingly, this guy differs from the original scuplt (check out JoshB's review of the B-Club re-issue here) in that the fins on the back have been shortened and rounded off.

I've done plenty of reviews in the past about cheap blow molded robots so it may surprise you to read that I never really thought about actually seeking out just toys that were blow molded, regardless of genre. I never really gave much thought to blow molded kaiju or monsters or hero characters and vehicles. But there's a lot more out there than I had ever realized. I've already added Red King and a couple of Ultramen to my collection of Japanese blow molded knockoffs and I've heard that there is even a Baragon as well. And of course, the very rare Supersol kaiju toys from Argentina, a country where nearly every toy is blow molded, are on my shopping list as well. Hopefully these guys are just the beginning!

What better way to honor a classic than to buy its cheap knockoffs?

The very first Godzilla vinyl was produced in 1966 by Marusan and was inspired at least in part by the earlier Aurora model kit. After Marusan released this toy, it would later be re-released by Bullmark, Bandai, M1, Super7 (giant sized version) and Marusan again, naturally with many mold and color variations.

But somewhere along the way, I'm not sure when, a bootleg version was made that was not vinyl at all, but in fact, good old fashioned blow molded plastic. So you know I needed one.

When I first saw this toy, I had no idea that it was blow molded. It was listed (along with nearly every other Godzilla toy out there) in the October 2004 issue of Super7 magazine celebrating the big Gs 50th birthday. This toy, and two color variations (red and tan) were simply listed at "bootlegs". Since nearly all of the other toys in the lineups were vinyl, I had always just assumed they were too.

I only found out that it was blow molded when I saw it while doing a general search for blow molded toys. Seeing as how I didn't own the original vinyl (only the giant sized Super7 version), I decided I had to have it. I mean, not only would it be much cheaper than trying to get an original, but it would actually fit in better with all the rest of my cheap knockoff crap.

As I said, I don't own the original, so I can't really make a side by side comparison, but I'd imagine that this one is slightly shorter. This version stands 8.5 inches tall. Cast in light blue with dark blue and green spray, along with with silver and black for the eyes.

There are four points of articulation (hips and shoulders) but unfortunately mine is VERY loose at the joints. Holding it by the head and slowly swinging it like a pendulum will actually cause the limbs to slide back and forth as gravity pulls them down and the arms cannot be properly positioned outwards while in a regular standing pose. They will simply fall to the side.

Still, it has all the ugly but charming attributes you would expect from a blow molded knockoff... atrocious seam lines, excessive flash and no weight at all. I have no packaging for it nor have I ever seen any, but I assume it probably came in a bag with a cheap, generic header card. Now I just need to get the other versions. Which is strange because I do not collect color variations of vinyl. So why do I want color variations of blow molds based on vinyls? As usual, I think it's best to think too much about it and just go with the flow.

Winning!!!

Sometimes things are so out there and hideous that you have to get them, else no one would believe you when you told them about them.

Such is the case with Spider-Man Adventure Hero.

It was a chilly February, and Dan, Adam and I were in New York City, doing some toy shopping in Chinatown between meetings at Toy fair.

We were just coming out of a disappointing tour of Elizabeth St when I came across this vendor. he had the usual tourist crap, and out front of his store he had a bunch of toys. Most were your garden variety bootlegs - disney toys, power rangers, etc.. But this one caught my eye. I started to take pictures of it, when the owner comes out to yell at me like I had just disgraced his family.

So, having stolen the toys soul with my magical camera, and not wanting a curse upon my family, I offered to buy it. I paid too much, but in retrospect, it was worth it.

So where to begin with this one.

Judging by the packaging there is a whole assortment of "Adventure Hero" versions of Spider-man. He plays Baseball, basketball, Soccer, he even boxes.

Of course, I got the Golf one. The juxtaposition with Golf Clubs, baseball cap, and then the sleveless shirt with tie is too awesome for words.

It's clearly a case of a Spider-Man head stuck to someone else's body. The only thing I could think of is maybe this is the body for the WWE wrestler Mankind, who wore a similar outfit.

The plastic is really cheap - a thick hard rubber. But it is very solid, with decent articulation. If it werent for the fear of poisoned paint, I might have given this to the kids.

The real treat here is the packaging. Each variant is displayed proudly on the back and someone clearly spent a lot of time on the graphics.

My favorite is the golfer Spider-Man declaring "Winning!!!"

October is here, and we're bringing the pain with a month of bootlegs, monsters, and downright scary toys. First off - the terrible Morphbot!

October is here, and we're bringing the pain with a month of bootlegs, monsters, and downright scary toys. First off - the terrible Morphbot!

I picked up this guy when KB was going out of business. I only paid a few dollars for it, and I bought it knowing it would suck. I thought it would be fun to chronicle it, and then maybe pass it off to my kids.

The box is pretty large, with a nice die-cut window and a try-me feature. One side of the box has a beveled edge for some reason.

The box has the usual photoshopped graphics, but I was surprised to see that this was licensed by Ford. Of course just because it has a logo on it, doesn't mean it is actually legit. Perhaps in the great automotive industry, this application got overlooked.

Morphbot is a 1/12 Ford GT sportscar. It looks like it belongs to the Roadbots toy line, but i couldn't find it. They have a ford GT, but it doesn't look like this one.

In vehicle mode, the GT is almost a foot long. It's big, and the vehicle mode actually doesn't look that bad. The wheels are hard plastic, and nothing opens.

The size is about the only redeeming quality of this thing. The material is a toxic, crayon-like plastic. I swear, if I get cancer someday, you can blame this. I felt like I needed to sterilize my hands after handling it.

Transformation is simple in theory, but because the molding is such crap it basically starts to transform as soon as you pick it up. Nothing in this toy is precise. All of the joints are ball joints that have too little friction to hold any pose.

So there is the transformation as depicted on the box, and then how I think it was supposed to go.

If you go by the way it looks on the box - forget it. It looks atrocious. The nose of the car is flat down, and the doors have to be removed and re-clipped onto the back. ugh.

However, you can get a manageable robot mode out of it by pulling the nose up and leaving the doors attached like a classic G! transformers style.

Articulation is good in theory, but the joints are too loose to do anything but stand up.

Morphbot comes with four weapons: A battery-powered rifle with sound and light action, a spear, a small gun and a shield (made from the roof of the car). All are lame.

After the review, I gave this to the kids. They thought the robot mode sucked, but they liked the car mode for the few minutes it held together. In minutes, it was in parts across the floor, already forgotten.

Off into the trash it went, to join its brethren in landfills across the world.

The good news is it does everything the original does and it wont make you poor at a retail price of about $5. The bad news is, it is cheap as hell.

The Build Tiger is one of the cooler brave mechs in my opinion, the DX one of the best toys in the line. But before you get all excited, this isn't it.

Yes, this is a bootleg, but not of the DX. This is a bootleg of the smaller Super Combine Super Build Tiger. Unlike the massive DX version, this one is only about 7 inches tall.

The good news is it does everything the original does and it wont make you poor at a retail price of about $5. The bad news is, it is cheap as hell.

The plastic is cheap, the fit is poor, the stickers don't stick well.. but despite the shortcomings, I can't help but like it. It's an ambitious bootleg. The fact that it still can separate into the individual vehicles, and form Build Tiger as well as Super Build Tiger, is pretty remarkable.

I'm not going to go into the history of the toy, or even all the gimmicks, as Dan is going to be doing a proper review of the legitimate DX toy. But I will talk about a few things.

The names of the characters are fun -

Drill Boy Soccer Detective

This part comes improperly assembled out of the factory. The soccer ball crest is backwards. It's easily fixed.

McCrane Combat Detective

Power Joe Kung Fu Detective

Dumpson Wrestler Detective

I couldn't get the two halves to fit together properly.

all of these (Minus Drill Boy) combine to form Build Tiger.

Add in Drill Boy, and you get Super Build Tiger

But wait, there is more, combine all the robots in vehicle mode to form Super Build Gimlet

Whatever the hell a Gimlet is...

I guess the point of all this is that you get all of this, for only five bucks. Not a bad deal if you ask me. Look for one at your local dollar store.

For better or worse, my Kong crusade continues...

Here's one that I picked up about a year ago and in fact, I accidentally outbid a friend of mine to get it. This Kong definitely originates in Mexico, no controversy here unlike the jumbo sized bank, and is 100% good old fashioned blow molded polyethylene. That's the good. The bad? Well, it's pretty dang ugly.

The one thing that I like about this toy as opposed to many other Kong toys is that it actually included a figure of Kong's affection, in this case, it looks like the "Dwan" character from the 1976 version of King Kong. It makes sense since this toy is most likely from the '70s anyway.

Or it could be just a generic damsel in distress. Either way, it's a nice inclusion. The figure can actually sit on the shoulder of Kong (so much for the "in distress" part, she looks to be having a grand old time...) via a peg that juts out from her leg and goes into the neck of Kong. Unfortunately, mine is broken off, but it can still balance on there ok.

Of course, if you prefer to have put the "in distress" back into the phrase, you can actually balance it pretty well in the hand of Kong, too. This is my preferred method of display, since the image of Kong holding the girl is so iconic.

This toy is about 9.5" tall and only the arms move up and down.

Before getting mine, I had seen these on Ebay before (and even once on Yahoo Japan), but I had never noticed that there was a different version until recently. Here's one that is fatter with paint applications to the face and feet. Notice also that the right arm of Kong and the left arm of "Dwan" have more pronounced bends to them.

Needless to say, this is just for die-hard Kong fans (check!) and fans of blow molded toys (check!) only.