Time for a special one-off revival of Official vs Bootleg! This series isn’t coming back full time, but this bootleg was not to be missed. This will also be a bumper edition as we have two figure variants to cover. Hope you enjoy!
For those not familiar with these figures, the Cow Cat is the original release and the Lemon Cat was a limited edition recolour, though the edition size was large enough to satisfy demand. As of time of writing, Ribose have a number available in their Taobao store, and AmiAmi is still waiting on their stock.
Pricing
Cow Cat
MSRP (without tax): ¥JP 8,100
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥JP 7,635 (£40.05)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): £9.50
The official I bought in a Hobby Genki sale
Lemon Cat
MSRP (without tax): ¥CN 369
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥CN 447 (£47.14)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): £8.81
The official I pre-ordered from the Ribose Taobao store.
A bootleg that’s a fifth of the price of the original? What could go wrong, sign me up!
Box
Front:
The bootleg boxes vary significantly in looks and size from the officials. Also I’m hoping there’s a TARDIS in there for the signature accessory…
The official boxes have nice touches like foiling, understated design elements and telling us what year these were conceived in. We also get to learn that “DLC” is “Decorated Life Collection”, not downloadable content. Whew.
The bootlegs? None of that. Poorly-taken photos of both the figures should you want to see them in a worse light than the box view gives you. Well, at least the box photography makes me feel better about my own 😆. Google Translate tells me the Chinese translates to “Tea Party Cat Series”, so at least that ties up.