Sword Art Online (SAO) might not have the best reputation, but it is popular enough that its prize figures get bootlegged, so now I have four of the SAO noodle stoppers to look at. First up on the block is Asuna.

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): n/a
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥2,060 (£13.06)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): £5.53

The official I preordered on AmiAmi.

Box

This one I got the box for, just to see what the boxes are like. I no longer have the original box, so there isn’t a direct comparison here.
Front:

Interestingly they’ve kept the FuRyu logo, but removed the JAMMA logo. The JAMMA logo should be sat underneath the FuRyu logo.

Continue reading “Official vs Bootleg: FuRyu Asuna Noodle Stopper (Ordinal Scale)” →

Today’s blog will feature the drink-hugging Momo by FuRyu. This is one of a set of FuRyu knockoffs I bought – the other ones in this set will be noodle stoppers. As she’s pretty skimpily dressed and there’s some closeups of her bikini bottoms I’ve marked this blog NSFW.
As these FuRyu blogs will be shorter due to the size and complexity of these figures and me no longer owning the boxes for a box comparison, these blogs will be released at a quicker rate.

I chose this particular figure as it’s a favourite of mine of these small figures, and is a little different from the other noodle stoppers.

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): n/a
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥2,060 (£14.03)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): £3.00

The original I preordered on AmiAmi.

Figure unbagging

This bootleg simply came in a clear bag, but an immediate issue presented itself:

Ah, hrm… not going to be hugging many bottles like this!

Continue reading “Official vs Bootleg: FuRyu Momo Belia Deviluke (Drink Holder)” →

This one I found an interesting choice on the case of the bootleggers – this figure is still being actively bootlegged, despite its aftermarket price usually being quite low. So what can we get for bootleg prices?

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): ¥3,800
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥4,290 (£30)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): $13.70 (£11.13)

Box

Front:

The Kotobukiya logo is conspicuously absent on the bottom left, along with the authenticity sticker. They have also removed the warning texts as well – not sure why bootleggers do this sometimes.
Interestingly the text that says “Party dress version” above Ayanami’s name is white on the official but black on the bootleg. Not sure why that happened as the box doesn’t appear to be a total recreation. The blue colour is slightly off, but not in a way that screams “bootleg”.

Continue reading “Official vs Bootleg: Kotobukiya Ayanami Rei – Party Dress ver.” →

This bootleg was slightly on the harder end to get hold of – there weren’t very many people selling it, and even less of those were including his box which I was intrigued in due to the pictures I’d seen of it in the past where it looked very similar to the real thing.
The other difficult thing about buying this bootleg is that it could’ve cost more than I got the official for, so I ended up waiting for a sale to buy it.

There is a lot of box action, so if you want to skip it scroll down to “Figure in blister”.

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): ¥6,800
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): £21
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): $24 (£19.33)

The official version I bought secondhand from an MFC user.

Box

Front of the box:

Wow, these are similar. The most similar official vs bootleg box seen to date. The GEM logo is slightly less in the corner, no authenticity sticker and the colours are a shade or two off – not something that’s noticeable without the official box next to it.

Continue reading “Official vs Bootleg: MegaHouse Kaworu Nagisa (G.E.M.)” →

Alter… one of the most highly regarded figure companies. Let’s see how an Alter bootleg fares to its original. Will this be the Alter of bootlegs? Let’s find out!

Want to vote on which figures you’d like to see in the Official vs Bootleg series? Head over to the OvB voting site!

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): ¥12,800
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥13,945 (£97.65)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): $20.47 (£15.90)

The official figure I preorderd the second release.

“Box”

This bootleg technically came with a box:

Hm, not really outclassing the original’s clear box here.

This is how the figure was packed in the box:

Not too bad, and did keep the figure protected in transit.

Here’s the parts laid out:

Not the worst packaging, but nothing to stop the parts of the figure from rubbing up against itself.

Now to start unbagging these bits and compare them to their official counterparts.

Continue reading “Official vs Bootleg: Alter Kurosaki Mea” →

This figure is the first one chosen by user vote! This figure was voted for by GerardHaZ and dtindcarea.
Partly surprised this wasn’t one of the bootlegs I chose for myself, as it was one I was curious as to how the bootleg compared to the real thing many moons ago. However, the real thing can be had pretty cheaply, with the postage likely costing more than the figure itself due to the box’s large size.

Whilst writing this blog, I ended up doing some more research on bootlegs for this figure – there appears to be at least three different bootlegs. One version is shown in the MFC gallery, featuring a box claiming the figure was made by Max Factory. There’s a second version which appears to be a run-of-the-mill bootleg, which looks more prize figure than scale, but comes with a box that’s pretty much a match for the official:

Note the unfinished green lines on her top, shiny hair and face plus seam marks as far as the eye can see.

And then there is the version I got. Which… well, you’ll see!

Want to vote on which figures you’d like to see in the Official vs Bootleg series? Head over to the OvB voting site!

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): ¥8,381
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥8,670 (£48.42)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): £24.58

I bought the official version from AmiAmi preowned.

Continue reading “Official vs Bootleg: Good Smile Company Racing Miku 2012” →

I promised another Q Posket blog, and here it is! The figure I bought at the same time as Catwoman was Harley Quinn.

Want to vote on which figures you’d like to see in the Official vs Bootleg series? Head over to the OvB voting site!

Pricing
MSRP (without tax) – prize figures do not have an MSRP
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥2,439 (£14.71)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): $4.49 (£3.47)

The official figure I bought unopened from Mandarake.

Accessory

This figure comes with Harley’s hammer, so let’s look at that first.

Top:

First thing that is immediately noticeable is the bootleg hammer is smaller – it is smaller in all dimensions, but the shorter handle is the most noticeable.
The bootleg has lighter coloured silver paint and a free dent on the head of the hammer. The shaft on the bootleg is a darker shade of brown and has a bit of excess plastic still attached.

Bottom:

The underside on both can be told by the inserted plastic piece which leaves a seam on this side of the hammer head. Other than the seam, there aren’t any notable flaws on the official. For the bootleg though, the head of the hammer is very rough in places and my copy has a slop of paint in the middle of the flat surface. We’ve also got a couple of marks from the moulding process. Well, at least the bootleggers had the foresight to face these towards the back.

Edge:

This time we have a defect on the official – part of the paint has been scraped off of the hammer, probably in transit. The paint is a lot smoother though than the bootleg, which has a bunch of knobbly marks from manufacture.

Base

Top:

The official has the Q Posket logo and the bootleg has… nothing! The edging on the bootleg is much deeper on the bootleg, which is a bit of a trend reversal for moulding on bootleg figures. Can’t say it’s an improvement though. The bootleg base is also shinier than its official counterpart.
The bootleg base also has a very strange feature – a second hole. I have no idea why this is here, and it isn’t used for this figure, even in bootlegger’s photos of it. I do wonder if this is a previously bootlegged base that just happened to work for this figure or if it was an unintentional mistake when “designing” the base for production. If you’re wondering if the hammer can stand in the hole – the answer is no. Hole is far too big and top-heavy for that to work. Maybe if you stuffed some tack in it?
Both stands have pegs for her feet – both figures work fine on their respective bases.

Bottom:

The official has a copyright mark, but interestingly only for Banpresto and not DC on this one.
Here you can clearly see the one peg hole on the official and the two on the bootleg. The bootleg also has a number “2” marking. I know Bandai has used numeral markings like this on trading figures to ensure parts stay grouped properly (all parts of a trading figure may have small numbers on them to denote what they belong to). This makes me wonder if this is a bootleg of an older Q Posket base, but these two were my first Q Poskets so I don’t have any of the older ones to compare.

These two bases would be hard to mix up. No Q Posket? Not a Q Posket.

Figure spin-around

Continue reading “Official vs Bootleg: Banpresto Q Posket Harley Quinn” →

oday’s blog features Q Posket Catwoman. As this is a small figure without any box or accessories, there will be a “bonus” blog next week featuring another Q Posket bootleg I ordered at the same time.

Want to vote on which figures you’d like to see in the Official vs Bootleg series? Head over to the OvB voting site!

Pricing
MSRP (without tax) – prize figures do not have an MSRP
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥2,393 (£13.00)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): $3.77 (£2.93)

The official I bought unopened from Mandarake.

I ordered this bootleg as I was curious what I would get for the princely sum of £3. These small figures are usually sold without boxes in multilistings, so I decided to grab two and see how they turned out.

Base

Top:

The bases from the top are very similar, with the holes and the logos in the same place. The writing is thicker on the bootleg, and came pre-dusty. The “Q” looks copied, then for the “posket” the bootleggers have seemingly picked a font they thought was similar enough. It isn’t very similar though – the characters are thicker and lack serifs (the sticky-out bits at the ends of letters).
The leaf pattern around the edges matches with the official, which is a mild surprise given the half-arsed font match on the top of the base.

Bottom:

As is typical, the official has copyright markings and the bootleg has nothing. The construction also slightly differs between the two – the peg holders on the official are one solid piece with the base but on the bootleg we have a part inserted to form the bottom of the pegholders.

Overall, the bases are very similar. There are two tells here – no copyright on the base, and the incorrect font on the top of the base. So if you see these displayed at a con unboxed, the easiest trick of inverting it to look for copyright notices holds strong (n.b. if there is no copyright for a Q Posket on the bottom, this is a surefire tell of a bootleg, however the inverse doesn’t 100% prove it is official, as in some cases bootleggers will do their best to duplicate everything).

Figure spin-around

Continue reading “Official vs Bootleg: Banpresto Q Posket Catwoman” →

This figure was intended to be the first entry of Official vs Bootleg… and here we are at OvB number 9! This bootleg was released several months before the official product was released, so I was super-curious how it turned out.

Want to vote on which figures you’d like to see in the Official vs Bootleg series? Head over to the OvB voting site!

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): ¥3,685
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥4,210 (£29.45)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): $14.58 (£10.42)

I pre-ordered the official figure.

For this one, I did not get the box with the bootleg, so we’ll be skipping that portion – though the bootleg box is very different from the official from the photos I’ve seen. And like a good portion of S-Style bootleg boxes, it has a window whilst the official ones do not, which is a massive clue to it not being an official S-Style figure.
This figure also does not have any accessories, so it’s straight onto the base.

Base

Side-by-side:

Yep, don’t think we can get much more different. Like the other official S-Style figures, the official base is a cog shape. For Shiro, her base is a darkish blue and does not have any pegs as she can stand on her own. The bootleg however… is a roundish fluffy thing that likes to shed feathers. Being cheaply made, its final shape cannot really be called circular, as it contains many irregularities.

Bottom:

For the official, we have the standard copyright notice and a central support to keep the base sturdy. The bootleg has been sewn to a piece of fabric, so there is some finishing work going on here. And no, they haven’t put any copyright info down here.

And here’s a picture for an exact size comparison:

Bootleg base is a decent bit bigger than the official. If the bootleg base was done more professionally, I think it could be preferable to the plastic discs these figures come with – they don’t tend to be well-liked. I think they’re OK, and I do like interlocking them when I’m displaying S-Style figures in a group, but I do agree some of them are a bit too gaudy-coloured.

Personally I display this figure with no base, so no actual points to award here really. As far as telling which is which, I’m not sure you could mix these two up. If the bootleg base wasn’t as poorly produced, I think it could be a contender for this figure as it is more interesting than a cog that doesn’t fit with the figure’s aesthetic.
Due to the fact the bootleg base sheds and isn’t a proper shape, I’d recommend buying something separately if you want her on a fluffy base.

Figure spin-around

Continue reading “Official vs Bootleg: FREEing Shiro (Cat ver; S-Style)” →

Today’s figure is very much NFSW – Rocket Boy’s Dva. Definitely not Blizzard’s D.Va.

Want to vote on which figures you’d like to see in the Official vs Bootleg series? Head over to the OvB voting site!

Pricing

MSRP (without tax): ¥14,455
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥18,640 (£124.04)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): $22.60 (£17.17)

The official figure I preordered.

Box

When I was taking these photos, I apparently decided to have the bootleg box on the left instead of the right. Not sure why I did that, and it isn’t as if I could accidentally mix them up! Well, now you can see why I chose to label the images instead of relying on convention!

Front:

The bootleg certainly lacks the subtlety of the original! No hiding what you’re buying here, though this choice does make it questionable for instore sale. Well, at least you get to see what you’re buying?
As well as the large window that has been added, the “DVA” text has been shrunk and moved into the corner so it isn’t cut off by the window, and the details are printed in white instead of silver. The bootleg box is looking worse for wear as it was shipped flat.

Continue reading “Official vs Bootleg: Native/Rocket Boy Dva” →

Today’s figure is Kirishima Touka from Tokyo Ghoul:re, the second (main) series in Tokyo Ghoul.

This was also the first figure that I needed a hammer to assemble – assembling the official was easy enough, but the bootleg had other ideas in mind. The bootleg only came in a (very smashed) blister, so let’s get straight to the figure-reviewing.

Want to vote on which figures you’d like to see in the Official vs Bootleg series? Head over to the OvB voting site!

Pricing

NEW section, starting from this blog. In this section I will list the MSRP (manufacturer’s suggested retail price), the price I paid for the official and bootleg including shipping (as the bootleg prices normally include shipping in the price) and state whether I PO’d the official figure or bought it in the aftermarket.

MSRP (without tax): ¥12,000
Price I paid for the official (inc shipping): ¥11,970 (£82.58)
Price I paid for the bootleg (inc shipping): £10.40

For the official figure, I pre-ordered.

Spin-around

Time to take a figure tour!

Continue reading “Official vs Bootleg: Kotobukiya Kirishima Touka” →

This figure is the first one that was not on the original poll, but I suspect it would have garnered a reasonable number of votes, so here she is.

And talking about voting… I now have a website where you can register your interest in what figures I feature in the Official vs Bootleg series. The website is https://ovbvote.tharglet.me.uk. You can vote for figures in my collection that are marked as having a counterfeit version on MFC and that I haven’t already planned to blog or blogged about.
If you have any questions/comments about the site, feel free to comment down below or send a PM on MFC.

And now for the main feature!

The bootleg didn’t come with a box, so no box comparison for this one. So let’s get straight onto the figure!

Spin-around

Continue reading “Official vs Bootleg: Kotobukiya Harley Quinn (Bishoujo New 52)” →