Adventures in Bootleg Lego Mini Figures - Part 2

As I promised in my last post I would be taking a look at my next order from AliExpress, comprising another dozen or so new bootleg mini-figures and even one small set.  This batch was ordered on October 13, and the last set just arrived TODAY!  Most of the products started coming in about two weeks after the order, so that's not bad.  I can also make this promise, I'll have a THIRD article coming in a month or two after I receive the products I just ordered earlier this week.



Let's take a look at what I got in batch #2 shall we?

First up is "Blondie", "Angel-Eyes" and "Tuco" from the greatest Spaghetti Western ever made, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.  While I appreciate the old Lego Western line, I never really owned any, the theme being released during a time when I didn't buy any Lego sets. These figures however are more than enough to keep me happy.  "Blondie" or "The Man With No Name" considering he's never actually named in any of the Leone "Dollars' trilogy movies is clearly my favorite, coming with his pistol, a wanted poster featuring Tuco, and his signature Poncho, which he wouldn't actually acquire until the end of the movie. 

Angel Eyes is well done also and comes with a piece of silver.  Poor Tuco doesn't get much besides his gun.  There's back prints on all the figures, but only one-sided heads. These were a whopping 65 cents each.  Maybe I should order a few more.

This next batch was an eclectic mix of random pieces.  First up, a red chrome "Classic Space" Astronaut.  Now, he's clearly not "Vintage" because the helmet is all wrong.  Also the printing on the face is similar, but nowhere close to an original space figure.  Something told me to pick this guy up in Red so that he'd match the original Red figure that came with my long-time grail set - 6929 Star Fleet Voyager, as I'd been looking to replace my original set for years.  Shortly after ordering this lot, I managed to find a good copy on eBay for a reasonable price and I pulled the trigger.  Even though that set came with the figure, I wanted to see if the display would look good with a chrome guy.  It does and it's fodder for another blog.

This little guy was my most expensive single figure purchase at $2.37.

From the same seller I also chose a set of Saint Seiya figures from the eponymous Anime.  This show was always a weird one for me, as I always enjoyed the designs of the characters, but I never really paid that much attention to the story or even watched a whole lot of episodes.  Yup, I like the armors that much.  In fact I still own a couple of the Bandai Gold Saint figures from the mid-90's complete with their boxes.  Sadly there's no real improvement on the secondary market for them, I saw similar copies at the most recent comic cons for the same price I bought them new.  

I can only really identify four of the six figures, Seiya, Cygnus, Phoenix and Andromeda.  The other two I have no clue.  This is actually the second set of boots I've gotten from this show, the other set which I found at the swap meet, is much much worse.  These actually look like the characters.  These were a little pricey at $1.28 each.

 I actually bought TWO sets of anime figures, this one is the Sailor Scouts from Sailor Moon, and they went straight to my daughter.  I have virtually no knowledge of this show other than it's the progenitor of the "magical girl" genre of Anime and predates Pretty Cure, and is super-popular.  I'm pretty sure there's two versions of the main character Sailor Moon, but I'm not sure who the other three scouts are.  There's also Sailor Moon's boyfriend Tuxedo Mask here.  Nice figures though and cheap, they were 86 cents each.






I bought two of the same figure because GROOT!  We are Groot!  He was 82 cents.  I love the longer legs, that's really the reason I got him, and of course one for me and one for the kiddo. 

One of the things I really love about this type of shopping is that I can find figures that would never ever get made by Lego proper.  Here we have Alex from A Clockwork Orange and the legendary Bruce Lee.  I really wish Alex had pink flesh rather than yellow, but oh well.  The figure is quite nice with awesome back prints.  The Bruce Lee figure is pretty standard, the printing is nice, and he comes with some nunchuks, which are hilariously oversized.  For 65 cents each what more could you want?

This next batch was strictly for the kiddo also, these are Minecraft figures, and I have no idea who or what they are.  The dragons were $1.30 and the figure (Alex?) and cat were $1.20.  The daughter loves them.

Here's the one actual "set" that I purchased, it's a Gundam Cafe!  This is one of six sets that Lepin released around the same time with somewhat "anime" themes.  The pieces here are nowhere near the quality of Lego, and the construction is a bit confusing.  The final product is less than stellar, but it's basically OK.  If there were other buildings in the line that I liked I'd buy others.  This was $4.36.

 




Last to appear in my mail were these two Godzillas in translucent plastic.  There's a number of colors to choose from, but they're all the same mold, so I went with Red and Green.  These are cute and will go nicely with my Gundams and other giant robots.  I could use more Kaiju mini-figs.  I'd love a line of Pacific Rim mini-figs.   The trans colors command a premium, these were $1.33.

Adventures in Bootleg Lego Mini-Figures

There's something inside of me that makes me very interested in knock-off and bootleg merchandise.  All ethical issues aside, I think it's fascinating that people will even take the time to knock-off other people's IP and items, and to that end, I'm endlessly intrigued with the results.

Many many years ago there was a knock-off action figure column in one of the toy magazines I'd peruse at the newsstands on a monthly basis (remember those?)  Some blogs and toy sites also used to write about them as well.

 I happen to love going on shopping trips, especially to swap meets and well, let's just say gray market goods marketplaces.  There are several of them here in the city of Angels, Santee Alley comes to mind.  It's those types of places where you find these bootleg Lego mini figures.  The quality is usually all over the place, sometimes great but most of the time not.

Enter the internet.

Through Aliexpress, every day shoppers like myself can order all sorts of goods from China, quite a good portion of them are bootleg items.  I recently made a foray into bootleg Lego mini-figs, and here's the first results.

I ordered all of these on September 14.  They started to arrive about three weeks later, and finished arriving about 10 days after that.  See you might place one order but you're aggregating a number of individual vendors into that order.  This one order of how-ever many figures it is came from 6 different vendors.

I'm not sure exactly which brands these actually are, as they don't come with packaging.  I believe they're at least KOPF or another major knock off brand.

Char's Zaku-II and a grunt Zaku-II.  These both come with a
bazooka and a rifle, which will come in handy later.

Thanos was the most expensive single piece at $2.40.  Came with the
Infinity Gauntlet and all the stones.  LEGO doesn't even make a chromed version of the glove.

I really like this Voltron mini-fig, though I wish it had the earlier version's lion hands.

I would like Mazinger Z more if they had included both sides of the chest piece

These are just fun.  80 cents for both.

That's a Minecraft Wolf for my daughter

I was fairly excited about He-Man and Skeletor, and they could be better, but they're not bad to begin with. 
The faces are a little off.

Jack Skellington, The 4th Doctor and Hulk Hogan. 
None of these have ever been made by Lego

RX-178 Gundam Mk II and RX-78-2 Mobile Suit Gundam.
Love these.  Didn't come with guns though, thankfully the Zaku guns worked.

All told I spent about $17 on these pieces.  I enjoyed the experience so much I made a larger order just a couple of weeks ago, most of which just came in, so look for Part 2 of this entry shortly.

Budget Deal Alert - Mobile Suit Gundam 00 - Season 1 DVD for about $23 SHIPPED!

Crunchy roll has great deals every now and then, today's deal with about 12 hours left is a DVD set of Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Season 1.  This is 26 episodes of mecha goodness with some nifty extras.
You get 3 different sets each with 2 dvds and there's also manga included.  List price is about $120.  When you put the item in your cart it will show up as 3 different sets for $10 each, making it $30.  Shipping to California was $9.


Oh but wait, you can get 15% off with code 537C-E735C-7698
AND if you have a premium membership (which you can get with a 2 week free trial) each set is a whopping $5.

My order cost me $23.10 shipped.


Here's the link:

http://www.crunchyroll.com/store/d/3364/Gundam00-Season-1-Complete-Collection

Budget Spotlight - Cheap Japanese Anime Magazines

I consider myself pretty lucky to live in Los Angeles, the city being a mecca for international flavor and culture. I've been a fan of Anime and Japanese models & toys since I was a little boy watching Speed Racer and Star Blazers on afternoon cartoons. For years I've collected anime toys and models, though in recent years instead of buying whatever suits my fancy I've been forced to take a more targeted approach. Los Angeles is a great town for Japanese culture, having several sections of the city being predominantly Japanese in population. Not only do we have a Little Tokyo, but just a few miles West is an even smaller "Little Tokyo Street" - aka Sawtelle Avenue, where the likes of Giant Robo's flagship store is located. There's also at least once "general" store that sells a few Gashapon/Chogokun and models. My favorite place though is the a multi-level strip mall where Asahiya Bookstore and Ninjiya Market are located. I try to get there at least once a month, because a couple of years ago I worked two blocks away and could go there for lunch, I now keep trying to ensure I don't lose that fun tradition.

I checked out the bookstore first this morning, knowing that in the last couple months several of the Japanese Hobby Magazines had some cool extra-bonus items. See in Japan, their magazines are several hundred pages thick, and carry free-premiums in every issue, making their cost in American Dollars usually prohibitively expensive. Fortunately at the chain store Asahiya they usually have a separate "sale" section of older magazines for at least half price. Today I lucked out and picked up October's copy of Dengeki Hobby, which came with a complete Gundam 0 Raiser Stand Arts toy! For a whopping six bucks I got a nifty modeling magazine with glamour shots of the latest Japanese model kits pu together by master modelers, and a nifty toy for my desk. The O Raiser is an add-on fighter for the Gundam 00 mecha. Standarts figures are a nice budget priced toy line that is usually found in grocery stores amongst the Chogokun/Gashapon candies. While I don't have the actual figure this piece goes with, it's really unnecessary for display, and I may try to flip the toy anyway on eBay, you never know.



(I 'borrowed' this image from Gundam Guy which is a great guide to everything Gundam oriented you could ever possibly want or think up.)


So my budget tip for the day, if you're into Anime, make sure you check out the bookstores "sale" section for older magazines, sometimes you'll get awesome deals.