Those crappy knockoffs are awesomely awful. I honestly wouldn't mind having a few of those. Those are bootlegs created for the American market. Minimum 20% different from the actual figures, and a spelling substitution or two so they can slip by copyright laws and make it to a flea market near you. But this is China we're talking about. There are no copyright laws. They have bootleg CARS. If there's money to be made, or someone to undercut, they'll make it.
Quote:These are real figures. The paint is way too similar to be fake.
Not so...There are some DAMN fine replicas coming out of China. I've been there. There is no such thing as a toys r us. You need to assume everything you find in a toy store to be a fake. There are things like the above obvious knockoffs, and then there are other things that you wouldn't know the difference.
I bought a World of Warcraft figure that looked *PERFECT* right down to the paper inserts in the package. I had the others in the series, purchased at legit stores over here, and thought that with my knowledge of the line, and "higher than bootleg" price, it was an okay buy. It was only after returning home that I opened it up and realized how terribly wrong I was. Nothing fit together right, and it has an overall "cheaper" feel to the plastics. It was a high-quality fake.
On that note, I started questioning everything. If the legit toys come from China in the first place, and these bootlegs are often made in the same factories, with the same molds, at what point aren't they bootlegs anymore? This also goes especially true with clothing. Some of it at the better sources, even thought they admitted it was fake, was impossible to tell from the real deal.
We're lucky too, in the fact that they bootleggers haven't been able to copy the RFID tech yet, so it's safe to say that anything that works in-game is from a legit source originally.
tl;dr if you see sellers on alibaba/taobao selling lots of unpainted/non-working/baseless figures, they're probably neither legit nor prototypes, but chinese knockoffs. They're still cool regardless.....and I kinda want a few myself now... dat clear stumpsmash....