Bootleg Thread

Great pickups Connell.

I love these bizarre pachi minis. They channel so many Ultra characters, but are all their own at the same time. I don't know that they have any 'IDs' as such, but there was a thread made for them here. As very cool as they are, surprisingly they are actually not too hard to track down, and usually can be had for a pittance or two. I think everybody should have a couple in their collection, and I am happy to see you found a few. Here is a shot of some of mine where you can see a couple others that were from the same series as far as I know.

^^^^ Thanks for the link.
Yeah, Aaron (uhoh toys) and I were going crazy trying to ID these guys. Like you say they sorta look like Ultra figures but when compared are not quite there. I think I got them all for under $20 on YJ. Now I'll have to keep my eye out for the ones I'm missing.

^ dang! Little nuggets of happiness

i found a Japanese website that had a few pages of info on these, will try to post more
about them soon. they were released in the early to mid 70's from what i read and were
issued in 3 forms, a regular release with 10 to 12 figures then a keychain style that were
painted different, finally a 'sloppy' painted release that may have been a later reissue.

the header card is fantastic! i will post a pic of mine later today. its weird how similar the
style is to that of IKB Hedoran header cards. i wonder if these were made by them but they
did not put IKB on them since the likenesses were past the point of knockoff on a few. my
collection is about the same as what you have posted, i need 7 or 8 more plus keychains.

Hey, that would be great! I would love to know more about them too, and definitely see the header art. You can post it in the header thread too, if you do take a pic or two. Now that you mention it, I can totally see a possible IKB connection in them. They have that amazingly crude, and yet still very detailed and well executed look to them. Not typical cheap generic monster bootlegs, you can tell someone put real thought into designing them and bringing them to sculpt.

Here is the site my friend Jun shared with me on these pachimon:

http://homepage2.nifty.com/namonaki_kaiju/page003.html

As a heads up click on pics they have hyperlinks to further info
and more pics. I forgot there are also standard size kaiju dolls
of the same non brand maker.

Also please keep this in mind:

Also it can become a good effort, how about you which combinations surprising upset is.

Standard size..

^ cool!

Bootleg flesh color sofubi Bullmark MechaniKong. The bootleg is actually bigger by 1-3 cm depending on the parts. The vinyl itself feels thinner softer and a cheaper brand of vinyl.

that is really weird, usually if something is remolded there is a degree of shrink
where the later product is a bit smaller than the original. is that a vintage OG
painted Bullmark or a reproduction?

any idea when that bootleg is from?

I am pretty sure that is a vintage M-Kong. I was wondering about the size differences specifically, so thank for sharing those extra photos man. I haven't had the chance to do any side-by-sides with the toys I have. The fleshy figures are weird, as it difficult to tell a lot of times if they are vintage bootlegs, or part of the later 'model kit' reissues put out (in the late 80s I believe). The vinyl, at least on the neo-vintage line, is definitely still very cheap and poory executed. You will frequently find lots of bubbling, the vinyl is thin, of diffrent quality (more like typical Chinese plastics than Japanese 'sofubi' vinyl), and the joints are often loose, with limbs bent/mismatched lengths, etc. As for the growth in size, it could be from taking molds off the original figures, which are then used to make the toys' parts, rather than casting new figures in the older molds.

Original 1970s Bullmark. The vinyl feels cheap. Like Steve said released during the mid to late 80s probably because of the garage kit boom.

Thanks for posting that pic, chimply. Good to see. So I assume this (size discrepancy) holds true for all the other flesh bootlegs? Also interesting to hear that they are of poor quality. I always just assumed they were standard vinyl products.

Always love mechanikong and that bootleg is fantastic

^^ Love the dinos! What are they?

The figure and the photo aren't mine, I found the picture in the web. The figure has nothing different than other Ninja Arashi bootlegs, what if it's different it's the header-card, I never seen this one who it's the same of the large Lion Maru.

It is kind of a stock bootleg header that you can find on a few different figures. A few of the bootleg headers were reused for whatever toys they had I think; not much thought was put in to the packaging, as these were put out cheaply to cash in on the [licensed] toy lines. This one in particular was always a mystery to me, as it appears to be genuine still from a Goji film, so I am surprised it didn't catch more flak. But then again, the figures themselves are also almost near-identical rip-offs in most cases, so I guess there was a lot of slack area or freedom in terms of legal pursuit by the primary companies.

Thank you very much for the information Ultrakaiju . From what you say, maybe it was not even his intention from the beginning to use this header card for the Ninja Arashi, rather they used it as something generic because perhaps when finished the manufacture was the only that they had printed. Like as some of the Mexican bootlegs manufacturers, that when they were packing them, they used the same image for any of the figures.

I think a lot of bootleg headers were intentionally designed to have looks or names similar to well known toys. This is why, regardless of the toy being sold, so many headers are named something like 新怪獣シリーズ (New Kaiju Series) to capture some of the Ultraman magic.

I had a discussion about this with a local vintage expert, and he also felt the headers were mostly about marketing. It's a really interesting subset of the vintage bootleg game. I have an Inazuman toy with 4 different paint variations and 3 different headers. Hoping to write them up one of these days.

I think a lot of bootleg headers were intentionally designed to have looks or names similar to well known toys. This is why, regardless of the toy being sold, so many headers are named something like 新怪獣シリーズ (New Kaiju Series) to capture some of the Ultraman magic.

I had a discussion about this with a local vintage expert, and he also felt the headers were mostly about marketing. It's a really interesting subset of the vintage bootleg game. I have an Inazuman toy with 4 different paint variations and 3 different headers. Hoping to write them up one of these days.

I think it would be great if we could make a sort of digital catalog of all the bootlegs figures came on the market. Because some members as you know much about it or have excellent photographies of these figures.

Best regards!

Many vintage Japanese toys and other kids' items are definitely underrepresented when it comes to books, websites. etc. (And that goes for Japanese as well as English language resources.) Right now, for bootleg figures, there are a bunch of photos scattered around on flickr, blogs, and some on this forum.

Scott's flickr feed is pretty awesome. https://www.flickr.com/photos/scottvan

A few areas, like chogokin and tin toys, have a wide enough collector base that there are books and what not out there. But for bootlegs, sofubi (In English, anyway. There are a few Japanese books out there), children's books, records, and other things, yeah there's very little.

Putting together resources like that is a big time commitment, and I imagine piecing together the history of bootlegs would be incredibly difficult. But even generalizations, categories, and a nice photo collection would be nice.

Thanks Andy for the props and for this Zarboga ...

I thought he was a variation of a boot Zab I had, but it turns out he has inverted rivets opposite to his bro's and his boots have some slight differences ..

That is excellent Scott! I have got one of those two, always just adored the quirky way this Zaboga was interpreted. It is great to see them altogether like that for comparison (and just for the glory of a bootleg trio).

Nice trio Scott! Love the one on the right. I've got a KR X in a similar scheme.

Here's one of the Zaboots carded: