Wednesday 5 May 2010

Force Fail: The Most Horrifying and Terrible Star Wars Bootleg Action Figures

I love bootleg and knock-off toys. I don't know why, but whenever I see one in a market somewhere, they just make me chuckle. Here are some of my favourite knock-off and bootleg action-figures from my favourite franchise: Star Wars.

Okay, what the hell are COBRA doing on Tattooine? My favourite part is definitely Star Wars misspelt as STARSWAR across the banner.

They are the Head Men. Goo goo g'joob.

“Head Man”, seriously? Okay, this is some distinctly Conan/Roman hybrid, that I have chosen to dub “Conan”. There’s something about this strangely ancient garb and solid gold head that screams Stargate – about fifteen years before that godawful Roland Emmerich movie came to light. Therefore, I’m holding this action figure responsible for the Crawling Chaos that is the Stargate franchise.

Arazi Tanki!

Reasonable looking Star Wars figures, except for the guy on the right who’s rocked up on a really odd looking Range Rover thing. I love the look of absolute bemusement from Darth Vader.

The elongated torso in proportion to the legs (Rob Van Dam’s Disease) is what makes this look less like Chewbacca and more like one of those Theme Park actors who molest you.

You could not look like this without getting some sort of “Dickface” nickname.


I really, really hope that’s a bad photo. Otherwise, the only other explanation is that they’ve drawn Wedge’s face on with a felt-tip. And given him Down’s Syndrome.

This is what Star Wars/Brazil fan-fiction looks like. I’m gonna see that coming at me in my sleep.

AAAAAGH!

AAAAAAAAAAGGHH!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHH!!!

I can’t quite decide what the most terrifying aspect of this figure is. Is it the pig like snout? Is it the tree-trunk thick leg? Is it the Doom-Clenching claw held up like he’s about to tell me that he’s my father? Is it the hobo dressing gown? All I know is this thing swims around near Innsmouth.

This is my favourite bootleg ever, because of the effort they put into the background photo, that can only be described as “middling”. They obviously decided that they needed a background. So, to be fair to them, they obviously went to all the effort of setting one up, lighting it fairly competently, and even posing the figure. But then they make it perfectly obvious that he’s sat at a giant calculator.

“Press the square root key for hot toasty death!”



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6 comments:

  1. While my memories of childhood are hazy at best, I'm pretty sure I OWNED the MTV-7 and never once suspected it wasn't official Star Wars merchandising.
    Despite the fact that it's not in any of the movies.
    What can I say? Kids are dumb.

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  2. Any chance of a Star Trek one?

    For further bootleg info; I present to you the worlds longest link. :)

    http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://theswca.com/headers2/russian.gif&imgrefurl=http://theswca.com/images-bootleg.html&usg=__zmIQP3jRNAjnGke1l24nfayVz-s=&h=357&w=237&sz=46&hl=en&start=7&sig2=I96wHOOKjAI1oCam7lC1Xw&itbs=1&tbnid=l5ZRUuTOUVhyUM:&tbnh=121&tbnw=80&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dstar%2Btrek%2Bbootleg%2Btoy%26hl%3Den%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=O1LiS4_RDpWQmwPGl-H7Dw

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  3. Hey James,

    I'm not sure how much mileage there would be - as here are simply more Star Wars action figures out there than there are Star Trek. This is because a) action figure collecting is a very popular asepct of Star Wars fandom, and b) Star Wars is much more aimed at children than Star Trek is.

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  4. I'll do some research, though. It may be do-able.

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  5. Thankyou for replying Brad.

    You are most definately right there, of course Star Wars is probably the bigger franchise, and with more milage more material in terms of articles can be written.

    God I miss the early 90's... ST TNG was in its prime. and DS9 didnt exist.

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  6. I do try and keep our coverage/parodies about 50/50 between Star Wars and Star Trek.

    ReplyDelete