Now, I'm not a collector of bootlegged action figures in general. By buying these shoddily made chunks of cheap plastic, you are only encouraging the criminals in continuing their seedy enterprise. However, I am also a TMNT fan, and finally finding a bootleg figure set at one of these things with a Turtle figure in it was something I had yearned for for quite some time. I had to have this set. Other than a couple of spottily painted parachuting Turtles I had found at a Goodwill, I had never owned any bootleg figures previously. I recall when the TMNT figures were still in their infancy back in the late '80's, I saw some bootleg figures at a discount store that were going for $3 or so. I do not recall much about them, other than I believe their weapons and/or names were mixed between the four Turtles, and the weapons were black. Other than that, they looked more or less like the real deal. However, my mother refused to buy them for me, as they were "not the real Turtles". Oh, woe.Anyway, excuse my tangent, let's take a look at these figures, shall we?
First off, let's take a look at Fighting Gear Raphael and The Thing. Raph comes with a multi-pronged sai (which is almost unrecognizable in these photos, due to my crappy camerawork) and a chestplate. This is literally the complete extent of his armour. Unlike the real Fighting Gear Raph, there are no shin and forearm guards, nor a helmet. Also notice that his belt is green, and his wrist, elbow, and knee pads are red. He also does not have a tail to his headband.The Thing is a disturbingly peculiar creature. Although his head is as craggy as one would expect from an action figure of The Thing, the rest of his body is set smooth, like a normal human's. It is my theory that his body was supposed to be that of The Hulk's, or that it was originally used in a Hulk bootleg figure. Also, instead of being orange, his skin is sort of a peach-ish, like a typical Caucasian's. The sculpting on Thing has to be the worst of the bunch, as his waist is slightly off-center, and there is about a millimeter of plastic on the inside of his left calf that protrudes down further than the rest of his leg. His left foot is also loose.
Interestingly enough, There was a flap on the figure set's package (which I will show you shortly), right over Brandon Routh's head, where a potential customer could press a button on the back of Raphael's shell. There is a little dot on his plastron, which I assume would be a light. Only it didn't work. I figured perhaps that the batteries were dead, that someone had played with it too much prior to the toy's purchase. However, after using a screwdriver to dismantle his shell, I found that there is no mechanism inside that would allow such a thing to occur. There is literally no connection between the button and the light. If someone were to add an extra action feature to a knockoff figure, you would think they would at least put some sort of device inside that would actually make it work. Nevermind the fact that if Raph's armour were on, the light w
ould be useless anyway...Both Raph and Thing come with these retarded little whatever-the-Hell-they-ares. They look like they are supposed to be POGs at first glance, but they're made from such thin material... I'm not an artsy kind of guy, so I don't know exactly what it is. They're not made of cardboard; the material is even thinner than a paper grocery sack. I recall finding some bootleg Dragon Ball figures at a Dollar Store that had the same kind of items. Anyway, Raph's has the four Turtles with the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles logo, while Thing's is just the number four.
Now come the Spider-Men. The standard Spider-Man is literally impossible to get to stand under his own power despite being the exact same sculpt as the Symbiote one. I had to lean him up against Thing to take these photos. In any case, standard Spider-Man has these detachable rubber suction cup-like items, only they aren't suction cups. They are made of a thi
n yet durable rubber, and are impossible to stick to anything in any matter. He also comes with a big red web that is made of the same material. Symbiote Spider-Man comes with a triple-barreled crossbow (which I didn't realize until it was too late, that it is not possible to make it out from these photos). It doesn't do anything other than clip to his wrist. There is also another thin little paper object, this one of a blue-and-yellow spider monster with the words "Man-Spider" printed beneath it. It is not round like the other ones.
The final figure in this horror show is Superman. Superman has to be the worst of the bunch, and of course, that's saying a lot. Superman obviously has a Batman sculpted body, and worse yet, he looks like he's trying to take a squat right there in front of God and everybody. Everything about his body looks like it belongs to Batman, from the spikes on the gloves to the cuts in his cape. Only the head, colours, and that crappily painted backwards "S" on his chest would tell you that it is a Superman figure. Oddly enough, Superman also does not come with any accessories - not even a shitty little paper emblem.
The package is your standard "throw on as many characters the kids like as you can with random Engrish". I find it funny that all four of the TMNT are presented on the card's front, but all of the other franchises only have one character. I honestly would not have opened this package if it wasn't for the fact that it was already a quarter of the way off when I bought it. Actually, all of the ones they had there with Raph were like this, and some of the ones without him were in worse condition. I paid $7 for this pack, instead of $8 like the tag says. I tried to talk the merchant down to $5 because it was already open, but $7 was as low as she was going to go. I still feel like I got screwed considering the fact that the open package could have been a catalyst to deliver Avian Influenza, or Rocking Pnemonia, or The Clap, or whatever the popular biological weapon is these days for unloading on unsuspecting parents that think they're buying the kids the real thing, or dweebs like me that know they're buying a bootleg but don't care. It is late and I am quite sleepy, so I will let the photos do the talking for me.
Hey kids! Can you tell which one is the real figure, and which is the fake?
Shredder-Raph's evil was outclassed by the evil of Dangerous-Amounts-of-Lead-Based-Paint-Raph.
