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*8-Bit "Final Trailer" music plays*
Hi Everyone, welcome to another episode of Black Tub Bootlegs.
Today's review Star Wars The Force Awakens THE BAG SERIES!
*screen powers up*
*fading synth whine*
*fading synth whine*
*fading synth whine*
One of the greatest things about bootleg toys is often the packaging.
Absurd card artwork, misspellings, and a vintage look created by someone who is an idiot.
Unfortunately, this run of Force Awakens bootlegs comes with nothing. I get it.
It's cheaper to produce nothing. No cards, no bubbles. The manufacturer sells directly to the consumer.
But, it really sucks the creativity out of the counterfeit game.
This latest run of Star Wars Force Awakens plastic junk is pretty terrible.
But for seven dollars including shipping, it's a great deal, and great lesson in what most modern bootlegging, and modern toys in general, have become.
Kind of a mediocre mess of blobiness.
Our first figure is Kylo Ren. At first glance this is a pretty nice looking simple bootleg, with minor proportion issues.
While most of these toys were inspired by various Black Series figures, they are completely new sculpts, which is a pretty impressive effort.
Looking at the finer details, while his helmet seems primitively rendered, it's well done if you consider that it was probably sculpted at this scale without any fancy reduction techniques.
The costume drapery is also fairly well done too. I like the ribbed sleeves, and everything's kind of teetering on the edge of being well done.
The articulation is severely limited though. With only a single head rotation, and two arm pivots.
The cape blocks his right arms mobility. His hilted light saber is crude, and hasn't been painted correctly.
Over all, a decent looking figure.
Next up we have Finn, or just a normal Force Awakens iPhone trooper.
The toy comes with three interchangeable heads, but unfortunately none of them are Finn's un-helmeted face.
Note the strange exaggerated thermal detonator, and long injection spikes on all of the parts.
The black visor and joint paint applications are thin and hazy, with lots of overspray.
While I'm still partial to the original Storm Trooper helmet, the Force Awakens redesign is pretty classy.
What's killing the bootleg sculpt of this helm is the distance between the visor and the mouth.
The head articulation is modern bell and ball, which works well for helmeted figures.
Again we have simple shoulder articulation, with no other posing options.
All of these figures are molded in a soft vinyl like material.
But there's no hope of achieving any pose other than what is baked in.
I thought maybe he could use his scope, but it just seems impossible.
Moving on we have our first droid, R2D2.
The big flub here... his head is on backwards.
These figures were intended to be carded, with the half painted side facing out.
Over all the body markings and everything are really close to the original design.
Again we have the terrible injection mark on his head, and rippling warped plastic here and there.
Over all the sculpting is very accurate. I'm not sure if this was taken from an existing toy, but it seems like they just re-sculpted everything
... and did a pretty decent job of making it all look mechanical.
R2's body pivots at his upper leg as expected, but since the head is glued into place permanently, he'll always be facing backwards.
Our next droid is BB8, with similar half paint job.
His antenna are overly thick, to make them easier to produce.
His body markings are all very close to the original designs, but similar to R2, the sloppy paint detracts from all of the existing detail.
Over all, a fairly accurate but slightly lumpy copy of BB8.
He has only one head pivot, and a very simple rolling feature.
*droid sqeaks*
Returning to the dark side, we have a 4.5" Darth Vader, inspired by Play Arts Kai's samurai design.
Similar to bootleg Ironman toys, we have wobbly hand sculpted armor.
It's a decent attempt at mimicking the detail of a much larger figure though.
Like the iphone storm Trooper helmet seen previously, Vader's face suffers from similar proportion issues.
The eyes are too low, and the implied nose is also too low.
But still, this is probably an at-scale sculpt made with no time. So hats off to the guy doing this under pressure.
Again we have terrible articulation.
Note the strangely pointed Adams apple.
Simple shoulder pivots that don't offer much.
While Vader's light saber is the correct color, we won't bother looking at the handle hardware.
Again posing is very limited, and dynamic duel wielding is a definite ...
*vader screams* NOOOoooooo!
Next up we have Poe Dameron, looking much more Top Gun than Rebel Forces with silver mirrored visor.
. He's fashioned after Hasbro's standard 3 3/4 inch Force Awakens Poe with baked in helmet.
While most of the costuming is fairly accurate, the gloves were removed. I don't know why they opted for flaccid hands and Members Only elastic coat cuffs.
Poe's thin exposed neck was not painted with skin tone, and clearly shows why I dislike the look of ball and socket jointed heads.
Luckily the helmet cannot be removed, sparing us from a terrible looking face.
But even the legitimate Black Series Poe head sculpt is really just a terrible train wreck.
Again we have the bell and ball head setup, with two soft arm pins, and no other articulation.
Poe comes with Luke's blue saber for some reason,
and his hand are sculpted in a strange half-open position, not really committing to holding anything.
He grasps his scoped blaster like a dirty sandwich.
Our most off scale figure is a huge Yoda, possibly inspired by Gentle Giant's full scale statue, but with 70's style head sculpting.
While this figure has the worst body sculpt in the series, looking like blocks of clay, the head sculpt is actually smartly done
It's far better than the puppet from The Phantom Menace, and its CG reincarnation in 2011.
There are lots of respectful details here, but the sloppy eye paint kind of screws up all of the hard work.
Again we have very simple articulation, with a classic head pivot, and soft arm pivots.
Yoda comes with a green colored Luke saber, with a strange ring at the bottom.
Moving on we have Chewy, impossibly standing via the magic of double sided tape.
The figure attempts to mimic Habros Saga Legends and Black series figures, but the look is just horrific.
While Chewwy's hairdo varies throughout Star Wars, it was never quite this evenly vertical.
His teeth are oddly squared off without his signature canines.
He comes with his classic bandolier bag and bowcaster.
Running a close second to BB8 for lack of articulation, Chewwy only has two arm pivots.
Our last Bag Series figure is Rey, with an overdone draped costume.
While not 100% accurate, the clothing detail is pretty nice, you can feel the effort that they put into it.
For whatever reason, they chose to have her head partially covered, like a combination of the two figures released by Hasbro.
While the face sculpt is off, I can see what they were trying to do.
But, like Yoda, the awful eye paint doesn't help at all.
I don't know why they chose to have an injection point RIGHT in the middle of her face. Just a bad idea.
Like Chewwy, we have almost no articulation.
Her soft cape blocks her left arm, and limits her right arm quite a bit.
She comes with her scavenged quarterstaff, which is impossible for her to hold.
Her hands are just too widely open.
Over all terrible accessories, terrible articulation, zero points on packaging...
zero odd charm. I appreciate some of the sculpt effort, but I think they were trying too hard, and just didn't quite make it.
*static pings*
*"THE FORCE" theme fades"*
Surprise!
*8-bit Imperial March beings* One more Star Wars Force Awakens knock off that showed up last week!
If you're familiar with Super Boy Alien Power and other bootleg Wrestlers pouring in from Shenzhen, these should look familiar, with all new head sculpts.
Our first figure is Space Elvis, based on a hollow generic Wrestler series that has been out for several years now.
They didn't bother to play down the sculpted wrestler veins on once bare skin, or modify the high laced wrestling boots.
If you're wondering why he has sunglasses on, it's all too obvious.
Rey wears sunglasses!
Our second indifferent Elvis character is the same wrestler body, but with added vader-esk paint.
Each figure comes with the same ill-fitting cape, that has been not-so-delicately pinned into place.
Surely you noticed the large scar on his face, not quite in the same worst scripted prequel character ever.
The white Storm Trooper figure is based on a Power Boy Alien body.
The larger head size is a little strange, but has a fun caricatured feel, which as actually stolen... I'll clarify later.
This example is actually a newer head sculpt, with an earlier release sporting an exposed chubby face.
Next up, we have dark brown Boba Fet.
The figure bodies have a smartly machined interior, which can easily be modified (with a drill and some basic components), to electrify the toy.
I guess the designer dreamed big, but no one was willing to pay five cents more per figure.
Our last and my favorite figure is Darth Vader.
The ridiculous proportions make this feel more like Lord Helmet from Space Balls, but that's really where the bootleg appeal factor kicks in for me.
The best part about the head sculpt is the tiny shark teeth, similar to a Zando-Zan
The human figure articulation is fairly decent, but very loose.
The elbow and knee joints are particularly wobbly.
The alien body articulation is very limited, might as well be a statue.
The Power Boy Alien character (included within carded examples of UNIVERSAL WAR),
was based on the botched videogame series called Destroy All Humans... the Furon alien design.
The large blaster accessories are hollow plastic, but very strong.
As usual, getting bootleg toys to hold accessories properly is nearly impossible.
The strange katana style wrapped grip creates way too much friction between the hand and handle.
On the human figures the gun easily slips in, but is held at an odd 45o angle.
I really hate simple issues like this.
It just looks so stupid.
Also, the guns are so large that the figures can't even stand up .
The Universal War Darth Vader and Bob Fet heads are my personal favorites from this run
In this case slight parody is really better than forgery.
Thanks for watching everybody, and as always, stay tuned for more Black Tub Bootlegs!
*8-bit "Imperial March" fades*