Yes, I realize that it’s been a while since I last popped in with a bootleg toy report, but I ain’t done with this thing just yet. I did skip the month of February due to a lack of time and resources, but I have come back in March for another round of everyone’s favorite flea market masterpieces.

I’m going to do things a bit differently this time around, though. I’ve got a ton of pictures of items that I couldn’t bring myself to buy, but still managed to get some nice shots of from the stores themselves. So while I’ll cover some of the bigger items in a bit more detail, I’ll have a small gallery later of other assorted bootlegs that I’ve run upon in my days of hunting.

We’ll start out this installment with an update of sorts. A couple of months back, I brought you this gem from the Space Warriors line:

At the time, I stated that this item was not a knockoff of a particular toy. However, it turns out I was wrong. Thanks to Doug Dlin for pointing out to me that this is in fact a knockoff of EnRyu from Takara’s GaoGaiGar line in Japan. Click here for more information.

But as it turns out, it’s a pretty shitty knockoff. Here are both robot and fire truck modes of the original:

Pretty neat looking toy, if you’re a fan of transformable robots. So I decided I’d open up the sucker and see how cool the bootleg version is. Here he is in robot mode:

And, well, I tried to get him in to fire truck mode, but all I got was this:

Not quite so impressive. The bootleg version doesn’t really transform, which kind of blows the whole “Transformable Robot Warrior” thing they have going on with the packaging. Oh well. It isn’t like it cost me a fortune, but it would have been nice to have a toy that was at least decent.

So, for this month’s first new entry, we bring you the latest in a seemingly endless series of Spider-Man multi-packs. These even got the name of the super-hero right:

At fisrt, it looks like yet another generic pack full of Spider-Men, not unlike previous inductees in the Super-Change and Hero Household lines of bootlegs. But if I look closer, I realize that the Spider-Men on the far left and far right aren’t men at all. They have Spider-breasts! Yes, in a brand new twist to the conventional Spidey multi-pack, we now have Spider-Women. The irons have been struck for women’s rights.

Speaking of superheroes of the female persuasion, we now bring you another popular bootleg target: The Power Puff Girls!

Hey, look! It’s a notebook, at least according to the packaging. But it also has a lock on the side, making it seem more functional as a diary. It has fairly accurate renditions of the trio of girls that protect the city of Townsville on the Cartoon Network each and every week right in the center, along with cutesy little “Just for you” and “Good luck” sentiments. How sweet. But let’s get a closer look at that fine print down toward the bottom:

I’ll pick a maple leaf to
send my friend in the
distance. Wishing you a happy life!

Okay, generally I think about picking a flower for a loved one, but I guess a maple leaf will do. Anyway, let’s turn our book over and see the other side:

A little simpler, but what does that little poem say toward the bottom?

Roses are pretty.
Violets are pleasant.
You will get a card
instead of a present.
Happpy birthday.

What the hell? Someone dares to make a big deal about giving out a crappy card rather than a real gift, and then has the audacity to wish an extra-happy (denoted by the extra ‘p’, obviously) birthday after verbally spitting in our face? Sheesh. What a crappy birthday that would be. I think my favorite part of this, however, is the hoops that the English-impaired creators went through to actually rhyme this thing and still likely have no clue what the hell it means.

Our next item is a bit puzzling…

Oh man, I kill myself sometimes with these puns. Anyway, yes, this is a rather innocent-looking children’s puzzle, or as it plainly states, “Interesting Children Puzzle.” Apparently this is part of a product line called Best Make-up Mon, which contains characters you might find familiar. The large cat on the puzzle itself is Meowth, a Pokemon. At the top, you’ll see two other Pokemon, Blastoise and Pikachu. Those other characters, though? Characters from the not-so-cool Digimon line, which pales in comparison to the coolness that is Pokemon. And hell if I know any of the Digimon character names. Maybe, though, Make-Up Mon is supposed to mean that in some alternate universe of sucky toys, these two competing toy lines somehow put aside their differences and decided to get along for the sake of crappy toys everywhere. Or not.

Next up, we show you something that is just stupid.

No, those aren’t real Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, and I’m not even sure about what “Famous Resoning” is all about to begin with. But what I can tell you is that I’ve seen these things at practically every flea market and dollar store within a 20 mile radius, and they all manage to fuck up the most common word in the world. Yes, that does say “Trading Cark Game”. I really don’t ask for a lot, and I’ve even seen name-brand toy manufacturers typo a word or two on their packaging. But of all the words to flub, you flub “Card”. How stupid can one be?

Speaking of screwing up easy words, please welcome Crawing Baby:

From Huada Toys comes this creepy little monstrosity. At least they didn’t spell it “Cawing baby”, because that would get real annoying real fast. This isn’t all that interesting, but it is fun to goof around with the bloken Engrish that appears on the packaging:

CRAWLING WITH MUSIC
FALLING DOWN AND CAYING
SAY DAD,MUMMY

Well, at least they spelled “Crawling” right this time, although they’ve added a whole new word into the lexicon in “Caying”, whatever the hell that means. And apparently they want to tell us that they toy says “Dad” and “Mummy”, or perhaps it’s a command to a Mummy to say “Dad”. Or something. I don’t know, and I really don’t care.

One more item this month gets any sore to commentary before I turn the reigns over to the picture gallery, and I guess this will have to serve as our main event this time around. No, this is not nearly as interesting as some previous items covered here, but once you’ve reached bootleg toy nirvana with something as amazing as the Spider-Man Animal Guitar, it’s really only downhill from there. But this one is still worth a chuckle or two, despite its lack of any web-slinging superheroes:

Behold the Organ Electronic, The Best welcome gifts for the Children. A gaggle of barnyard animals has apparently gotten together here to ride a school bus, which apparently makes a bunch of sounds. Everything from dogs and cats to alligators and nightcap-wearing ducks are aboard the Organ Express, which seems to have these exciting features:

Since when can Music be prefaced by an adverb? Anyway, these are basically your run of the mill Engrish product descriptions, which do wonders both to sell these products to unsuspecing children and to make silly folks like me chuckle.

The back of the package also has some pretty descriptive instructions as well:

Press the key
utter the
homologous sound

ho·mol·o·gous adj. Corresponding or similar in position, value, structure, or function.

Okay, sure. I would have chosen a better word, but I guess that’s why I don’t get paid the big bucks to write product descriptions on cheap Southeast Asian Sweatshop toys.

So that’s about it for this month. The market’s not quite as saturated as it once was, and I’ve kind of run a lot of this area dry, so it may be a while before I bring you another Bootleg toy article. But to tide you over, here is the promised picture gallery. Click any image to enlarge.