Many moons ago (roughly four years, in fact) I stumbled upon one of the greatest wonders that I had ever seen. It appeared to me as if it were sent from heaven, and changed my life (and this web site) forever. It was an eleven-inch tall hunk of plastic in the form of Stan Lee’s greatest creation, the Amazing Spider-Man, and it only cost one dollar. As my toy collecting hobby had seen far too much money leave my wallet in favor of the real things, this bootlegged delight was a sight for sore eyes.

My addiction grew, and in five separate articles here at Movie Criticism for the Retarded, I presented the best and the boldest of my findings, the finest bootlegged toys that cheap Chinese factories had ever brought to life. But it wasn’t long before the well had run dry, and finding new additions to my collection became too much of a challenge.

A blessing in disguise, perhaps, as I had amassed quite a large menagerie of the stuff. I began to thin my collection, giving overstock away as gifts, but eventually I was forced to store them away, out of sight and out of mind.

Two moves later, and they have made their way to the surface. And not only will the last few from the early hauls see the light of day on MCFTR, but you, yes, you, will get a chance to own some of these fine artifacts from the days of yore yourself.

So, without further ado, welcome to Bootleg Party ’07, brought to you by the blood and sweat of poor factory workers in a third world country!

We begin this party with something called a “Bubble Hammer”. As you may have grasped from its name, the Bubble Hammer is a hammer that also contains bubbles, making it two exciting toys in one. Actually, a correction — it’s also got a whistle attached to it, making it not two, but three exciting toys in one.

As I was acquiring the last one in their stock, I asked the nice woman at the dollar store which sold the Bubble Hammer if I could also have the backing card from its display, and she was kind enough to let me have it. And what a lovely background it is.

I wish I had the chicken too, but alas, I’m stuck with the duck. And I apologize, but apparently I misspelled “WHISTEL” earlier. My bad. But what’s this about a “Terrible Voice”? Well, let’s let you hear it for yourself:

Yeah, that’s pretty terrible, all right.

Now, we take you to a seemingly innocuous Hello Kitty tote bag.

Oh, wait, that’s not “Hello Kitty”, that’s her evil twin sister, Hollo Kitty. How do I know that Hollo is the evil one? Well, much like with the Electric Plano that I found so many years in the past, this Kitty likes to give the finger.

So, there you have it. By the way, that lovely textured denim? Just a printed pattern on vinyl. Not nearly as exciting as one might think.

It’s certainly not as exciting as Spider-Man, who graces us as he does in every bootleg toys visit. It’s not nearly as exciting as his infamous telephone or animal guitar forms, but at least he’s on a super-action lenticular wallet:

Not only does oscillating the lovely velcro wallet cause Spidey to rock back and forth like a mental patient in a padded cell, but it also causes the nearby bird and butterfly to flutter their wings. I’m going to guess that being stuck in a pasture with fluttery little creatures is some sort of therapy for Peter Parker after his descent into madness.

Now, we venture into a new direction altogether, as we present Wild Surfind!

I don’t know what “Surfind” is, but it appears to be some activity that involves birds riding upon the backs of crocodiles and swinging baseball bats. I like to imagine that the birdie on the back is swinging at mailboxes in a fit of juvenile delinquency. I thought the back might give me a little more insight onto what Wild Surfind was all about:

Great, so all I know now is that it has light, a working jaw, and a wiggly tail, which I’m guessing is its biggest selling point based on its capitalization. It is more funny to play it, however. More funny than what, I’m not sure, but I’m going to guess that it’s more funny than this:

Yeah, I’m not touching that one. Someone at Disney is going to sue someone, and I sure as hell don’t want it to be me.

And now, a visit from Mongoloid Hulk:

Yeah, the less said about the gamma-radiated freak, the better.

Speaking of things that don’t deserve much verbiage, here’s Yet Another Power Ranger Rip-off:

GaoRanger is not that amusing unto itself, but it does get better when you realize that these Power Rangers are not just your typical do-gooder superhero types. To the contrary! They Fence Against the Earth!

They also happen to be equipped to Supertime Action Weapons, but they are also Super With Lightning!

Sometimes, you just have to read the fine print. Hey, here’s some more fun fine print from other toys that otherwise aren’t really that much to write home about:

Okay, with those out of my system, here’s another exciting piece of small print:

This fabulous piece of Engrish is from one of about a half dozen toy guitars I found along the way, the best of which is still only about 1/10th as exciting as the Spider-Man Animal Guitar which is to this date the greatest bootlegged toy in existence. It’s still amusing enough to merit a few kilobytes worth of bandwidth, though:

What’s interesting is that multiple toy guitars carry the same bit of Bloken Engrish, despite having very few other similarities:

   

And now, for proof that some words just don’t mean the same thing to us as they do to the makers of cheap plastic toy telephones:

   

I expected to see Madonna and Grave Digger in the packages, but we get waterhead Ultraman and generic anime character instead. *Sigh*.

Hey, what would a visit to a toy full of cheap Chinese crap be without a cross-eyed dog with human hands and a soccer ball?

Yeah, that’s what we get here. Her name is “Dog”. That’s quite creative, and I’ll bet it took all day to come up with that one. It’s a tough name to remember, though, because they didn’t even get to the back of the package before altering it:

Dog has become doggie. Its function: Electricity! And yes, it apparently can go in myriad direction.

Longtime followers of the crazy world of bootlegs can attest to the fact that they tend to do a lot of wacky multi-packs. Normally, it’s a bunch of Spider-Men together, or Daredevils, or Power Rangers, or even multi-gendered groups of Spider-people. But today, we get some variety:

And if the multiple Power Rangers along with Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man turn you off, then we can just remove them and replace them with another retarded Hulk.

And since the two uncharacteristic-for-these-characters weapons that are included in this pack are green, I’m guessing that they exist so that Hulk can commit suicide whenever his strange condition leaves him with the desire to leave this mortal coil.

Finally, we come to my new favorite heroine of the bootleg world. He comes to us on a set of stationery, colored blue for the boys, and she tells us her name. You’ll never forget the name of TELPOS:

Telpos wears a lovely white dress with a red bow, and rounds out her outfit with a lovely pair of moccasins. She reminds us of the following:

And while we’re not sure about the following, we think it may be the introduction to the lyrics of the Telpos theme song:

And somehow, we’re shocked that we never heard of Telpos before, after all, this cute little kitty is pretty well-known:

Wait, what? Dog? Telpos is a dog? I’m…going to have to re-examine my life.

Now, surely other people have had the “Telpos: dog or cat?” debate in the past. I mean, the internet is a vast, vast place, so I’m sure there is tons of information on this cat-dog thing, especially if she’s really as world wide famous as the box states.

Yet, Google shows nothing. Nary a trace of Telpos in her current incarnation. I’m so confused now that I’m going to have to get rid myself of my memories of Telpos. And she’ll join the rest of my soon-to-be ex-bootlegs on eBay.

So yes, stay tuned, because in the next couple of days, you will be able to share in my agony. My bootleg collection can belong to you, at what should surely be a ridiculously overpriced rate. So stick around, and check this space for an update soon.

Until then, check out my new rad ride!