Quote:
Originally Posted by Primetyme
Probably box is pirate facsimile.
However, the figure could have been pulled somewhere along the Hasbro factory conveyor belt or it had some minor QC issues and were pulled for disposal (but someone intercepted.)
So the pirates may have just created and packaged the box outside themselves.
|
It could be a real product, or not. The sheer number of offerings on AliExpress makes me a bit skeptical.
It probably is a reproduction and they goofed on the spelling on the locker box. That seems to be the dead give away because otherwise it looks to be an exact replica.
The last decade has seen an explosion in reproductions of action figures. They have improved so much from the early days of G1 TF KOs that easily be seen as not original due to quality.
More and more these reproductions are being done in high quality factories, and I wouldn't be surprised in some of the original factories as well. So the figures are getting closer and closer to the real ones that in many cases you can't really tell the difference. This Eel looks to be one of those cases.
I remember when I was collecting Tamashii Nations Star Wars Samurai figures they were getting flooded with KOs that were really high quality. They of course had a few differences, mostly in the build quality of some of the smaller pieces, and the printing on the box, but not so much so that the average person would notice. The boxes were also exact replicas of the official products except for missing the holo-foil sitcker. And this was almost 10 years ago, and they were plentiful on AliExpress.