How Are Bootlegs Made?

Most bootlegs come from China or Malaysia.  China is a hotspot for bootlegging because, like many companies from all around the world, most of the manufacturers of gashapon and other figures outsource their production to factories in China.  The molds and designs are made in Japan, and then they're sent to China, where the factories pump out the figures and ship them back to Japan for very low costs.  The problem is that there are very few rules regulating the Chinese factories, and there are plenty of bad apples among the workers. 

When the production line for a certain figure is complete, these bad apples steal the molds from the factories and use them to create their own bootleg figures that can look very similar to the real ones.  Since they're using the same molds, the shapes of the figures tend to be identical, but the plastic that the bootleggers use is often much cheaper and lower quality.  The molds also don't cover the coloring of the figures, just the shaping, so the bootleggers are left to do the painting by their own means, and often do a fairly shoddy job, getting colors wrong and coloring "outside the lines," so to speak.  Also, when there is Japanese writing on the figures, the bootleggers often get the characters wrong.

Another problem for bootleggers is that they don't always manage to obtain the molds for the bases of the figures.  Because of this, many bootlegs are sold without bases entirely, or with custom-made bases that may not fit the figure properly.

Yet another problem is that the bootleggers have a tough time recreating the boxes and papers that may come with a figure.  For this reason, most bootlegs don't come with boxes at all, but some may come with custom-made boxes that again are much cheaper and lower quality than the originals.  These boxes are often made of very thin cardboard and the pictures printed on the boxes are often straight copies of the originals that are blurry and sometimes crooked.

So does this mean you should never order any toys from China or Malaysia?  Not necessarily.  In fact, most figures you buy on eBay will be coming from China, regardless of whether they're legit.  It is very rare to find sellers from Japan.  Sometimes people will sell the legit figures straight from the real factories, and the figures may even be cheaper because of this.  It's all about knowing how to spot the bootlegs before you buy them, so pay attention to my eBay buying tips in the past and future.