exillionXLR: A KO CRACKER

My first KO Thundercracker listened to wayyy too much Eiffel 65

Going back, maybe as recent as three to four years ago, knockoffs were nasty! Good and nasty! You would walk into a pound shop or seedy newsagent and there!!! On one of those rust stained wire racks that squealed like a vole in a headlock every time you rotated it to browse over the sheer crap that was on offer. KNOCKOFFS!!

 

Thin bent cardboard, bubbles so cheap that they crinkled like fusion powered rice crispies and a sign on top written in dried up permanent marker reading "evrythung one pownd"

The sexual "Decepticon Magnus"

It was glorious! Not even the simplest of the planets inhabitants could be fooled into thinking that they were buying anything that might come within light years of safety standards. It was all about buying the crap for laughs! To hold up and bask in the glory of unacceptableness!



Somewhere along the line though something changed, a potential was realised and it is that very thing i wish to discuss here.

The Games of Deception set box art
Very deceptive if you actually thought it would remain exclusive
P.S. Dear Elias Weskerson...HA!


I believe it all started at Botcon 2007. It was here that the convention exclusive "Games of Deception" figure set included three previously unreleased seekers: Thrust, Dirge and most importantly Thundercracker. People spilled over themselves to get hold of these guys as shirts were lost, throats cut and children sold! To an outsider it would have appeared that, to a hardcore transformers collector, owning a full set of seekers was more mandatory than maintaining self nourishment based sustenance. The later release of the Gentai versions of these three seekers along with Skywarp too would further prove this as these $80 deluxe figures shifted faster than Cat Headquarters on national salmon week.

Somebody...somewhere...,for arguments sake lets call him Uncle Ken (of KOtoys), saw what was going on. He noticed that these figures were commanding such extraordinarily high prices on Ebay that their potential as replacement organs was mixing with viral myth.
What Uncle Ken(of KOtoys) decided to do was up the game!

And so...I'm not sure how, or where but I am damn sure why (moneyzzz)....The new knockoff was born!
Gone now are the days of the newsagent rack, gone now are the days of mistaking a toy for a pack of Dairylea slices, gone now is my concentratio.....yeah they made some nice ones and stuff.


They even ripped off the packaging, what a bloomin' treat!

So here he is, a toy that represents a new era for knockoffs....KO Henkei Thundercracker. Before Hasbro's eventual release it cemented itself as a solid and viable long term stand in allowing twitchy G1 fans to avoid selling family members in order to fill that winged shaped void on their shelves at a fraction of what it might have cost them originally.

Spot the impostor!
KO Thundercracker in front of his licensed counterpart

For a KO this figure is damn impressive! His missile launchers go off more frequently than dairy products and they don't really want to stay in his arms but i figured he might just have bad hygiene.

The implications of this entire adventure are a mixed bag of fruit pastilles and Devonshire wildlife. On a moral term it could be said that this is completely wrong as these manufacturers are stealing Hasbro's designs and making money from it those evil evil evil evil....yeah I'm not going to pretend it bothers me.

KO manufacturers have upped the game and for collectors like us this is, in my opinion ,a positive thing. Until the inevitable law suit happens we get some seriously cool knockoffs to choose from, i mean there is some NICE gear coming out from these KO sites, stuff that I would happily combine with a pack of Jacobs cream crackers and chow down on.

Back to front: Hasbro Generations Thundercracker, Uncle Kens First, Uncle Kens Finest

Hasbro might even up it's own game..or they could shut it down altogether in which case one would hope that they take note of how popular this stuff is and apply this kind of content in their own lines. After all now that these companies have the ability to create such accurate and fair quality replicas of Hasbro's products I don't assume they would take this lightly and discuss it over biscuits and squash.

So I'm not sure where I was going with this, it started off as a somewhat intended review and became a holiday package deal with extra tubes.

I'm not trying to advertise anything here. I just really think the KO market has taken an interesting step forward on a path that I find more than intriguing.
Am I wrong? Am I a moron? Am I no better than than cheating darn tootin sheriff? Do my Gundams offend kittens? Let me know!

Thank you for reading

Brad (exillionXLR)