Friday, March 18, 2011

The 15 Most Unintentionally Hilarious Bootleg Toys


[Octo: I don't care to acquire bootleg toys; I rarely save packaging (which is 2/3rds of the fun with bootlegs), and after the initial giggle it's kind of annoying having such junk around, especially when I hardly have enough room for the good toys. But they are hilarious, and the examples in this article are beyond anything I would have the stamina to research. So I'll turn it over to the good folks at Cracked.com...]

#15.RobertCop

Yes, it's RobertCop. It looks like a silly photoshop, but pictures abound of the same box in various settings (it's something of an internet sensation -- fans of RobertCop have even given him his own Facebook page).

The beauty of this is that when tweaking the name for their bootleg knockoff toy, they could have went with "Robo" anything and it would have made perfect sense as a toy. RoboDetective, RoboWarrior, RoboMonster -- this is the world's easiest thing to rename. But instead, they replaced the Robo part. With Robert.

Robert is a good officer, but he almost never murders an entire warehouse full of drug dealers.

That's awesome because it doesn't in any way explain why he is made of metal. It almost implies that cops are all robots in America, and that RobertCop is what happens when a robot gets killed in the line of duty and they resurrect it by fusing it with a guy named Robert. He's part cop. Part Robert. He's RobertCop.

Three.

See the rest here.

2 comments:

JPX said...

Terrific article! As you noted I’m glad someone else took the time to research this strange little subculture of toy collecting. I also agree that the packaging is half the fun. There is much to love in this article but I think my favorite is the “Tomos” toy line – that might be worth seeking out. I don’t know if Zach is into Thomas the Trains yet (pray that he doesn’t get into them, it’s a pricey toy line!) but the line is so saccharine that it’s hilarious there is a transformer/evil robot bootleg. It would be liking making Grimace and axe murderer.

Octopunk said...

Hmm, that's an interesting notion. I feel like Grimace would probably be the child molester, Ronald would be the axe murderer, and the Hamburgler would be an arsonist. I know cannibal seems like the obvious pick for him, but I like the pairing of hamburger lust and pyromania.