I ended up at Big Lots! today (as I often do, really) and while the overall size of their runoff/knockoff toy aisle had shrunk, there was still “treasure” to be found. I guess.

I love close/blatant knockoffs, since they fill me with this wondering sensation- Are they more meticulous for so slavishly copying the original product, or are they merely lazier for not trying to force some half-assed alteration or cost cutting measure? In this installment of Hong Kongy joy, we take a look at some knockoffs of the semi-recent Robotmasters line.

These “Space Warrior Transformable Cyber Master(s)” are pretty recognizably the handiwork of makers of those Beast Wars knockoffs.  Plainly, Transformable Cyber Masters are different than Transformers Robot Masters. They come in two packs that invariably consist of A Jet and Some Other Guy. I got this one for the Mirage.

Originally, they came with spring-loaded auto-changing gimmicks, and for the most part the mechanism is still there minus the spring. So, they still KINDA self-change if you grab onto the lever or whatever and yank hard. Overall they’re sturdier than the average knockoff in that they didn’t break into slivers when doing so, but Mirage (the racer, for the uninitiated) has super floppy shoulders that make the sides of the car sag down, as well as limiting him to depressed or listless poses.

The other guy, the jet has kind of a squashed Megatron-style head. I think he’s based off Megaplex or Wing Stun or Fagstorm or something like that. He changes into a black and orange F-22 Raptor, a plane I can almost always get behind. Well, a really fat F-22 with half a robot hanging off the bottom. The arms in particular stick out like sore… entire arms. He even has a folding landing gear under the nose cone, but nothing to stop it so it just kinda keeps going back until it’s near flush with the bottom of the jet. Kiss the tarmac.

Light piping is a technique wherein translucent colored plastic is inserted into the robot head so it ‘glows’ in front of a strong light. In keeping with the theme of “Is it half-assed, or are they trying to outdo the original,” the entire head of both robots is translucent blue, and also recessed a bit too far into the chest to catch light very well. Or be turned. It does give the impression that they’re super-cool robot GHOSTS! Well, that their heads are, anyway.

The set also comes with four little weapons- three guns and an aqua-colored little kukri-knife thing. If I recall correctly (I could have easily just written IIRC, but that always feels a little short and dickish), a gimmick of Robotmasters was to have each guy come with a little weapon that could hook up to those of their teammates to become a mighty BFG of translucent plastic doom. So, nice they thought to include that.

All in all, they’re not too bad for four bucks. That’s probably less than half of what one of the genuine article would set you back.

I also found an entire shelf of old Pokemon figures marked with the “Only at (Target Logo)” brand. THAT’S EXCLUSIVE.

…yeah, I bought the Team Rocket pack.