6/23/22

Hilarious Chinese Bootleg Puzzle

I love Chinese bootleg crap.  I should really clarify that, and say I enjoy the products that are ironically funny, since we are finding ourselves in our everyday lives literally surrounded by annoying, cheaply made knockoff garbage, thanks to lots of big name Internet retailers I could name.  Anyhow, imagine my surprise when I found this frame-tray puzzle at my local thrift store:



I walked right by it, then did a double-take.  It's one of those things that gets funnier the longer you look at it.  For starters, obviously we have Ultraman Zero and Taro dominating the image, but then your eye starts to wander...


First of all, yes, it's the starship Enterprise and a Naboo fighter.  I mean, really.


Secondly, that is indeed my friend Baragon...but in reality it's a photo of the Revoltech action figure of him.  They couldn't even be bothered to find a photo from FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD and Photoshop it.  That was too hard.  It reminds me of the Episode IX debacle where an action figure of the Emperor was embarrassingly used instead of actual art, which of course is indicative of the whole existence of the Sequel Trilogy, but we aren't here to discuss that.

Of course, there are even more things that don't belong, some of which I can't even name (let me know in the comments if you can; it occurred to me the other day out of the blue that the upper-right monster is Golza, who was a prominent Ultraman Tiga villain).  This being a Chinese puzzle, there is actually an activity on the back, rather than a boring blank cardboard backing like the boring Americans have on their puzzles...if anything, China gives you value!


It's, um, a crummy cartoon house, and you have to color it yourself.  Don't worry though, because they give you an actual guide in the corner to show you how to color it...until you realize most of the house is actually white, so...

Also, there is a bar code, which I ran on the UPC code database of 63 million codes, and...it doesn't exist! What? Shocking!

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