there isnt much to discuss about it and I have shown it before but I am still very proud to have thism original cardback- and it may be interesting for people chiming in, that are no die-hard bootleg collectors (yet). The cardback is stamped on back and is ultrarare. Except for the approx. 20 MOC examples, I know of only 3 authentic loose cardbacks in collectors hands.

As soon as I find a proper replacement blister I will attach my boba with gun for display purposes :-)

rubberlike wrote:

I have here a couple 1st gen variations that many people might not have seen before.

One more thing: that unusual Han has the same limb color as the unique BS limbs 1st gen Nien Nunb. It is really interesting combination of colors. I wonder if we will find some time a Boba Fett with those?

Michael Vogt wrote:

here are two bulks of 25 polish boba fetts i once owned.





Intersting to note that the darker fett is somewhat smaller. Also I got these 25 plus maybe 30 more from one source only. I have never heard of another source. The source was german and wouldnt tell me how he got these.
He just told me that his contact got these from evanplast company (he even sold these using the name of the company!) and that they wanted to stay under the radar cause they were afraif to get in trouble because of copyright violation. His impression was that these were produced recently but this cannot be proven.

Interesting to note, that i got the 2 packs from different sources (grey from poland/dark grey: germany) but both had a similar sticker on it with the same handwritten "25" on it...

Interesting I bought 11 of the darker ones from a seller in switzerland he also had 9 of the lighter ones.
By the way has that trilogo fett arrived yet Michael?

I promise to investigate the Evanplast company, still have no idea how not to startle them...

I think someone made new molds or got the older ones and tried to make some money, perhaps is still trying. Poor end of a legend of bootleg history in Poland...

Movable and Wanted



This time let's have a look on the most sought after figures of the Polish bootleg world. Misterious, glorious, extremely rare items; a top of any SW collection.



LOOSE SERIES

I decided to put together two figures here: a well known Chewbacca and a recent discovery, 8D8. Both were made of very similar material - light plastic, both were sold loose and both were seen mostly in the Northern Poland area, near the Baltic Sea. We don't know the producer or the circumstances of starting the production.

Chewbacca

Made of brown, black or white plastic, had a movable limbs and the proper gun. My informer told me about yellowish examples, future discoveries will show us how many more variants there was. One of the sources says it could be the very first of Polish SW figures, another one claims there were still some examples sold in Warsaw about 1990. I don't remember it at all - living on the South never saw them in shop. There are five black examples existing today, five brown and one combined (by mistake?) of brown and white. The pictures below shows items from the collections of Wolff and Daren and mine.




8D8

A 2011 discovery. Almost in the same time, the figure surfaced from two sources. There are four known examples until now, making it the rarest of Polish figures. Yes, I'm convinced it is Polish. I spoke with the first owner of this figure, he is completely trustworthy. He said he bought it on the seaside, in the tourist village called Gąski, between 1984 and 1987. Maybe it was only a short production, maybe the sale didn't go well or maybe nobody linked this figure with SW series - we are still waiting for more examples coming to the light.





BAGGED SERIES

Called also 'original series'. Sold in plastic bags, with the card on top - similar scheme as in some Mexican items. Nevertheless, nobody today have seen the original package, we are still waiting for a miracle. The figures were made with much care, plastic corps with movable rubber limbs and heads (very fragile) and proper gun attached. They were present fo sure well before the unarts and Elektrospółdzielnia series appeared, maybe even before the ESB came on Polish screens (1982). We don't know the producer.

Princess Leia

The rarest of the series - seven examples are known. Made with translucent cape (only one preserved today). There were different belt paintings - red, green, black, maybe others too. Note: this figure is very similar to Hungarian Leia; the main difference are feet - Polish Leia had gold paint on them while the Hungarian was unpainted.




Han Solo

Copy of the large head Kenner variant. Eight examples exist.




Tusken Raider

The only one differing in color from Kenner origin. Neevrtheless, it is an imposing item, made of marvelous orange plastic and rubber, with orange cape. There were a proper gun included - none of them survived until now. Eleven examples are in the collector's possession.




Obi-Wan Kenobi

Made with brown cape (the other colors existing needs to be proved) and lightsaber, which is frozen half-opened. Anyway, on the back of the arm there is still molded a fragment used topull the saber, painted on the sam color. We know about twelve examples, differing in saber colors - gold, silver or blue. Four brown capes surfaced until now.





CARDED SNOWTROOPER

Produced in the second half of the 80's by the small private company near Warsaw, it was possibly the best quality Polish bootleg ever made. It was not only a direct copy figure of Kenner origin, equipped with rifle and cape, but it was also attached (in plastic bubble) on one-sied card, copied from Kenner but with Polish text. Only one complete example exists, there is also one incomplete card.

We know about three color variants: black, red and milky white. There is about fifteen black figures existing (not always complete limbs) but only one red and only a pair of legs from the white variant. If the owners will forgive me, I will show pictures from they collections to make complete gallery of what we have:






I am lucky to be born in the country that made such great items. Hope to write soon some bomb news I got about some of them. The 8d8 shown us that maybe not everything is discovered yet

Jakub

Great work Jakub. I think it's worth mentioning the color variations on the Original Leia's belt. I am aware of black, green and orange which is a lot of examples of a figure existing in such small quantities.

Thanks Trevor - done!

Plus given. As always great to read and great pictures!!

Im a bit surprised by your numbers of the Ben. I would say Ben is the by farest the most often on the market! I would have thought of it doubled compared to tjhe other three!!??


Well you learn sth new every day!

Anybody has a Leia for me??....Sorry....I have to ask....its the only one missing here!

Wolf,

Ben is twelve, and I was really surprised how hard it was to sell the examples of him recently. I know it was damaged ones a little but still it is the figure from the oldest Polish series!

I am aware that there is a little break down of Polish bootlegs. I know, they are not so easy to collect, you don't get a complete set of carded ones as in the Uzay or Hunagarian case. But I have the impression that the collectors will come back to the Polish focus after some time of excitations about the Turkish or Hungarian stuff...

Remember, there is NOTHING comparable to Polish bootlegs. We were the country of paradoxes, country of private initiative within a communist system. No Uzay will match with this!

Jakub

*Ahem* well I've only been collecting for 2 years now, so my opinion doesn't carry the clout or knowledge that many of our other bootleg brethren possess. But I do get the impression Uzay have been the most popular bootleg line ever since bootlegs were popular I think this is due to their relatively good production quality and ridiculously awesome card art.

Hopefully Polish figures will become more popular again, but I don't it will happen at the expense of Uzay (or Hungarian for that matter) becoming undesirable.

Btw there is only one complete carded Uzay collection...and that same collector is just one Polish MOC away from a complete set (I think his name starts with a J...). Granted Uzay MOC come around more often than Polish, but for every loose Uzay figure for sale there seems to be a 100 unarts and 200 3rd gens...

Hehe, Mete, Uzays are great and everything... Just grew up playing with Polish rubber stuff There is space for every bootleg. I am patient, waiting for another big time for Polish boots. I was the one standing in the crowd in the toy shop of the 80's when the new stuff arrived - that is imcomparable to anything for me.

The only question is - who will collest theese items when we die?

Probably nobody will collect these when we die I think its great you looked for the newest figures when you were a kid Jakub that's awesome Polish figures will rebound someday I am sure...

Let's drink some vodka for this :!:

turkdlit wrote:

Probably nobody will collect these when we die I think its great you looked for the newest figures when you were a kid Jakub that's awesome Polish figures will rebound someday I am sure...

Propably we will never die
Seriously, I think in 20 years or so the interest in rare/expansive vintage sw including bootlegs will drop significantly. Of course some newbies will spend money but you wont be able to get todayd prices back.Some iconic items will remain at a certain value like blue snags, yak face, msybe jaea vinyl, but i suggest an unarticulated logray wont be on the list. Fancy (and famous) stuff like uzay will also stay popular to a certsin extent but I think it will get harder for some if the niche items like unarts or mexican stuff.. just my 2cents... I think collecting will go back to the basics, people will buy main characters, maybe star wars moc due to their historic look, etc. noone will care about subtle paint variations in a decade i guess...

I have to ask that now....its a question I have in mind now for a very long time:

Is there ANY differneces between a 1gen and 2nd gen black weapon?? Means...can expert define if its firstgen besides the color???

Some of them are just made of softer rubber (1st gens), the later gens are also not so deep black in color. But you can only be sure when you get the gun with the particular figures from the first owner...

So better buy funky colors with your 1st gens???

Yes, colors are safer. But you can also trust the good sellers when buying black ones

Man, I've been away from here for about 2 weeks because of my move. SOOOO glad to see the response to the new bootleg threads. Especially this one since my main focus is unarts and deluxe AT AT Drivers. Now to just find some more time to participate actively! Hopefully after I get whatever my fiance will let me unpack.

Hey Dallas,

Just sold a nice blue deluxe AtAt... Tell me when you are ready to pick up some beautiful unarts

starwarsaw wrote:

Hey Dallas,

Just sold a nice blue deluxe AtAt... Tell me when you are ready to pick up some beautiful unarts

Hey bud. I saw it when you had it up for sale. I've got a blue one right now. Until I get some more colors I'm not going to double up on any (even though they are all different in slight variations).

Here is what I have so far for the deluxe:



And second & third gens:


I'm afraid I'm out of the buying game for a while. At least until after my wedding anyway.

Wow, they definitely can be used on the wedding cake

OR maybe better:




:sealed:

LOL, we're actually using the 2 production figs for that. Seriously! I've got several of them so not worried about them getting messed up.

I don't think I want to poison our cake with any toxic bootleg chemicals anyway...

A 1000 views of the Polish thread!

To honour that, let me paste a picture of pink Luke I got recently:





Jakub

Hey guys, this is a try to overwiev a quite chaotic section...



The Stormtroopers were most popular figures in all Polish bootleg industry. You can buy them today for few cents if you're lucky. Seem to be boring items. But still there are some interesting things to be discovered here. Let's try to make an order in the various groups of this army.




THE UNARTICULATED SERIES: KENNER MOLD


Group I: Metal Troopers

For a long time I was convinced there are only two variants of Stormtrooper Kenner bootleg figure, both made of black rubber and then painted all silver or gold. The gold one was harder to get. As a kid I was angry that both are not resembling the colors of a film character. We can assume, that they were a classics for 80's collections:




Lot of kids were also angry for those colors and there is a huge amount of repainted items surfaced from the original collections, done with watercolors or oil paints:




We can now say that there are also a white rubber items from this group. This was typical Polish absurd: to make a white Stormie and to paint him all silver... I'm very curious if there are any examples made of other rubber color: blue? red? yellow?



Group II: Gloves Troopers

This seems to be a simplier version of the above, maybe caused by the lack of silver and gold farb. The figure is made of black rubber, has white details on the helmet and color on hands: gold, green, red or other.



Does it mean they were made by another producer? We don't kno that for sure.



Group III: Shadow Troopers

Seems to be made by different producer or just painted with different scheme. There were several variants within this group, but the black ones are the most notable here, therefore we can call this cathegory 'Shadow Troopers', made long before the real Shadows appeared on the official market

The possible variants were at least: black rubber with white details, black (any?) rubber painted all black with white details, black rubber painted all silver with black details, white rubber painted greyish with black details.






UNARTICULATED SERIES: BUTTON TROOPERS


This is a misterious group. Mostly linked with so called 'caped Stormtroopers', who seems to be the last breath of the series. Since we know about unique examples of the white rubber button Troopers, we can assume they were first on the market. Why 'button'? Because of the four buttons molded on each forearm and some little button differencies on the belly. The other detail are feet: shorter and thicker than the Kenner-like items, also the 'smile' on the mask is molded differently. What was the origin for this? No idea. Also we don't know if there was any cape added to the figure. The more important is, that it could be the only white unarticulated Stormtrooper on the Polish market and was extremely rare one. Today we know about only two examples of this version:




It had to be later in the 80's when somebody used the same mold or created a new one for the second wave of Button Stormies. This time most of them were equipped with a cape, with a name written on it: 'obi-wan kenobi'. Another Polish absurd, because there was another figure in this series - Chewbacca - with a cape holding a proper name. This wave was made of very soft rubber, painted silver and gold, without details.






ARTICULATED SERIES


First generation

This was one of the Elektrospółdzielnia most popular figures. Made of white rubber, with Biker Scout limbs, sold on cards. The details were painted quite funny: yellow arms and belt, black details on the helmet, red details on the belly. We could eventually ascribe that scheme to the category: Sandtrooper IF such figure would exist in the Kenner oldest series.





Second generation

There were two types of second gen movable Stormies, for which I count only proved and played-with items from collections of the original owners from the 90's. This figures also came from the Elektrospółdzielnia mold, made of white rubber. One of the versions were painted similar to the first gen (sometimes even sold on shorter photo-cards), the other has only a black details painted, which makes it more similar to the film origin.





Third generation

Here we have the come back of first gen color scheme. It could be a strategy of the after-2000 makers who wished to gain some more money from the collectors. I never saw a played-with item of this color after 1st generation.







It is hard to categorize within a vast bootleg Stormtrooper output. If you guys have another thoughts or experience, please write it or show the pictures. I will change the article according to the convincing proves.

Jakub