Today’s Mutant Monster knockoff Mad Ball is named Green Multi on the Five Below website, but any Mad Balls fan knows exactly who this is — it’s Slobulus, just reincarnated as one of these glossy bouncy-ball freaks. Slobulus is a classic Mad Ball who shows up all the time in official and unofficial lines.
He’s a booger monster who’s often the butt of a joke, hates being the butt of a joke, and absolutely cannot tell a joke. But don’t mess with him — the dude can snort out snot hands. Fuck around and find out, I guess.
This is classic Slobulus all over: green skin, popped-out eyeball, boogers everywhere. He doesn’t have any hair here, which the real ones usually do… but knockoffs often skip that detail. Honestly, as a Mutant Monster he’s got a bit of a baby face, and it’s kind of cute. And of course he’s sporting the exposed yellow brains that at this point feel like the official hallmark of the Mutant Monsters line. On Green Multi they look infected — which, for a guy like him, totally tracks. You just know if he had legs, he’d be wearing a pair of grubby solid black sneakers. He’s that guy. I can practically smell him coming.
Today’s Mutant Monster knockoff Mad Ball is listed as Gray Multi on Five Below’s website… which is a pretty wild name for a guy who’s mostly blue, but whatever. Gray Multi is a very direct knockoff of Repvile. Repvile is a reptilian monster who, after years of being a boogeyman and scaring kids, learned about Swamp Thing and decided swamp-life was the way to go.
For whatever reason I always wanted to call him Cretin. He just looks like the mascot of an early 90’s punk band in ball form. You can practically see him painted on a drum kit or slapped on stickers the band hands out after shows. I’d have absolutely stuck him on my school notebook and then immediately gotten made fun of by the kids who were “cooler” than me. Man, I do not miss those days of never being able to do anything right according to other kids. Regardless, it would’ve been a cool sticker — and it’s a cool Mad Ball design.
His Mutant Monster incarnation is pretty spot-on. A little more smoothed out than the official one, and of course featuring those exposed yellow brains that might just be the Mutant Monsters’ signature trait. These guys seem to be more in the bouncy-ball lane compared to the foam official Mad Balls, and that thicker coating gives Gray Multi a shinier, wetter finish than Repvile ever had. I don’t mind it, but it’s definitely noticeable. It’s really cool seeing this design again as a Mutant Monster. I genuinely hope this little line keeps going — I dig it
It’s far past time I take a look at Mad Balls here on the site. Like a lot of kids in the 80s, I loved gross things — slime, Garbage Pail Kids, and of course Mad Balls. I’ve picked up various gross-out toys on and off over the years, and Mad Balls have always been a constant because they’re just freaking great.
When I got my most recent batch, it hit me: I’ve never covered them on Zone Base. What the heck? Time to fix that with a look at the new Mutant Monsters balls that have been popping up at Five Below and in Target’s Dollar Spot. The Mrs. grabbed me three of the six currently available… and I’ll absolutely need the other three. These are awesome.
Mutant Monsters are seemingly unlicensed knockoff Mad Balls, basically copying older official designs. And look, I don’t mean to come on too strong here, but… knockoff Mad Balls? Inject that straight into my veins.
They don’t have official names, so I’m going by what Five Below uses — just color descriptions. Weirdly, I kind of love how plain that is. From here on out, I’m just talking about each ball individually. Consider this your required preamble. Moving on.
Orange is one of the more unique Mutant Monsters, leaning closer to an original design. I say closer because it’s clearly playing off Alien with the facehugger-like creature latched onto its head. There was an official Mad Ball with that gag in one of the Horror Series lines, so it’s not totally new… but this version leans more into mutant/alien territory, with a green creature gripping a red head. You might think it has blonde hair in the pictures, but nope — those are exposed yellow brains. Yellow is an odd choice, but honestly? With the rest of the colors going on here, it works.
I’m also not sure why it’s called Orange when it skews more red, but hey, that’s knockoffs for you. The color isn’t even consistent — some spots are lighter, some darker. The monster itself has three angry, bloodshot eyes, and the sculpt reminds me of something you’d fight in classic Doom or Quake. Actually… anybody remember Bio-Freaks?
Orange is a really neat looking Mad Ball — or Sad Ball, as knockoffs are sometimes called. These seem to be more bouncy-ball style rather than the usual foam of the official ones, complete with a glossy finish that makes him look a little moist. Which is perfectly gross.
Having almost every show I want to watch availible on in demand is pretty awesome. Things like TokuSHOUTsu and the Transformers Channel on Roku is amazing. YouTube... YouTube is pretty great, I mean, look at all the content I put on this site using YouTube. All this stuff is available pretty much any time of the day and any where (we've all watched Voltron on the toilet). It got me thinking though, just how much we take it for granted and the things I did prior.
I've mentioned before that I worked at Office Max in college. I had rent, a car, and school to pay for while only having McDonald's as work experience. It wasn't easy. Fortunately at 20 you're more willing (and able) to live off ramen noodles. I still was able to enjoy my hobbies, even if it could be pretty limiting due to funds (or lack of). I might not be able to order those Car Robot toys from Japan, but no problem, they're getting released here next year as Robots in Disguise. Gonna prop up with my laptop real late at night when traffic is pretty light on dial up internet and download pirated episodes in Real Media format.
The video quality is horrible, but hey, I can actually watch it. I'd often make VCD's from them and buy other VCD's online. They usually were pretty cheap, even though the quality was iffy and sometimes there would be a wrong show stuck in randomly. Usually The Tick or TMNT. I also had bootleg tapes thanks to a roommates arrangement with a nearby comic/anime/gaming store. They rented out bootleg and legal gray area sub-titled imports. My roommate had a part time job there and he was allowed to make copies of shows for us as part of the deal. I'd hit up the thrift store and find some G1 and G2 bots. Missing the gun, yeah, but it's a buck. Big Lots has some cool bootlegs. Animorphs are on clearance. I had my fun.
That Office Max I spoke of, well, it was a terrible store. Badly ran and unwisely opened up next to a Walmart. However, it had a copy center. There was a Staples and an Office Depot in the shopping center across from the highway. However mine had that Walmart, Target, Belk, Home Depot, and many other popular stores a person would go to on the weekend. They'd often pop in our crappy store to make copies so they wouldn't need to leave our shopping center. This meant that despite working in the electronics section, I also helped in that copy center. What's a shit head kid with disks full of images going to do with unlimited printing resources?
Every poster on my wall, every flier for an event, even home work was printed right there in that copy center. If I ever would have made any of those zines I wanted to make (which this site is the ultimate culmination of), I probably would have made them there. In hindsight, I probably should have helped other zine producers out.
One poster I had made for myself somehow survived all this time. It was a promotional image for the Beast Wars 2 movie. One side had Lio Convoy and Optimas Primal, the other side was Galvatron and Megatron. I thought it was awesome. I blew up the image and printed out a poster of it. That poster was stuck on every refrigerator I had for years. Every apartment, there it was. Eventually it did get retired. I still have it though, in a box. Folded up and sorta acting as a liner. It's a little dingy from the years and has that old paper smell. Like it came from a library, not something I made with a floppy disk and a color copier in the 90's. Guess that was over 20 years ago.
If it's Halloween time, The Monster Mash will get played there. If you're lucky, Boris Pickett will perform it live. However it'll be the most low rent thing you've even seen. Boris will be performing the entire month of October with the best paper plate mask monsters two dollars can buy. But he will be doing it harder than anything you'll ever see.
This past Sunday morning I found myself in another Walmart than the one I shopped at Saturday. Of course I took the time to look at the Halloween section with the wife. Different Walmart's tend to have different stock and that's usually noticeable in the holiday sections. There's probably a reason for it, but I don't give it too much thought. I just don't care. I like the variety between locations. Each store is it's own thing despite being part of a big chain. Like I said, we were checking out the Halloween section and for the record, this location usually has great holiday areas.
Each weekend they're getting a bunch of new stuff. It's fun to check it out and maybe get a cool surprise while doing so. Which brings us here today. Whilst looking around, I found a lone peg hook with articulated skeleton action figures for $3.88. It was just there, seemingly hung randomly with no actual spot to call it's own. I like to think it's supposed to go on one of those hanging strips and whoever just stuck it there. But there it was, cool as crap. So I bought one.
A Instagram friend pointed out it's a bootleg ReMent Skeleton that's been making the rounds. If you check the link, you'll see that's a $70 dollar toy. Holly crap, wow. You can imagine my surprise and apparently others as well after I pointed it out to others online. One guy pointed out that it's been in Big Lot's for a few years. I've never seen it, so maybe. On it's own, it's a pretty good figure. Lot's and lot's of articulation allows you to put it in a ton of poses. It is a bootleg, so the plastic quality isn't super awesome, but it'll do. It's not fragile or anything, so go ahead and put it in the Ironman pose.
This morning I found some time to play with my new rainbow colored Seacon set and man, what a time I had. Like I said yesterday, it's a downsized set. Meaning, it's much smaller than the original toys.
Whenever these knock off toy companies make a Transformers set, they tend to get creative. There's molded over parts, sometimes new parts made to compensate for deteriorating molds. Or in these downsized sets, they seemingly have to re-engineer some of the parts a little.
The Seacons were a Scramble City style combiner team, meaning any of the limbs would work as any limb. That wasn't the case here, or from what I could tell after a lot of fiddling. Not to mention, the neat 6th member could be a gun wasn't universal either. Which didn't matter as Piranacon doesn't have fists to hold it with. I opted to keep Tentakil out of the combiner since I just love his weird sea monster mode so much. Thanks to ample peg holes and guns, you can fashion a blaster type hand easily. Honestly in combined mode, I really like this toy. The wacky colors look sharp and the sculpt looks really good in a smaller size.
Going back to the individual team members, the sea monster modes look really great. Snaptrap is as small as the limb bots, which is funny as the smaller size makes for good proportions when combined. They're really good copies of the original toys as well.
In robot mode, some of that knockoff toy new part magic comes in. Leg/mid-sections are serviceable, but are clearly where the company has had to get a little creative. It's still a really nice looking set. While a few parts were omitted and not all the accessories are there, they've all got weapons. Aside from scale and color, they're pretty close approximations of the team.
The quality is always in question with knock off toys. Sometimes it's a near perfect replica, sometimes it's kinda ok. Sometimes it's apparently made from old soap and turns into powder instantly. For the most part these guys were pretty good. Some of the joints are really loose, while one of Snaptrap's legs was impossible to move. I'm no stranger to knock off toys and some of my old tricks came into making a more stable set.
I absolutely love the Piranacon this set makes. That smaller Snaptrap makes for a different looking torso and the proportions are absolutely wonderful. Normally with Scramble City style combiners, you have a big body with stumpy limbs. Everything is more evened out here and it makes for a better looking robot. I can't help to look at other combiners and imagine them with similar builds.
It was a total surprise when Shawn sent me this and made for an interesting week. I'm pretty grateful for it. I've got a ton of toys, but the ones with stories I really appreciate. Shawn's an awesome friend as is, but dude gets me. He saw some weird shit and knew I would not only like it, but would turn into a week of site content.
Ever have a story that takes two different posts on two different days on your fan blog? Me too! This particular one of those instances began Monday afternoon when Shawn messaged me. He asked if I had checked my mail since Saturday and said maybe I should.
Before I go any farther, let me explain. I live in a town home neighborhood. The mailboxes are similar to an apartment set up, with them being at the front. Little mailboxes and storage lockers for packages, though usually those are left on door steps.
So when Shawn says something is waiting for me in a storage locker. I check and... nope. I let him know, he double checks tracking and same info. So, I used the little tracking tool on the Post Office website to let them know something went wrong. I get a generic 'looking into it email' back and when the mailbox was checked, there was a key for a storage locker. Ok, no problem, whoever did the Saturday run must have forgot. Inside the storage locker was... wait for it... another key. The hell?
This key however is not like the other... because it doesn't work on any of the lockers. I get to work and reply to the email. This morning, I call the Post Office and... the manager who wrote me the reply had went on vacation. I think this is actually a Rascal Flats song, your Mom loves them. BTW, ever notice the singer of those dudes looks like the guy who played Duke on old GI JOE commercials?
Now you and your Mom have something in common. You can talk about how knowing is half the battle and that life is a highway. Speaking of talking with Mom, tell her the Star Brigade toys in that commercial had Action Master Shockwave's art used to represent Hawk. Also tell her that I need her dog to stop shitting in my yard.
So my wife suggests I ask to speak to a manager and I get the supervisor! Who then calls the employee who handles my neighborhood (and usually leaves packages at the door), who then says which box my package is in. Great, because I don't have a key that first and ... know what I'll just check again... still didn't work. So the supervisor has the employee to bring it to my door (as they normally freaking do) when they come. Which they do... without knocking and I have this key that I have no clue what to do with. Guess I'll mail it back?
So what was in the box? A red foil zip-lock type bag with a label that you can zoom in and read. Or if your the type to figure out the title of my posts normally have something to do with the subject, you may have already guessed.
Indeed inside was something amazing, a scaled down set of Seacons in the most pleasant rainbow colored pattern one would never expect. It's a worn out meme to label anything with crazy colors 'G2', but a G2 set of Seacons probably would have looked like this had one been made. That or some random European version of the molds like Rescue Force.
The toys themselves? They're fantastic! Big thanks to Shawn for thinking to send me this rad set. I'll talking about the actual toys tomorrow in the action packed conclusion to this post. Spoiler warning, it won't be that action packed. This is just a blog.
Various bootlegs and unofficial toys have pretty much been consistent throughout the history of the Transformers brand. It's an ongoing thing with varying opinions on the matter. It's not exclusive to Transformers either, but that's what we're specifically talking about here. Being that the initial batches of Transformers were made from prior existing toy molds, bootleggers had an early start. When you add in Diakron was on shelves not long before Transformers, there was a lot of grey area for off brand Transformers to thrive.
Any trip to your local discount store around the holidays can prove it's a ongoing issue. That's not even counting today's adult collecting world of unlicensed 3P toys adding to Hasbro/Takara's ongoing legal department dilemma. I'm not here to shame on anybodies preferred way to buy Transformers, I'm just setting up today's post centered around an old commercial. But man, I had no clue why my brown Ravage from K-Mart's feet kept falling off.
There's a variety of methods that Transformers as a brand has deployed to emphasize that there's is the official 'real' Transformers. The most famous would be the heat rub symbols. Honestly, I loved these things so much I was a little bummed when they went away. I didn't know what a bootleg toy was when I was a kid, but I loved putting my finger on those stickers and watching the symbols light up in a variety of colors.
Let's be honest though, this commercial is a bit harsh. The Transformers are saying very firmly that they are the only real Transformers and the others are fake. It's harsh and I like it. Not for any other reason than 'whoa dang,'. If at any minute if they started cussing, I wouldn't be surprised. I was pretty much expecting Optimus to lose his cool at any minute.
I've mentioned before my love for capsule toy machines. Probably one of the reasons I love blind bag toys so much and wish I had access to the gashapon haven that exists in Asian countries. As a kid and even now I can't pass one by without checking out what they have inside. Sometimes it's just those crappy rings (pass) and sometimes it's gold (dammit, I need quarters!). Before I go any further, this is one of those posts where all the images came from screen shooting Google image search results from shady auction sites. Bootleg Voltron figures sold in gumball machines don't exactly always pop up on Amazon, gnaw meen brah?
I didn't know what a keshi or a bootleg was when I was 8. But I did know these neat little rubber monsters and super heroes I'd get from the machines at the grocery store looked like Godzilla and guys from video games. Later in life when learning more about such things... turns out they were from Godzilla type productions and video games originally. Or hey, when my childhood arcade got prize redemption counters. That little bucket of colorful dudes have tiny Masters of the Universe mixed in with the dinosaurs. Luckily those always were the cheapest options, so a few dollars worth of skeeball really paid off. Or man, these little robot model kits in the Kroger machines look like the guys from Robotech. Some reason that one Kroger had those model kits on lock down.
One of the more odd outlets for these toys was party supplies. Thanks to curiosity getting the best of me on a faithful trip to the store, I noticed the party supply section had more than just balloons and birthday candles. Baggies of cheap toys intended for goodie bags usually contain those crappy race cars and planes with the wheels that fall off. Or those stupid little games where you have to make the ball bearings fit into the clowns eyes by rolling them around. But sometimes... dude are those Madballs?
Next thing I knew I had a bag full of tiny rubber Madball rip offs for a dollar. This is still a common occurrence. Next time your around a party supply section or store (the more ratchet the store, the better) check those out. Usually it's just crappy kazoos, but on occasion you'll find M.U.S.C.L.E rip offs or whatever. One time I saw some Street Fighter figures. They were from a gashapon series originally, bootlegged in weird plastic that kinda smelled like fish. That's the gambit you run with el cheapo bootleg toys. They're usually pretty sketchy and might be made in a facility next to bathtub meth. So uh... be careful mang.
What's more Halloween than dressing as a monster and later throwing eggs at that old lady who keep's giving out those gross peanut butter things house? Well, not much, but speaking of peanut butter, know how it's so special when Reese's mixes peanut butter and chocolate? Well Bandai put the egg and monster together for Tamagoras Egg-Monsters! Mixing classic monsters and kaiju into the egg robot formula for pure magic.
One fall day in my early 20's I accompanied my mother to the hospital for a light surgery. I had spent the night at her place and drove her to the hospital. Hanging around the hospital, and driving her back home... I was getting pretty bored. Fortunately a run to the local drug store to pick up her prescription gave me a much needed escape. While waiting for the pharmacist to open the bottle of pills behind the counter and carefully count them out, I was happily looking through the Halloween aisle.
There they were, hanging from one of those ... hangy things with clips that stores put things... on... the hell are those even called? Was glow in the dark skeleton eggs! I quickly bought one and a Pepsi before heading back to my Mom's house with her medicine. While waiting around her place a little longer before going home I transformed my egg into a skeleton. Overjoyed with my new toy I made a point to stop back by the store and grab another (and a Pepsi) before going home. Later on that evening I was looking up egg robot toys as they were fresh on my mind. Turns out I got a bootlegged Tamagora Egg-Monster! Turns out these were what Meteorbs were made from! Turns out I made a post about egg robots into two and tied one into Halloween!
I'm mentally gearing up for Rangerstop this weekend. This morning before I went to sleep, I looked at various keshi and other mini figures and made a mental shopping list. Sure, I hope to score to score a SPD Megazord to make up for that one I never got around to buying or another few particular items, but smaller figures are a focal point for this show.
My first introduction to Rangers was late night viewings of Dynaman on USA. Here was this cool show that was like a combination of Voltron, Godzilla, and video games that was funny as hell. It didn't take me too long to notice the gumball machine toys I would get from the grocery store and other cheap rack toy robots and monsters looked familiar. I was a kid, I didn't know what a bootleg was, but I knew those cool figures in the gumball machines looked like some of these guys. Years later, Power Rangers started up and these guys looked like Dynaman!
Around a year ago I talked about bootleg toys from gumball machines, thanks to those gumball machines and random cheap toy purchases I developed an affinity for smaller figures when it comes to Power Rangers. It wasn't until a little later when I started using the internet to get a full understanding of what these various toys were knock offs of. I had learned what Super Sentai was not long after Power Rangers came out thanks to an extremely informative TV Guide article (that's why they look like Dynaman!) already.
Unlike Transformers where I seemingly buy everything (with especial love for the little bots), I mainly buy smaller Power Ranger toys (outside of the occasional regular toy). That stems from my initial enjoyment of Power Rangers that came from little toys. Even when PR started up and other shows like it came around, I'd gear towards smaller toys of the characters. I'm literally chomping at the bit for the new Fisher Price Ranger toys and have the best time with Micro Morphers right now. Holy crap the level of anticipation for those blind bag Fisher Price Rangers I have is absolutely absurd. That absurdity is thanks to little toys of dubious legality in front of Kroger.
Know what, how about another public domain Korean super robot cartoon featuring *ahem* familiar looking robots? Will I ever get tired of posting them? Nope.
I just found out this movie was public domain. Which makes the 1$ I spent for the DVD over a decade ago feel expensive. Regardless, This is the English dub of Diatron 5 called Space Transformers. I'm going to warn you, it's not the best cartoon you'll ever watch. Though, sharp eyes will notice all the stolen Diaclone designs throughout the movie.
I've made my fondness for the Dollar Tree 'ROBOT' toy line known before. It's a pretty easy to buy line of robot toys of dubious legality available for the whopping price of 1$ each. One figure from the line managed to escape my grasp until this weekend when a quick stop found it in my hands. Seeing as the figures don't have names... it's a jet.
It occurred to me that many of you might have assembled your Constructicons from various thrift stores, loose seller boxes, or random bootleg toy sets. Assemble those mofo's into Devastator! Actually, if you've got a bunch of mismatched parts, even better! Know what? If you've got some Frankenstein creation of a Devastator, send me a pic (include a link or something for the pic) with some details and I'll highlight it here on Zone Base. I don't know just how many of those K.O set Devastators I have, but man there's a million! I've seen folks mix and match parts just to form a Devastator and it's usually great! I still regret not building that Walgreen's multicolored set from around 2003 (that joker was diecast!).
Blockman was one of those lines that passed me right on by until I was in college. One of Takara's cool robot lines of the 80's, Blockman did see life in the US as part of the Robotech toy line and even bootlegs of the figures did appear in gumball machines. While I vaguely recall seeing the Robotech versions at Kaybee, I did have some of the gumball machine bootlegs. I don't know the specifics of distribution (the machine owner probably just ordered machine robot toys from a catalog), but I very strongly remember the Kroger we'd get groceries at had an awesome selection of gumball machine toys for awhile. Including one with a generic space robots art taped to the front and random robot toys inside.
Mostly I'd get various Mospeada (which I knew as the third season of Robotech) figure kits (probably were bootlegs of some candy kit) in a variety of colors from it. Occasionally I'd get some of these neat square robot dudes in that machine without any clue to who they were other than a neat robot. That machine rocked, though eventually it gave way to little rubber figures of various bootlegged characters, which too was awesome, just for different reasons.
I've never pretended to be the biggest scholar when it comes to Brave. I like it, but I'm not a walking encyclopedia or anything. One thing that has always been part of it's charm is it's odd relation to Transformers. It's Takara's post G1 series that started it's life intended to be a Transformers series and even uses some Transformers molds in it's toy line. The cartoon is very similar to the Takara Transformers cartoons and the toys are from the designers. So basically, it's a continuation of G1 in a semi sorta way. I have a good number of the toys, but aside from a Death Garry Gun (yes, that's his name, he's also recolor of Sky Garry... yes that's also his name) they're all bootlegs. Bootlegs of Brave toys are pretty rampant in the robot world and can usually be purchased at discount stores.
well...crap
Unfortunately when it comes to bootleg toys the plastic can vary from pretty ok to a pile of garbage. My Advenger (yes, that's his name) from Tuesday Morning here has kinda oki-ish plastic with a pretty low quality build. So he fell apart instantly as I was removing him from his j-card prison. Fortunately, he went right back together. I'm sure I could fix him easily, but for a 5$ bootleg, I don't know if I'll take the effort. Attempts to transform him became basically putting him back together after twisting a few parts resulted in him falling apart, and I had to put him together with ample cussing.
Advenger is still a nice looking robot, even with the cludginess (that's my word for it) that comes with a discount store bootleg robot toy. He has most of his accessories, though his firing rockets are molded in. His shield is a leftover from from an additional train car that the real toy came with that pretty much has nowhere to go when he's transformed into train mode now. Though the hitch to attach the car is there, and his storage for car bots in train mode still works.
I was actually impressed with some of the bits that actually functioned correctly, his flip out panels for launching gimmicks fold out, though the launching gimmicks are molded in. For a discount store bootleg of a 20 year old toy I'd expect those to be molded over, so it's nice that the small amount of original toy remains even though it's in a neutered state.
His train mode suffers a bit as it doesn't properly go together. It might, but I'd never know as I had to snap him back together several times to force him into what gets close as possible to a train engine. Though his thighs still flip over to the coal bin in train mode. Which, like the flip out panels in robot mode, I'd figured would have been left out. Advenger can store his accessories in this mode, but Steel Divine just kinda has to leave them behind. I have no clue if the storage works as I could hardly get him to hold together in this mode.
Over all it's still a nice looking robot, and if you can pick up one that holds together correctly (or you take the time to fix it) you'd have a nice enough version of a old toy. Visually they got most of it right, and it has that great late G1 looks. It does make me want a real version of the toy as man it's sharp. So I guess it wasn't a total bummer that it falls apart and I suppose I could spend a little time to fix it up. Maybe.
