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Notorious Guf

New LEGO Ninjago Fakes

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I have just stumbled upon this eBay seller who has listed a whole bunch of blatant Ninjago Counterfeits. They are listed as Pre-Order so I wonder if we are about to be bombarded with a huge amount of Fake LEGO.

I've reported this to eBay and about to do so to LEGO themselves, in the hope that something can be done. Hopefully there is someone here who can bring it to their attention sooner.

http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/Toys-Hobbies-/220/i.html?_uhb=1&item=181031820048&pt=AU_Toys_Hobbies_Building_Toys&hash=item2a26565b10&_ssn=nyesale

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How nice of them to use the same exact character names on top of it. I wonder how the quality of the plastic is compared to LEGO.

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how exact is the item fake? i didn't see anything in the description which says it's a copy?

edit: i see it now - the last photo of the set. wow, these clone brands can come up with copies quite quickly. i wonder how the plastic compares with the real deal too.

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how exact is the item fake? i didn't see anything in the description which says it's a copy?

edit: i see it now - the last photo of the set. wow, these clone brands can come up with copies quite quickly. i wonder how the plastic compares with the real deal too.

This is my concern, they appear to be real in many ways & unless you are very careful about reading the listing, you will get caught out. They even use "Official" LEGO images. You'll notice on some of the listings you can see the LEGO print on the studs!

It really makes me sick that people will take advantage of fakes like this & more so that people are getting tricked into thinking they are buying an equivalent product. :sick:

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Ah, you're right. I clicked the first link (a Lloyd ZX minifigure) and right there under "Item Specifics" it says "Brand: decool". Decool is, of course, a well-known maker of counterfeit LEGO products. And further down, it says in large red text, "Note: This item not genuine Lego, but it can compatible with Lego product." Congrats on being far more observant than I was... I also thought at first glance that this was just a legitimate reseller.

I'm not sure if an eBay shop can be shut down for selling counterfeit product if they are not the ones producing the counterfeit product, but they can definitely be asked to stop using LEGO product names to identify non-LEGO products. Not sure if eBay has its own system for dealing with this kind of request, or whether going straight to TLG with it is a viable course of action, but hopefully it is soon dealt with.

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You don't even have to click through to descriptions. In the very listing titles it says 'Lego Style.' That means not real Lego.

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What shocks me is that it's a top rated seller :wacko:

They've sold a tonne of the stuff in such a short period. It's popular products at really cheap prices (If it were real).

You don't even have to click through to descriptions. In the very listing titles it says 'Lego Style.' That means not real Lego.

Yes you are right, which I also picked up on, hence looking further. This is another Breach of eBay policy as you cannot use a Brand Name other than the one you are selling in the item Title.

Not everyone, especially first time or new eBay buyers, realise that Lego Style doesn't mean LEGO.

I believe the listing has multiple breaches & they should be able to shut them down, but they will come back quickly enough with a re worded listing. You cannot sell counterfeit goods on eBay, however in this case they'll get around it as it is a different "Brand Name". You can't use wrong brand names in your listing & I'm sure somewhere there is a rule against using wrong images, but I'm not certain on that one.

From TLG point of view, the fact that the packaging & design of the sets are absolutely identical, this should hopefully be enough for them to take some form of action.

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I don't like the piracy, but I'm confused. These don't seem to be cheap at all. They have spinners listed at AUD 19.95 which is USD 20.86 right now. LEGO spinners are USD 9.99 at the LEGO store, so I'm not sure why anyone would buy these fakes? Are they really more than double the US price in Australia? The Fangpyre Mech is more expensive as well.

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I don't like the piracy, but I'm confused. These don't seem to be cheap at all. They have spinners listed at AUD 19.95 which is USD 20.86 right now. LEGO spinners are USD 9.99 at the LEGO store, so I'm not sure why anyone would buy these fakes? Are they really more than double the US price in Australia? The Fangpyre Mech is more expensive as well.

Yes they are much more expensive in Australia, so these are relatively cheap in comparison.

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i wonder if that bout of cheap UCS DS is actually a clone brand too? i mean, if they can dupe ninjago, they can also dupe lego star wars. the only difference there is instead of just lego, the license owner can also sue them. but if they are in the business of producing copies, and are located in china, i don't think lucas entertainment can actually touch them.

there seems to be a lot more downside than upside in moving production to cheaper countries. for czech and mexico factories, we see plenty of smuggled minifigures being sold on ebay. for china factories, we see clones sold.

i guess lego has lax control over the production - i mean we don't have this massive issue with the iphone or ipad. i mean there are clones but they are usually so inferior that no buyer would want them. doesn't seem so with the lego sets. perhaps it is just that easy to duplicate a lego piece? despite the need for thousands of molds, it doesn't seem to affect the clonies. either the molds are not that expensive to make as lego said they are or the clonies are using lego's own mold from the factories abroad.

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I suspect the clone companies don't have the exacting standards and tolerances that LEGO has for the molds.

Plus, they are copying an existing piece and not making a totally new one from scratch which means they aren't spending many many man-hours refining the design via computers, 3d-printed prototypes etc etc.

As for shutting them down, eBay can most definatly shut them down. eBay does it for counterfeit designer goods (handbags and the like) all the time.

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Another one has just popped up -

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Lego-Style-Decool-Ninjago-Minifigure-Green-Lloyd-Zx-compatible-with-Lego-5-/271114103401?pt=AU_Toys_Hobbies_Building_Toys&hash=item3f1fa8ea69&_uhb=1#ht_500wt_1288

This is a new seller now, interestingly enough, the complaints about the other seller haven't gone too far with eBay! I think they have slightly reworded the title, but they still use the word LEGO in it, which is against eBay Policy! Still using official images too.

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At the end of the title of every listing, there's written "Compatible with Lego" which automatically means that this is not original Lego, but only compatible.

If it would be Lego, it wouldn't be necessarily to write "Compatible with Lego".

However, these situations makes me extremely angry.

Not only once I've got myself spammed by such scammers.

I actually never got trapped in this, because I always read carefully each description and always talk with the seller carefully before to buy something on internet, but it's extremely frustrating when you search something by using the keyword "Lego", and between results you also get such cheap imitations just because they also include the keyword "Lego".

I'm not against all these, but my only objection is that such listings should not include the word "Lego".

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At the end of the title of every listing, there's written "Compatible with Lego" which automatically means that this is not original Lego, but only compatible.

If it would be Lego, it wouldn't be necessarily to write "Compatible with Lego".

However, these situations makes me extremely angry.

Not only once I've got myself spammed by such scammers.

I actually never got trapped in this, because I always read carefully each description and always talk with the seller carefully before to buy something on internet, but it's extremely frustrating when you search something by using the keyword "Lego", and between results you also get such cheap imitations just because they also include the keyword "Lego".

I'm not against all these, but my only objection is that such listings should not include the word "Lego".

That's probably why you buy things IRL, off the lego website or off bricklink. Other websites are kinda, well, tricky...

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eBay has a program (VERO) for dealing with counterfeit product (anything from fake handbags to bootleg DVDs). IMO LEGO should join this program and use it to enforce their IP by shutting down those who sell product that clearly violates LEGO copyrights and trademarks or that look close enough to LEGO products as to mislead consumers into thinking they are LEGO products.

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Doesn't matter if they are advertized as LEGO, LEGO compatible or otherwise. Its clear that they violate LEGOs IP.

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