Banpresto One Piece Girly Girls: Perona figure

 February 18, 2020  Toys

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CHARACTER AND TOY LINE DETAILS

There are many characters in One Piece that deserve the spotlight, even for antagonists like the Ghost Princess – Perona.

Like Nico Robin, she also had a face to face battle with the Straw Hat Pirates, before cooperating with them in some adventures. But before that, she was one of the commanders of an undead pirate crew called the Thriller Bark Pirates. This notorious pirate crew belonged to a group who were once one of the Three Great Powers. There’s no questioning as to what these pirates are capable of knowing that Perona holds power of a devil fruit.

Of course, Banpresto had it coming for One Piece villains. They have a knack of featuring antagonists just as much as the Straw Hat Pirates. For the Girly Girls collection, we get to see daring female pirates other than Nami and Nico Robin — and the Ghost Princess is one of them.

Unfortunately, figure pirates are always on the prowl for designs that can be copied easily. More or less, they’ve already planned on stealing these from the factories that are located in China.

ORIGIN OF FAKE

Bought on: AliExpress
Origin: China
Vendor: DoleToy Store
Distribution Area: Worldwide

Figure manufacturers have most of their factories located in China. Why? It’s because the production of anime figures are cheaper and efficient that way. Although they have a few factories that are located in Japan, mass productions are held in their factories in China. Japan factories usually serve as research centers, or if a figure isn’t going to be mass produced.

Nevertheless, going through AliExpress for anime figure shopping is definitely a bad choice. It’s simply difficult to find authentic figures on the website. And if you’ve ever seen a toy store such as DoleToy Store, then that would probably worry you more.

Spotting bootlegs online can be a hard task as determining whether an item is real or a fake. You’d be surprised as to how this bootleg Perona figure could be mistaken for an authentic.

DESCRIPTION OF FAKE

Banpresto prize figures, as we know it, have boxes of their own. Surprisingly, this fake Perona figure brands itself as such, and it looks like the bootleggers went out of their way to copy a box for this item.

The first thing that comes to mind when seeing a figure packaged in a branded box is that it’s probably authentic. Of course, you’re seeing a well-made box with an artistic design of the figure at the front for its cover. If you look at it closely, however, you might throw up a bit for how shabby its quality is.

Apparently, the fake box is made from low-quality image prints that would make you think you have a blurred vision, when in fact, it’s the problem that comes with counterfeit packaging. What’s worse is that the box isn’t even sealed in the first place leaving the contents inside vulnerable.

The overall quality of the box is just too bad, and if you open the top, you’ll see how wiggly the material is. The fake box doesn’t even feature the two most important logos of a Banpresto prize figure: the Banpresto logo, and the Craneking logo.

Upon opening taking out the figure from the box, you can see that it’s sealed in a tight plastic, which the bootleggers should at least do. The components include the standalone Perona figure, and a disassembled chair for its base.

Assembling the chair is quite a headache because the pair of feet at the back doesn’t stick at all. While the front pair of feet does its job, it’s very much useless, so we had to set the base without the chair’s legs. Luckily, the fake Perona figure still stood intact on its base.

From a fair distance, you wouldn’t suspect this bootleg as such if it was displayed together with a bunch of legitimate figures. It could very much blend in, but you would notice some details are a bit off, and that would probably set you to looking in closer.

The Perona figure indeed has a pale look, just like the actual character. There isn’t any flaw that’s noticeable on its face because the eyes are copied well. However, its hair details are oddly unrefined. Some color matching comes off as weird and unaligned. Take it from the fake figure’s flower pin on its pigtails.

There are a few dents on the hair as well. One can be seen from the top and one at the back. And if you’re looking for tiny spots, you can find them on the back too.

For the fake figure’s body, you might want to look back at the figure’s packaging again. Use it as basis to compare the fake figure’s paint job from the real, actual figure.

Have you given it a peek yet? Then, you might’ve already realized that this bootleg is missing the pink bat tattoo, and if that’s not too bad, you’ll notice that the area is replaced by an annoying dent. Talking about missing details, the breast area is also missing some paint details as shown on the front print of the figure’s box — assuming that the figure on the print is the authentic figure.

Other flaws are found on the figure’s red gloves such as dents and gaps.

The fake figure’s lower body has several defects on its paint job. As for the dress, you can see that there’s an inconsistent shading as well as the dirty overlapping white paint. The area is also shaped irregularly as if the dress was done poorly on purpose.

The stockings are just as bad and it appears to be scratched and painted terribly. As true as it is, prize figures have a reputation of looking cheap, especially for grown figure collectors, but it would never look as awful as this bootleg Perona figure.

For reference, the real Girly Girls: Perona figure is a well-detailed figure. If it would have any defects, feel free to complain as Banpresto is committed to producing quality figures.

Nevertheless, the authentic figure showcases a daring Perona which is perfect for collectors who are into such designs. As you can see, the base works as expected and the figure itself fits perfectly onto it. The skin of the figure doesn’t look as pale as the bootleg, if you haven’t noticed yet.

PRICE

The fake Perona figure tags itself for $8.24 USD, and while you think that’s kinda cheap, you have to consider the wait time for it to arrive from Chinese sellers on AliExpress. It’s clear as day, you don’t want to pay for $8 just to get a figure with a broken seat.

The real Girly Girls: Perona figure is definitely a complete set and go as low as $22 USD when it was first released on reputable online toy stores. Although reportedly, the price already went up since 2017.

WHERE TO GET A REAL BANPRESTO GIRLY GIRLS: PERONA FIGURE

Fortunately, you can still find the real figure on Solaris Japan.

For roughly $31 USD, you can collect one variant of the authentic Perona figure from the website. Solaris Japan happens to offer worldwide shipping, so you really don’t have to worry about the hassle — unless, of course, you live in conflicted countries.

If you’re also into getting the latest designs, you might also want to check an incoming Perona figure for this year of 2020.

The Sweet Style Pirates: Perona is already available for pre-order on BigBadToyStore for only $24.99 USD. Another daring design from Banpresto is coming its way this April 2020. You might also want to check out the whole Sweet Style Pirates collection which includes Nami.

OUR VERDICT

The fake Perona figure is a bootleg that would really fool a beginner collector’s eyes, especially if it’s an item only posted online. In reality, though, it’s packed with dents and mishaps on its paint job. It’s basically a sloppy work made by bootleggers who are only after you hard-earned cash.

There are a lot of choices if you are downsizing your budget for authentic figures. Give this fake Perona figure a pass as we give it a 90% bad rating.