San-ei Mario Party 5: Donkey Kong plush

 December 5, 2019  Toys

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SERIES DETAILS

The characters of Nintendo are always in collaboration. Not surprisingly, a fun game was released back in 2003 and it was fronted by the Mario franchise, thus it was called Mario Party 5.

Among original Nintendo characters, Donkey Kong was also one of the iconic characters. Not everyone may know this, but the fearsome gorilla came from the 1981 Donkey Kong game where you see Mario dodging rolling barrels thrown by the beast. In later years, the character grew into a hero of his own series of games and was accompanied by his partner, Diddy Kong.

Of course, San-ei had their hands busy with making popular Japanese plushies. Their eyes are circling around the Nintendo universe and made a Donkey Kong design based from the Mario Party 5 game. 

Although the plush was released in 2004, plush pirates are still making dirty money off the bootlegs. Let’s have a quick look where these fakes come from.

ORIGIN OF FAKE

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

Most bootlegs come from China, there’s no doubting that. The amount of factories or stations of production are mostly located in the country. This is because manufacturers find it cost-effective to mass produce their products here. However, these companies are putting their designs at risk since crooks are eyeing to make some easy money.

One of the stores that’s selling bootlegs is named after something out of a random thought. You wouldn’t have an idea what Yoyou Store is selling just by seeing its name off a google result. As expected though, the vendor’s full of sketchy deformed plush toys from different brands.

You wouldn’t want a faulty item, not to mention a rigged plush beside your bed, would you? Have a look at this fake Donkey Kong plush so you’ll know how to avoid having to buy one!

DESCRIPTION OF FAKE

The fake Donkey Kong plush is wrapped inside a cheap, thin plastic. Oddly enough, having such frail packaging can damage a plush toy even if it’s an authentic plush.

As you can see, the fake plush stands awkwardly with its physique. You’ll notice that it lunges forward a bit and this could be made possible by the imbalance with its body parts, but we’ll get to that later on.

From the current point of view of the images above, you can already see that the plush looks weird. If you’ve already seen Donkey Kong, then you would have already suspected this plush as a fake even before reaching the first batch of photos.

The face isn’t a very desirable sight. There are few inconsistencies that are worth pointing out. Overall, the facial features of the bootleg looks generic and far from being Donkey Kong.

For a first, the lips look odd. They’re folded unevenly and you can see the rightmost side is widely spread while the other is shut tight. Although the bootleg’s lips look fine when it’s totally shut, you already know that there’s faulty stitching in this area.

The Donkey Kong character has his eyeballs covering the whole brown area. As for this fake, there’s a tiny space left underneath eyeballs. And under that flaw, you can see that the plush’s nostrils are unaligned.

The appearance of this fake Donkey Kong plush can really be deceiving at some angle. The plush even has a necktie that’s labeled “DK”. An obvious acronym for the gorilla’s name.

Within the area of the plush’s body, you might notice a slightly slanted chest. You can tell from the stitch lining on the center of the body that it’s definitely flawed.

The arms and hands aren’t showing any decency as well. There are a lot of visible stitches within the lines. Apart from that, the size of the hands aren’t made bulky enough to make the plush stand erect. You can see that by viewing the item from the sides.

There are loose threads hanging from this point of view, although we still have to check how the plush’s right foot is hanging because of its physique.

The shape of both feet are also irregular. Authentic plushes, if it isn’t really intentional, tend to have the sizes of the hands and feet equally. However, for the fake Donkey Kong plush, you won’t see that for both of the parts.

The fake plush really intends to fool someone out of its effort to show copyright tags on it. It is also possible that this item was thrown in the ‘reject’ bin of the official manufacturer, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still sold illegally.

For a plush toy that was released back in 2004, you wouldn’t expect any traces of it left online. Most likely, a whole batch that was manufactured back then was already sold out.

Now, this is when bootlegs come into play. These awful items think that they can supply the need for out-of-stock items, when in fact, they just provide a bad replacement.

In comparison of both plush toys, you can really tell that the real Donkey Kong plush packs a punch. The plush is a true image of the character, nevertheless.

PRICE

We found previous sources of the Mario Party 5: Donkey Kong plush to sell it for as low as $9 USD. However, these may already be out of stock. If you’ll look at the fake plush’s price though, you can see that there’s a small gap between their prices. This would mean that the bootleg is a lot overpriced for its $4.84 USD price tag.

WHERE TO GET REAL SAN-EI MARIO PARTY 5: DONKEY KONG PLUSH

We did mention that the real San-ei Mario Party 5: Donkey Kong plush was released back in 2004, right? Well, we found it in Ninoma not too long ago, but the item is already out of stock. Reportedly, it was last found in stock just last year, so you may want to check in with them from time to time if you want the exact plush toy.

It is the exact San-ei Donkey Kong plush from the video game, and although there isn’t any price indicated on posting, we found that it was priced at $9.11 USD when it was in stock.

On the other hand, you can still get a quality Donkey Kong plush from Ninoma. Apparently, they have the Super Mario All Star Collection: Donkey Kong in stock for roughly $30 USD. The item should be available for international shipping.

OUR VERDICT

The fake Donkey Kong plush is far from the character’s image. Apart from that, it’s full of defects — from loose threads to inaccurate stitches. For most parts, it can be a really deceiving item, but if you know what you’re looking at, you can distinguish the difference between an authentic and this awful fake.

Nevertheless, you wouldn’t want to settle for a cheap knock-off. Do yourself a favor and ignore this one. This fake deserves a 75% terrible rating.