From the outside they look very accurate, but if someone buys a copy “New” from Ebay or an Amazon Marketplace seller, here are the tell tale signs:
· The set is flimsily shrink wrapped instead of our standard factory sealed shrink wrap
· The Master Ninja movies have the wrong films on the discs. The disc that says Master Ninja 1 has #2 and vice versa.
· Some copies of Project Moonbase have Magic Voyage of Sinbad on it.
· If you look closely at the legal lines on the discs, especially the Master Ninja discs, there are numerous spelling errors.
If someone has purchased a bootleg they should demand a full refund from the seller and report them.
Word to the wise!
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I’ll begin by saying I agree with the difference between a bootleg and pirated copies of any entertainment media. Bootlegs are of not officialy available material and piracy is copying and stealing.
That being said, an earlier post asked “Why Volume 20?” I seem to remember reading somewhere that since SHOUT! Factory took over with Volume 13 each box set has sold better than the last. After only three or so years SHOUT!s numbers have only gone up and up. This may answer the question, there’s now more demand for official MST3K than ever. This is thanks to good advertising, Netflix, YouTube, word of mouth et al. I don’t think pirates can fake the GAMERA tin, but it’s safe to say they can make a pretty good fake box set.
At least we as fans now know to keep an eye out for pirated copies in the future. Just by the percentage of fans that were jipped on this board alone is like 10%-15%. How many copies are actually floating around out there?
Thank you for this warning. I just thought the movie mislabelling was a minor glitch, but it turned out I do have a counterfeit set, down to the “Master Ninje” legal line typo.
So I’m working on getting a refund from the seller. In the meantime, Shout still has the set on sale and it’s less expensive than Amazon, standard shipping included.
Why Vol. 20? Why not Vol. 10?
Quite honestly, I don’t think pirates have ever had much rhyme or reason behind what they do. They just copy in an attempt to get a quick buck. They probably just saw 20 and thought it looked like an impressive number.
As for #35’s case of the Nemesis photos on sets of Star Trek: The Original Series, not to sound racist but they are Asian and there’s a lot that gets lost in translation between our respective cultures. If anyone’s interested, here’s a few funny photos demonstrating this:
http://www.x-entertainment.com/updates/pics/bootlegga/1.jpg
http://www.bestweekever.tv/bwe/images/2010/02/Harry-Potter-Obama-Sonic-Backpack.jpg
http://operatorchan.org/vg/arch/src/vg22540_BATTMAN%20CONSOLE.jpg
Oh, and something else that might be of interest to MSTies is to look up the Turkish film 3 Dev Adam.
Putting it all full circle though, whether it’s from China or somewhere else, whoever put this bootleg together really did a pretty good job comparatively speaking. I’m glad Shout was able to notice this.
Should my copy say “Hosted by Joike”?
kiddin. tee hee. I’m lucky mine’s the right one since I’m such a tightwad.
So is there a “Backstroke of the West” style Chinese mistranslation of the MST3K movie out there?
Wonder what’s up with “Mystery Science Theater 3000: Manos The Hands Of Fate”. According to Amazon the DVD is under review. Was going to purchase it but I guess I’ll wait to see what the problem is. (:-/)
If I had a set of pirated MST-3k DVDs I would keep them and add them to my collection (and be sure to get the legit ones also.) Someday you guys can tell your grandkids about them. Captn Ross Hagen can tell his grandkids right now!
I bought The Simpsons Season 20 on ebay and ended up with a bootleg. THe thing reeked of printer ink, the booklet was all arranged out of order and the discs looked cheaply printed. I notified the seller and he acted “surprised”. He said send it back and I’ll refund you. I said it’s not worth my time and effort, and the refund would be nearly the amount of what I ship back. Besides, it is a blatant bootleg, so why would be need it back? I reported him to ebay and notified a number of previous buyers, two or three replied and said they too thought something was wrong with their copy.
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