New range..I think not (1 Viewer)

Wow, this should be an interesting thread........
 
Spitfrnd said:
Well they look interesting but the plastic casting is not well done by today's standards. Curious as to why an item in the US is listed on Oz Ebay.
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Its from US ebay but I was looking at it from the OZ ebay site
 
They look quite similar, but not exactly the same details on close inspection. I have no casting experience, but if one were to make plastic copies of a metal soldier wouldn't the results be essentially identical?

MD
 
theBaron said:
My first suspicion is that it's someone in the PRC.

Prost!
Brad
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Certainly China is well known as the world's foremost violater of copyrights, patent infrignements, intellectual property theft, and so on. So if true its probably not the first time and not a total surprise to K&C.

Its worth noting that as worldwide economic issues persist, this can be one way of getting more value out of expensive molds. Given that, who knows, maybe K&C was a willing partner? Their biggest value is in producing highly detailed painted figures, so these items are not really competition for their customer base.
 
Mister Dave said:
They look quite similar, but not exactly the same details on close inspection. I have no casting experience, but if one were to make plastic copies of a metal soldier wouldn't the results be essentially identical?

MD
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It could be that these were not cast from K&C molds; the molds to cast metal figures probably can't be used for injection molding, without some modification, anyway. These may be from molds made using K&C figures as masters. There is always a little loss of detail in the process, from the master figure to figures made using the production mold. And if the mold used to make these plastic figures was made from a K&C production figure, it will probably show a little loss of crispness in detail, too.

Prost!
Brad
 
Mister Dave said:
They look quite similar, but not exactly the same details on close inspection. I have no casting experience, but if one were to make plastic copies of a metal soldier wouldn't the results be essentially identical?

MD
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You are right Dave, I had another look and on first glance they look indentical. But as you study each picture there are subtle differences. I think this is how they manage to get away with it. I think I remember seeing that there had to be 15% difference between the original and the copy to avoid infringement. :confused:
 
Rutledge said:
Certainly China is well known as the world's foremost violater of copyrights, patent infrignements, intellectual property theft, and so on. So if true its probably not the first time and not a total surprise to K&C.

Its worth noting that as worldwide economic issues persist, this can be one way of getting more value out of expensive molds. Given that, who knows, maybe K&C was a willing partner? Their biggest value is in producing highly detailed painted figures, so these items are not really competition for their customer base.
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It's plausible, but I would think that if K&C knows about these figures, there would have been some announcement about a new line of plastic figures.

Prost!
Brad
 
They look like resculpted copies to me! Kind of just like K&C early metal figures were resculpted copies of airfix and britains plastics poses so I guess its pay back in reverse!:p The detail looks much larger on the weapons and the poses look slightly different.
There are also plastics copies of K&C Crusaders out there also. I can,t wait till some one knocks off the napoleonic line in plastic!:cool::p
 
Canadian Samurai said:
This is nothing new - see: http://www.treefrogtreasures.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9303

While the man himself never responded to my query, it seems these have the blessing of K&C since it's been occurring for several years now across multiple lines of figures.
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I wouldn't say that that implies Andy's blessing, but perhaps rather, that if these are knock-offs, and he's aware of them, he might not consider it worth the expense in time and money to go after them, especially if they do come from the People's Republic. I can't imagine the Politburo getting too exercised over claims that someone in the PRC is copying toy soldiers. "Another lawsuit, Comrade? Throw it on the pile!"

Prost!
Brad
 
Earlier today, I sent an eBay question to the seller, to ask if there were any markings on the figures, such as under the bases. I received a response from him later:

"No, but they each have different little numbers somewhere on their backs, like "23" which I think are the King and Country numbers."
 
lol, good point, Brad, I'm surprised that we haven't heard from him on this thread. Maybe he hasn't seen it, but his silence adds to the mystery....
 
I remember him saying awhile ago that it's something they had no interest in doing but "never say never" and, who knows, maybe somehow this got taken from the factory.
 
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