Pirates – Robot Claw

Antipodean Skullduggery

June 2, 2026

We went to Charlestown Square today, a lovely and gigantic shopping center beloved by all men. In certain circles however this is known as one of the blackest markets south of the equator, with a panoply of booty that would impress even the most weathered buccaneer.

I’m speaking, of course, of K-Pop Demon Hunters bootleg items. And today I could have filled a suitcase with them.

I’ve already done two posts about cards, but one stall today had all sorts of stationary items for sale. Stickers and cards are all entry level material, but as you can see the prices are low so they’re a good way for a beginner to invest in booty.

I’m not exactly sure what the above is, but they look like tiny acrylic standees? Maybe I should have purchased it for a closer look…

I’m impressed that the pirates have the decency to produce stickers of the ‘non-repetitive’ kind. Even on the high seas, there seems to be some integrity amongst rogues.

There were many different varieties of shoe charms (that you plug into Crocs) and the accuracy of the likenesses varied wildly. These were amongst the best and were only $2!

Blind boxes were also abundant, and very few of them had any indication of what exactly was inside. Once again I asked the girl what was in one and she didn’t know either. She actually laughed when I asked, and while an amateur may have interpreted her reaction as embarrassment for not knowing, I took it to be her mocking an amateur (me) for presuming a pirate cared about her plunder.

‘Hunters Girl’ it says. I believe this is a doll, but it was suspiciously lightweight. It also wasn’t very expensive. I wonder what it was?

A more traditional packaging of dolls, and I’ll let you decide how accurate they are to the characters. Since I was curious I hefted this item to gauge if the previous was about a third the weight and it didn’t seem to be.

I had a terrible suspicion the previous cylindrical package was largely empty, but it was a bit too expensive to buy to find out. 🙂

Here we have a full set of action figures, and it’s immediately evident these were manufactured by the most amoral of freebooters, since even someone who had never seen the film would gauge these as worthless trash. ‘Happy Eveny Day‘ indeed. Look at (best girl) Rumi’s figure:

I should have purchased all of them and destroyed them in a bonfire.

And then there’s this figure, done in the 3.75″ scale (like Star Wars action figures) albeit lacking some of the detail. This is strangely unboxed and clearly doesn’t stand: the photo was taken from above and the figure is lying down. This is, again, worthless trash.

Squishy things are hot here, so of course the pirates are making them. Here we have a K-Pop Demon Hunters example, specifically (second best girl) Zoey. This is a terrifying item to hold, squeeze and even look at, and since it was undoubtedly manufactured in a cave somewhere on the Barbary Coast it probably contains toxic chemicals.

It’s a shame I already own the world’s most fashionable bucket hat, since this one would have turned heads if I’d worn it walking down the streets of Tokyo.

I say again that these photos aren’t all the items I saw today, and had I been taking photos of everything since I arrived this post would have been three or four times longer. The sheer amount of K-Pop Demon Hunters bootlegs available here beggars belief, and I can only imagine Australians are the world’s most rabid fans of the film!

I’ll end today with this Kopp Domo Hneur bubble gun. There’s so much that can be said about this item, but this bag of chicken twisties in my lap ain’t gonna eat itself so I’ll let you imagine what I would have written 😉

Bootleggers Again

May 28, 2026

Went to the mall today, and what do you know I found more bootleg cards! I know Oz was founded by criminals but evidence these past few days suggests they’re still here.

And what do you know, once again it’s K-Pop Demon Hunters cards. Two different packs in fact, which were a measly $3 apiece. What could be the difference between them?

The box on the left contained fifty or so foil cards all depicting stills from the film. Unlike the ones from yesterday they weren’t just the girls and included a good few Saja Boys cards as well.

These are reasonably well made and printed, although the foil is unspectacular and darkens the image slightly. But for the very low price (about US$2) this would be a fine gift for a bootleg-card-collecting K-Pop Demon Hunters fan.

The other box was a near-identical product, although the cards had different art and no foil coating. They were also not exclusively film stills, with a few cards depicting other anime style and chibi versions of the girls.

These ones felt a bit cheaper than the others, but at the very low price and given the art is different I’d say this would also be fun for a fan. (Who are these fans that collect bootleg KPDH cards?)

It’s been fun opening and inspecting these, but I think this is it for bootleg cards this trip. And maybe pirates booty in general, unless I find something truly unique!

Trading Cards Purchased From Bootleggers

May 27, 2026

We drove back to Newcastle yesterday, and I’m now at mum’s. I won’t blog as frequently here, but right now I’m going to showcase some exclusively Australian trading cards games I obtained from reputable sellers at a location in Sydney. I won’t tell to exactly where this market is, but it rhymes with ‘Paddy’s Markets’ 😉

Let’s begin with Lilo & Stitch. This trading card game – which isn’t a real product and only the product of smugglers – labels itself as ‘new’ and seems to be based around a larger Lilo universe that I have no knowledge or indeed interest of.

The pack – which cost me $3 – contained 8 cards, each featuring a loveable character from the franchise. All cards have attack and defense values and a rock/paper/scissors mark so this can be played multiple ways by even imbeciles. Amusingly the statistics are ludicrously inflated: with most in the high hundreds of thousands.

The front of each card is foiled with a nifty starburst effect, but the backs (see the first pic) are matte and uncoated and I imagine if you got these wet they’d ruin quickly. Quite a risky feature considering these would have been shipped to Australia on galleons from the far east!

This is of course a worthless product as a game, but intriguing for hardcore Stitch fans. My analytical brain tells me this is probably influenced by Lorcana, but I think that may be giving the bootleggers too much credit.

I’m not a fan of Demon Slayer – I found the characters insipid – but in the interests of research I had to buy this illicit card pack. Much like the above, this cost $3 at the blackest of markets.

Were I a betting man I’d suggest these were produced at the very same factory the previous cards were (and these in fact) since the size, card stock, print quality and foil effect are identical. That is except for one card – top left in the above photo – which mysteriously has a different foiling from all the others.

The pack contained seven cards, and as a game this seems even simpler than Stitch since each card only has attack and defense values. There’s some flavour text in the form of attack names (“Breath of Rain in Love with Cats“?) but this has no bearing on play. A worthless game therefore, albeit about a very popular series.

It’s worth noting these are in English – not Japanese – and I do wonder if the audience for this game is as large in occidental ports? Maybe the bootleggers miscalculated spending their valuable production time on this one?

Now this is a more marketable ~~illegal~~ product! Everyone loves Spider-Man, and who wouldn’t want a pack of game cards for a film the sequel of which seems like it’s been delayed forever?

Once again we have the same type of cards produced at the same factory using the same materials. However these ones are all slightly bent, and some of them were dirty! This suggests the factory was in somewhere like Tortuga, and indeed I can almost smell the rum on the cards.

Gamewise (I know, I know…) these adhere closely to the system introduced by Stitch and I think I can confidently say they have the same game system and can therefore be played together as one weird multiversal TCG.

Players that attempt this should be careful: with the exception of Ultimate Spider-Man all the cards in this pack had much lower atk/def values and would be effortlessly defeated by any of the Stitch cards!

While this is another worthless product, it’s also Spider-Man which means of interest to collectors. I don’t doubt they would like a pack or two for amusement value.

One of the hottest brands out there right now is undoubtedly K-Pop Demon Hunters and in a shocking upset the first to market with a TCG are the same pirates that produced everything else I’ve shown today!

It’s all the same again as Stitch and Spider-Man, only the statistics on these cards have a wider variance, with some weaker than any in Spider-Man and others so strong to be able to defeat anything from any previous pack.

I know you’ll be shocked to hear that (unlike all the others I’ve opened so far) the QC on these cards is atrocious! Not only is the foil layer lifting on a couple of them, but three had serious damage to the edges. Not only would this make them illegal in a sanctioned tournament, but it would greatly reduce their value if sent for grading. Shame on you, pirate TCG bootleggers!

And that’s all I’ve found (so far) in the category of bootleg trading card games… but I do have this other mysterious box:

This was found in a cavernous dollar store in Orange and purchased from a lady whose face had never known a smile. It’s about as big as a box of cigarettes, and this is what was inside:

The box label was correct: it contained exactly 60 cards and 36 stickers. This isn’t a game, so the cards are just pictures, but they’re all different and the print quality is excellent:

There’s no foil effect and the backs (the top left card above) are matte, but if you’re a fan I think these would be a good buy for the price.

However if you’re a Saja Boys stan, step back! These are the Huntrix girls only, which makes me wonder if there was another pack with the boys in it?

And as for the stickers… watch your postcards 🙂