Class of Bootleg	Class 3 - Concept bootleg
Class Notes:	Possible Class two, due to copyrighted ship art on backer
Bootleg Source:	Star Wars vehicles, Aliens Vehicles
Bootleg Rating:	(Four out of five stars)
Sightings:	Canada, California
Vintage:	1999

This particular line of bootlegs became very prevalent in late 1999. Based on vehicles from various science fiction movies, toys from this line were found loose, carded, and in boxed sets.

This review focuses on the carded offerings.

At right you can see the card design that is common to all offerings in this set. The top right corner has the Star Force logo in a font very suggestive of Star Wars.

There are also images of X-Wings, A-Wings, and TIE Fighters, all flying away from what appears to be a large Death Star in the corner, and heading for a planet that could possibly be Earth.

The child saftey warning (lower left) has this toy aimed at the over-3 crowd. On most examples found in Canada, the X-Wing art has been obscured by a Toy Galaxy import sticker. A variant card has shown up in California, and is reviewed at The Undiscovered Playthings.

The back of the card is plain cardboard, and the card itself measures 8" x 5".

The bootleggers are proud of this toy line, even including their logo in the upper left corner:

At left you can see the useage instructions, such as they are. On this style of backer they consist of a drawing of the Alien escape pod and the words Pump & Go

In fact, all the toys in this line are indeed Friction Powered - meaning if you pull them back along a flat surface, they'll race forward for a bit.

 
As a last bit of trivia, the stock number printed on the card (and shown in the detail at right) is SF28006. As there are six ships in this set, the real stock number may be closer to "2800/6".

 

Here's a closer look at all six ships in this set. Some of the ships have been found made of DIE Cast metal, others in metalic looking plastic. The only real way to tell in-package is by heft.

First up we have a ship losely based on the escape pod used by Lt. Ripley in the first Alien movie.

Aparently it was what crashed in Roswell, as the United States air force has covered it with both USAF Roundelles and big "US" on either side of the centerline.

Next up is the A-Wing fighter from Return of the Jedi.

It has been painted all white, with more USAF decos.

Also from Return of the Jedi is this Mon Calamari Star Cruiser. It's interesting that the bootleggers chose to duplicate this ship, as it's not exactly the most widely recognized ship in the fleet.

The MonCal ship has been painted silver with yellow and blue highlights. Obviously the bootleggers knew what ship they were duping - if they had added the decos from the Aliens ship or A-Wing, the scale would have been very off - the MonCal ship is HUGE.

The toy, however, is only about 3" long.

 

The glare in the photo obscures it, but this is another example of the classic Bootleg Dual Cockpit Millenium Falcon design.

The color scheme on this toy is a base of silver with green, red, and yellow highlights.

I think the addition of the four big jet exhausts at the rear of the ship make for a funny addition to the vessel.

 

Last from the world of Star Wars we have an X-Wing Fighter.

Once again the base color is silver, with green, red, and yellow spray-ops.

Note the replacement of the wing guns with huge missles!

Last up is this ship. I can't place it. Judgning from the other ships in this series, however, it's probably some obscure ship from a B-Grade film.