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Hello my cyber friends! MY little brother wants to buy a G1 optimus prime, in the box from a friend of his... but it looks way too new for it to be vintage and original. We really don't know how to tell if it is a knock off that has recently been manufactured in china or not. How do we tell? Is there something on the original box that would not be there or vice versa? Please help!

Thank you!

Mike

I'm not sure, however if it doesn't have a trailer, its official but not vintage as the recent Wal-Mart re-release lacked the trailer and was only the cab. Other fans here should be able to help with KO info.

There have been several re-releases of the G1 Optimus Prime figure, so many it's kind of hard to keep count. Plus, G1 Optimus Prime has had plenty of figures throughout his 35 years (3 in G1 alone), so there's a chance we may be thinking different figures.

Any chance we could see the box? The G1 Optimus Prime bootleg's box has some styling differences compared with the original.

If it's in as good a state as you say then probably the easiest thing to do is go on eBay and compare it to any of the honest auctions listing KO Primes. Pay close attention to things like TF logo placement (KO has more empty space to the left side), silver boarders around the window (the boarder stops over the trailer on the real one, goes all the way around on the KO), and brightness of the yellow burst behind the character art (on the KO it's brighter and a little lower than the real one). They KOs basically recreated the boxes from scratch so they aren't perfect.

If it's the original Hasbro reissue it'll be much easier to tell at a glance since it'll have short smoke stacks and wont have the logo flap on top of the box. The second reissue, as mentioned before, doesn't have a trailer. Japanese reissues are very obviously Japanese and none of them are perfect recreations of any original box.

Emerje

One perfect tell-tale sign it's a KO is a certain discrepancy with the box vs. the copyright on the toy. If the box is a US Hasbro box but the copyright on the toy has "Joustra" on it, then it's most certainly a KO. One type of KO was made using (copied?) molds from the original French release of the toy.