K-2SO gets a bootleg buildable figure care of KSZ

At this point in time, Star Wars is a guaranteed money-printing machine. Rogue One is no exception. As it stands, the movie has grossed upwards of $900 million. Of course, no Star Wars movie is complete without the myriad of merchandise on retail – including bootlegs of said merchandise.

Today I’ll be showing you a bootleg of Lego’s Buildable Figures K-2SO, that sassy droid which endeared itself to many moviegoers. This set is made by KSZ. I have seen this brand around for some time now. They aren’t as prolific as the more known makers are, but they do produce a number of minifig sets and buildable figures, the latter of which is a market that hasn’t been tapped much by bootleggers. Let’s take a quick dive and see what this set has to offer.

I was able to purchase this set for PhP 280 (US$ 5.62 as of time of writing). The original set would set you back around US$ 25, so that’s a pretty decent discount.

The box front is pretty much a clone copy of the original’s own box, save for some details such as the maker’s logo, text, and the removal of Disney’s logo at the lower-right (most likely to avoid incurring the wrath – and lawsuits – of the House of Mouse). You’ll also notice that KSZ also opted to rebrand their stuff to Space Wars – again, to probably give them some leeway to wriggle out of a lawsuit.

The rear of the box shows the figure in action. Again, this is a copy of the actual rear box art Lego uses for the original set. It shows various points of articulation available for the figure, as well as advertising the availability of other buildable figures in this series (in this case, Jyn Erso and the Imperial Death Trooper).

To note, KSZ actually does make buildable figure bootlegs of Jyn and the Imperial Death Trooper. I might look at getting that Death Trooper sometime later, but I’ll have to pass on Jyn, mostly because the buildable figure style simply doesn’t fit human characters without armors – they tend to look cyborg-ish for my tastes.

Opening the box reveals the parts bag and the instruction manual contained within. I’m not sure about the original set, but for this bootleg, the box size seems overly large for the contents inside. The building manual, I would guess, is a fraction of the size of the original’s manual.

Here’s a sampling of the build manual. While I do think the instructions themselves are direct copies of the original’s manual, the illustrations show jaggies, which leads me to think that the manual is not a 1:1 scale with the original’s, probably scaled down for cost-cutting purposes. That said, it is readable and clear enough to work with.

So here’s K-2SO when built. KSZ has gone the now-standard route of including spare pieces, which is a nice touch. The model itself is pretty solid. The joints are able to hold themselves in place, which is good. I was worried that being a bootleg, some of the joints’ pieces might be loose and would make the figure wobble or not stand at all. I’m happy to report that this isn’t the case.
Of course, this being a bootleg, it will show some signs of being one, like with this piece in the middle. This particular piece has a cosmetic from its production process. It’s not as big of a problem for me, though. It’s certainly not a deal-breaker.

All told, I’m pretty happy with this figure. The pieces are good, the joints are solid, and it seems to clone the original Lego figure nicely. If you ever want to have a poseable K-2SO figure for a song, this might be of interest to you. Recommended.

I’ll leave you with some more photos of the figure for your perusal.