Toy Oddities: The Bootleg Black Widow!

Deep inside China’s seedy underbelly, shady miscreants are capitalising on both The Avengers’ massive success and shapely Scarlett Johansson’s coveted likeness, by churning out bootleg Black Widow figures for ill-gotten profits! Normally you would “purchase” one of these highly sought after items in a dark back alley, generally trading sexual favours or opium, but I was able to secure some infamous Scarjo contraband through a little-known Interwebs site referred to only as “eBay”. Small first letter, capital second letter? Sounds like a hacker nest to me!

Now that she’s safely in (rugged) Western hands, find out what I thought of her... after the jump!


Well she ain’t pretty.

If you turn the lights low, stand a few feet away from her and squint, you may be fooled for a second that she’s not too bad. But get up close and the illusion quickly shatters. This is a misfit toy, probably carved from a human thigh bone in a pit.

There’s no packaging here. She arrived taped up inside a block of crudely cut styrofoam. She was also in a clear plastic bag that leads me to believe that she was no doubt smuggled out of Asia inside somebody’s body. She took about a month to arrive too, so I’m also guessing that said smuggler was deficient in fibre.

Bootleg toys are notoriously lightweight hollow shells, but the smuggled six-inch Scarjo is surprisingly solid and heavy. Her proportions are somewhat askew and she suffers from a record-breaking lack of articulation. She has shoulders and neck and that’s it. And she struggles to stand unassisted. These rare shots were snapped a split-second before she toppled onto her back like a frisky drunk.

Not even Scarlett’s much written about derriere (a muse for many a poet) is rendered flat and dull here, lacking the enchanting double-cushions that inspired a generation. These lackluster cheeks were surely chiselled with hate in an Asian pleasure den.

Long of torso and unloved, this is one strange ginger beast, and yet she earns her place in my Black Widow collection. A collection that is still conspicuously lacking figures that actually look like Scarlett Johansson.

I believe that these sinister bootleggers have also produced tawdry figures of the rest of the team too so if you’re at an airport and see a shady character walking funny then there’s a very good chance that they have a horned helmet Loki somewhere deep inside their body.

I provide this community service announcement only out of concern for you, dear consumer. Take care out there!