EVer since I was a kid the constructicons have been some of my favorate toys only shadowed by starscream and his army of clones.

once I found out they were originaly from a differnt line years ago and in differnt colours I had always wanted to own those versions of them. every time a new repaint of them came out , like g2 and all those chinese bootlegs from recent years I've always picked them up (have quite a collection of goofy varients including most of mr hard hat!) but one of my goals has always been to pick up a legt diaclone set, no easy task!. after this years botcon I picked up most of what i was missing, a mixmaster and most of the combining parts (head missle crotch one wrist one fist and a broken super wing) I've cobbled together a mostly complete set. now I understand there were lots of bootlegs of the diacone version, and i'm familiar with most of the variants (ie differnt stickers being the biggest give away) along with the dreaded taiwan stamp on most of the figures (I know my long haul has this under his chest)

the part that has me a bit stumped (and the seller i got most of the parts from at botcon) is there an easy or at least acurate way to tell if the accesories are genuine or bootlegs?

overall i'm just as happy with a parftially bootleg version of him as whatever I have holds together beautifully, but still i'd like to know how much of him is legit. I've included a picture of what I do have as well as a few extra bots/parts i've picked up (and i knw I have a few more bonecrushers and schrappers somewhere.




I can definatly tell one of the heads is a bootleg (no eyes) but otherwise i'm not seeing anything that screams bootleg, any help would be greatly apreciated!

 

This might help... http://www.geocities.com/futuristgroup/vdiadev.html

It looks like there's info on distinguishing legit robots from fakes, but their accessories could still be a problem.

 

This is a easy one. I call fake! check the copystamp. Does it say Takara Japan or Taiwan. The early Diaclone KO's were very good quality and not much different to the untrained eye. As far as the accessories go that is going to be a tough one. I have both real version and KO version I might have to do a comparison. Good question btw :O)

 

I've never seen those colors before, so I'm interested now. Might Gaine is the expert in toy versions and KOs, you may want to PM him.