This guide is intended to give the reader a reference on how to distinguish the fake Furuta Choco Egg products from the real ones. Good luck.
I have been advised that there are fake Furuta Choco Egg products flooding the market recently (since couple months ago back in May 2007). As of today, fake products for the following series have been noticed - Furuta War Plane Vol. 1, Furuta War Plane Vol. 2, Furuta War Plane Vol. 3 (especially set of 20), Furuta War Plane Vol. 4 & Furuta War Plane Vol. 5.The quality of the fake products is quite bad comparing to the genuine. I have seen fake ones for some models and you can tell the difference right away as they were manufactured and painted poorly. Also, the parts don't fit as nicely as the genuine and a lot of effort is required in forcing the parts to join together. The paint furnishing is very rough. Missing parts/wrong parts are very common among the fakes.
If you have purchased a Furuta Choco Egg product and you have doubt about its authenticity, there are two things you can check specifically to identify the fakes ones.
1) The instruction sheet
Even the fake ones have instruction sheet. It looks very similar to the original instruction sheet but only a bit blurred.
2) The details
The fake ones always tend to have a few details missing. You can compare your item with the photo from official sources to see if there is any detail missing like insignia, flag of nation, call signs, numbers, markings, etc. Significant color discrepancy is another thing you should look for on a fake product. I have photos of most Furuta plane products. Email me if you cannot find any particular models.
If both of the above checked OK, congratulations, you probably have purchased a genuine Furuta Choco Egg product.
If you are planning to purchase Furuta Choco Egg products online, there are couple things you should keep in mind before clicking that Buy button.
1) Check to see if the seller has a good history of selling Furuta Choco Egg products or not. This is rather important because since all the fake ones so far are copies of Furuta War Plane series which have been out of production a long time ago. Therefore, if a particular seller is able to come up with a supply of these products all of the sudden specially within the last couple months, it could be a bad sign.
2) Compare the photo of the item in the listing with the photo from official sources thoroughly to look for missing details and color discrepancies. If there is no photo of the item available within the listing, ask the seller to provide one for you.
If you have other precaution steps that can be taken to screen out the fake ones, please share so our fellow eBayer can avoid buying a wrong product from a wrong seller.
Below is a few fake samples provided by my suppliers and a comparison is done on each pair for your reference. If I have more, I will put them put.
#43 - the red paint on the missile head is missing
#48 - stripes on rudder and fuselage are missing
#57v1 - many markings on the helicopter are missing
Please note that all the Furuta Choco Egg products I sell are 100% genuine and are from authorized suppliers. Just a little advertising for myself... :)
Guide created: 07/14/07 (updated 03/08/08)

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