Caveat Emptor – Beware The Dark Side!

Caveat emptor, or Latin for “Buyer Beware,” is a sort of motto we use often here on the Blog as a way to qualify what we report as either rumor or speculation based on rumors. But we just wanted to take a moment to re-iterate this phrase which should be in everyone’s daily philosophy. Read more after the break.

Now that we’re partnering with Sideshow Collectibles, a great company that caters to the serious Star Wars collector, we just wanted to offer a few words of warning. It’s Christmas-time for many people around the world who are ultra-excited, like us, that a new Star Wars movie is roughly a year away. In my exuberance, I have been browsing the world wide web looking for The Force Awakens merchandise and have found some. However, the items I have found on eBay and Etsy, to name a few, are bootlegs or knock-offs, no, NOT that really, really awful Jean Claude Van Damme D-flick from 1998, but UNofficial, UNlicensed Star Wars: The Force Awakens merchandise. This may not seem like a big deal and it isn’t, but we just wanted to alert readers that there are some pretty good fakes on the net. Take for instance this item I found on eBay yesterday:

Compare to a legitimate version:

Jason Ward, of MakingStarWars, posted some information in our Cantina regarding these fakes:

I Tweeted out something about this earlier in the week. Fake hats have hit eBay. For now, the fake ones don’t have a VII on the back too. Request a photo of the back if you’re an interested buyer. We saw two fakes sell for $500.

As you can see from the above images the yellow if more vibrant on the legitimate hats vs the bootleg and the “V” is wider at the base on the knock off than the legitmate ones. Hate to play Captain Obvious, but it’s probably a really great idea to ask for more pictures as well as some sort of documentation or certificate of authenticity. Now, we know that some items are selling on eBay that are being sold as “FAN MADE” creations. Take this well-made custom action figure for example that recently sold for $225:

Figures like the one above were clearly sold as a “custom made figure.” However, this hat is being fraudulently sold as “a production gift” — a rare and valuable item to a collector — and using a note from JJ Abrams to the cast and crew as proof (not included.) Also, I asked the seller to see a picture of the back of the hat and, of course, never heard a word. So, IF you should stumble upon items like this beware it’s NOT worth $50 let alone $500 and consider that IF this was an actual gift from the production, surely rare, then it would be better represented than this. By the way, I reported this seller to the eBay customer service group and have not heard back as of this writing.

I contacted Disneystore.com for some information about when we may start to see officially licensed TFA merchandise and this is the response I received

Thank you for your recent e-mail, and we appreciate your interest in DisneyStore.com and the new Star Wars episode set to be released next year.

 

As of yet, there is no information on the release of any Star Wars: The Force Awakens merchandise at this time. Please feel free to check our website periodically, and check our store blog; The Buzz at blog.disneystore.com, for news about new products being sold by Disney. I hope this information was helpful, and you continue to shop with us here at DisneyStore.com.

 

This warning doesn’t just apply to hats. There are many posters, bumper stickers, magnets, and key chains being reproduced based on the fan art that has been floating around the web. Also, T-shirts. There are a few crudely made T-shirts on eBay that claim to be “New” but mysteriously have no tags. I contacted FifthSun.com, one of our partners and an OFFICIAL licensee of Star Wars T-shirts, about when we could see some TFA T-shirts and this was the response I received:

Our customer service team forwarded your request to me. We honestly don’t know when to expect the new line of Star Wars 7 products to be ready. As you can imagine, a lot goes into the production of these goods and the timing is largely driven by the timing of the movie and the licensor (Disney/Lucas). 

 

If you’d like, I can make a note to contact you when we have more information that we can share publicly. We do work with many of the largest U.S. retailers and so we could help inform your readers on where to get items as they become available–perhaps even in advance.

 

Can’t make any guarantees, of course, but we’d love to help spread the news if we can. Let me know if you have any questions or anything else I can help you with and we’ll do our best.

As you can see FifthSun is a legitimate and professional company that is licensed to produce Star Wars T-shirts so if they don’t have any then most likely no company does. In fact, they will surely spread the word when they do have them. So just beware of the frauds out there because, unless you really have a lot of “disposable income” — and I don’t know too many people that do these days — there are a lot of cheaply made, but expensive, bootlegs out there. To get in on the conversation about this topic jump on over to The Cantina.

Echo-07

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