Papo Polar Wolf vs China Knockoff - Walkaround *Large scale Papo Copy found*

For a few years I have been noticing more and more unbranded China copies of major brands like Schleich, Papo, CollectA and others. While I usually avoid buying knockoffs, I decided to buy this one, a knockoff of Papo's Polar wolf to use in a "Quality Differences" walkaround.

Please note that I have painted over the knockoff wolf's eyes because they were really freaking me out! But I do have some photos of it before I painted over them.

Tag that came with the wolf:
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At first glance, it looks fairly convincing.
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But let's take a closer look at this model.

Up close, you can see hairline swirls in the plastic. Not present in the Papo Polar wolf.
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You can also see a lot of visible seam lines which is very common in these China copies.

Seam lines are noticable on the face and the face also lacks a lot of the fine fur details of the Papo Polar wolf.
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Seam lines are also very noticable on all the limbs and the bottoms of the paws.

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Paw pad details are very vague and almost absent.

Paws and legs are warped. Legs are a bit thinner and the model does not stand flat against the ground. You can see all four paws are slightly curved up on the inside.

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Last but not least, all of Papo's info including year, month of manufacturing and copyright have been removed.
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As far as the paint job on this model...I did a "scratch test" with my fingernail and was able to easily remove the paint without much effort. Quality of plastic itself was actually somewhat better than I was expecting but the legs are still a lot easier to bend than the Papo Wolf's legs.

Unfortunately this is not the only Papo wolf model I've seen stolen on the market. There is also a hollow China copy of their walking female wolf on the market too. And I recently came across a copy of Schleich's polar wolf also, painted much the same way as this one.

It's unfortunate that this is happening in the first place. It makes me sick to see how many copies of major brand's models are cropping up all over eBay, Amazon and even in brick and mortar stores.

A very interesting topic :)

widukind wrote:

A very interesting topic :)

I agree ,Very interesting.

Famous brands animals are very detailed and the paint is very fine.

Other imitations, have stain in paint .

I like many china animals with bad paint, but with other poses.

Knockoff is bad if quality is bad.

I agree with all. It is very interesting and show why we have to pay a little more to get these branded figures. Their quality is taken seriously and what seems to be a little difference in a figure, represents a big effort from the workers of the company to get them as correct as possible. These copies are not only saving in finish quality and materials, they are also just copied from original moulds, so no research, no originality, nothing. Just copy and put it in production as cheap as possible.

Thankyou, Fallon, for this great topic !!! you did a great job showing the very important differences

How very irritating for the sculpturer and the manufaucturer of the original, - and in the long run it may well a bad influence on the market for all of us

More copies found...now even large scale Papo wolf has been copied. Interestingly it is actually solid hard plastic and not hollow like I was expecting.

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They are both gorgeous

The copy is the one to the right, isn't it ? Hard to see , actually
It has almost the same colour as the original before ( lovely) repainting