How to spot a fake Play Arts Kai Tifa

Being a huge fan of Final Fantasy VII from the original release I loved playing the remake too, it brought back a lot of memories and was really well made. One thing that isn’t well made is KO toys based on the game and there a lot of sellers online trying to sell these as legitimate figures so here’s a comparison so you can spot a potential fake.

You can see more pictures of the official release in our review of the Play Arts Kai Tifa from Final Fantasy VII. Although we’ve found a few ways to spot a KO here, there are more on the market.

This one was purchased online and imported, it was much cheaper than the official release but the listing never mentioned it was a KO or made by bootleggers, in fact the listing said it was made by Square and I’ve seen numerous over listing of these which are similar. If you want to buy one I’d recommend using the official Square online shop, it will probably be the cheapest way to get an official release.

In the pictures below the KO version is always on the right with the official release on the left.

When this first arrived I did think it could be an official release but if you have both in your hand you can clearly tell the difference.

Here’s a comparison of the boxes, you can see the obvious difference with the bootleg on the right missing the red triangle logo. It’s an easy spot now but if you didn’t know to look for it the box looks very authentic otherwise. It even has the magnet on the door of the box. 
Below you can see the side of the boxes, the KO on the right has a bit of an alignment issue but you can see how well they managed to clone the colour and glossy look. If it wasn’t  for  missing logo and alignment the box would seem identical.Here’s a comparison of the back of the boxes, again almost identical. This is why a lot of online retailers selling the bootlegs have the ability to try and pass them off as official. To be honest some online retailers might have bought fakes without knowing themselves.

Out of the box the fake version on the right looks again almost identical at first glance. If you have the official one to compare it though you will notice the difference in quality. The joins are tight and click when moved on the official one whereas the bootleg has looser joints.

Now the most obvious way to tell will be the following picture. Again the official release is on the left and has amazing paint and detail. The KO on the right slips up here as this is something they can’t copy and reproduce at a low cost. Notice the less detailed eyes and thicker black paint around the lower part of each eye. The bootleg also slips up on the black detail of her top.  You can see the missing black paint around the top edge and overall looks a little sloppy.

The bootlegs sell for a wide price range, some sell them as obvious bootlegs for around $25 USD but some retailers are trying to sell the fakes as legitimate figures and trying to charge around $100.

Update: Some sites are selling replacement heads with an updated paint job which look almost identical to the official although I haven’t seen these in hand to tell the difference.

The picture below is from a listing of an updated KO version.

With the price difference you might be tempted to buy a KO version but I honestly don’t think they would be worth it.  If you buy an official release for $150 it’s going to look so much better and be worth hundreds in a few years. Whereas the KO looks bad and will be worth nothing.

This isn’t a definitive guide to spotting a bootleg as there will be more fakes out there so if you are worried just buy from the official Square online shop.

Posted by Adi Mursec on September 18, 2021