Boaconda, on Jan 22 2009, 04:46 AM, said:
That said, I don't believe these are stolen figures, only because of the two sets represented. Atomic has yet to appear in most of Europe or the US, and doesn't fit the Playmates pattern (due to having Atomic-colored Lords). If the figures were Elemental Fusion alone, I could see that. I don't see someone taking a bunch of the same small subset of Atomic figures, waiting a couple years for Elemental Fusion to be released, taking a subset of those figures, and then selling on eBay. It's just not logical.
Great point. Odds are Boaconda is 100% correct.
The other possible explanation I could see is that recently in China a lot of factories have shut down or cut back on orders and warehouses have been emptied as a result of closures or cost cutting, leading to lots of older/vintage toys getting discovered.
A friend of mine in Hong Kong has a contact in China that trades in bootlegs, factory escapees, prototypes, etc. He was offered some mint boxed MASK, Centurions and Sky Commanders toys that were discovered after a factory closure as well as some mint vintage Kenner Care Bears.
So assuming these aren't bootlegs, it could be that a factory producing Gormiti purged some of their stored samples which were a mixture of older Atomics as well as Elemental Fusion.
Another possibility is that the Atomic Repaints are for an upcoming UK release (after the initial wave 2 that is currently in release.)
Elemental Fusion is the next Euro release, and if Atomic is the next UK release then these could represent samples of the most current figures in production. (Granted there's no evidence of Atomic for UK, but then there was no apparent reason to include FE repaints in the US release either...)
In any case, we'll know more when mine arrive! Sadly air mail from HK takes a couple weeks ususally...
One thing that will be very telling is if the the Atomic Volcano and Sea figures in the picture are color change... I'd be shocked if a bootleg figure went the route of adding color change when even the official US releases dumped it!