They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but oftentimes it’s a more reliable source of hilarity.Let's check out the most hilarious knock-offs of famous brands that you can find on the internet!
Rip-Off Toys
Toys and games are the things that encapsulate our childhood. But where there’s mimsy, there’s mimicry. Can’t decide whether to get your kid a Lion King or Star Wars toy? How about that lion thing! This is Chewfasa, what looks like a Wookie painted red, though you can’t deny them the genius of that name.
Forget Star Wars and The Lion King though, growing up, I remember wanting my mom to get me some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures! Unfortunately for me, she was a tightwad. But it could’ve been worse. Instead of getting me nothing, she could’ve gotten me these in the post below!
These are the Turly Gang, and they look like an unholy mix of He-Man torsos with heads pinched from other, more popular toys. Why are their knees always bent? These knock-off ninjas were released in Germany and surrounding areas during the 90s, when turtle mania was raging. And despite the name Turly and his turtle looking head, this guy is supposed to be a frog.
The manufacturers probably had to say that because the He-Man molds didn’t have shells on their back. If you can
read the German on the back of the packaging, you’ll learn the toy’s backstory tells of how five friends were transformed into mutant warriors by lava, and now they must fight against evil. Of course, the Turly gang aren’t the only TMNT rip offs around. Feast your eyes on the ninja hero riders, frogs that wield katanas, wear eye patches, and ride horses.
You gotta love the dumbfounded expression on his cute little face. And just look at how his green horse with blond hair gallops!
231 Ninja Hero Rider by Plasticjunky Sometimes, online shopping feels like roulette, you never know what you’re going to get! This was painfully true for Thanh Sang from Hanoi, Vietnam. Hoping to surprise his son, he spent 850 thousand Vietnamese dong, about $33, on an Iron Man toy he found online. The ad promised a normal buff superhero, just like in the movies. But when the package arrived, Thanh ended up with this in the image below:
Iron Man? More like Iron Deficiency Man. Even though the scrawny arms and potbelly combo is a nice touch. If Thanh really wanted a robotic superhero, then he should’ve got his son this next epic piece. The beefed up Thomas the Tank Engine in the clip below apparently comes from Japan, except he’s been mechanized into Super Electric Thomas.
俺は機関車をやめるぞ！パァシィーッ！！「機関人トーマス」登場 by moeyo channel For kids who can’t handle Super Electric Thomas, you could always get them something a bit more mellow, a Toy Story figurine or Woody! His hands are as big as wardrobes! And in case you forgot, this guy isn’t from Toy Story, it’s from Space Boys.
And who could forget Batman and Super Flyman! The odd duo below comes from the
Weirdo Toys website. According to the collector, they stumbled across these strange figures at a toy show, where the seller claimed these contraband crusaders were originally manufactured in Hong Kong.
They were later found in an abandoned New York warehouse, where the toys had been left water-damaged from poor storage. Since appearing online, they inspired a
piece by artist Thomas Perkins. Whatever they are, they’re not as terrifying as the next figurine. In all of Nerdom, no one is more feared than Darth Trump!
This isn’t really a knock-off, but more a bit of fun. The Trump figurine comes from TIMEBANDITS, a site run by designer and visual artist Jonathan Stephens who makes and sells good stuff like watches, comic books, and of course, toys for ages 33 and up! And for those who are feeling a bit more spenny, why not splash out on a
Darth Trump gold edition?
Rip-Off Games
What family hasn’t had a good squabble over a game of Momoney? Believe it or not, this rip-off is actually unavailable on most online shops, it’s manufactured by a company called GeniusCells and comes with a calculator instead of physical momoney.
For those not willing to put in the hours of a normal momoney or monopoly marathon, there’s always the speedier version, Monopoly Deal. Redditor OneTrueBrody tried ordering the card game from Temu and then one from Amazon, and see if you can spot the difference in the image below. It seems that Pennybags must’ve took a vacation someplace sunny!
Back in 1983, Nintendo released the Famicom, better known as the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, outside Japan. This revolutionary console could run arcade games at home and became a global sensation, selling more than 2.5 million units by ’84. But with success came imitators, and the NES earnt the honor of being one of the most copied consoles of all time, spawning a wave of "famiclones." One such crappy copy came following the fall of the Soviet Union, complete with an adorable, albeit somewhat creepy, elephant mascot, the Dendy. Released in 1992 and produced in Taiwan, this gem was clearly “inspired” by the NES, which was already nine years old by then.
It even came preloaded with bootlegged Famicom games. The best of the best is absolutely, without a doubt, Somari: a Sonic the Hedgehog game, except instead of Sonic, the main character’s a spinning Mario. Regardless of, or perhaps because of, its bizarreness, the Dendy was beloved throughout Russia.
Somari (NES) Gameplay by blacksquirrel3 Rip-Off Books
For nearly 30 years, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has mesmerized kids and adults alike with magical stories, unforgettable characters, and intricately detailed worlds. Hoping to jump on the bandwagon, other writers have tried emulating Rowling’s works.
Nowhere was this truer than in 2000s China where, in 2001, an estimated 30 to 40% of all books on the market were pirated. Among the most memorable counterfeits was Harry Potter and the Golden Armor, which looks a darn sight cooler than the US version.
And then there’s Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon. And is Harry tackling a centaur?
Research reveals that the plot follows Harry as he’s transformed into a fat hairy dwarf. After that he goes on an adventure with characters both familiar and new in a plot that’s a rehash of Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Well, that still sounds better than any of the Fantastic Beasts movies!
Rip-Off Fashion
Over in the US, some products might look like knockoffs, but if they can be proven as parodies, they’re often protected under the First Amendment, bypassing trademark infringement laws. That’s why you get companies like the odd online fashion store Dolce and Banana selling the T-shirts below. That’s a bit more than evocative. And, as far as we know, Dolce and Gabbana haven’t sued them yet!
It's know that people are willing to splash thousands on designer brands. Take the Speedy 30 bags from Louise Vuitton, those things can go for over $1,800! Good thing we’ve got companies like
My Other Bag then, who make much cheaper tote bags with drawings of iconic designer handbags! Except, Louis Vuitton didn’t find the parody funny.
In 2016,
they took My Other Bag to court, arguing trademark infringement and dilution. The district court disagreed, ruling that the totes were clearly a parody that wasn’t likely to confuse customers. But Louis Vuitton wasn’t having it. They appealed and lost once more. The court upheld the original ruling, pointing again to the fact that the bag was a parody. The court also said that Louis Vuitton hadn’t provided any evidence to prove that a customer could possibly mistake the original Speedy for a tote bag with a picture of a Speedy on it.
Rip-Off Social Media: Lamebook
If you have a mom, aunt, or gran, you know Facebook is this extraordinary website used for sharing inspirational quotes. Unfortunately for the company, there are a few people that think Facebook is a bit lame. That’s according to Lamebook, a site that shares screenshots of hilarious Facebook hijinks.
Incensed that someone would claim they’re uncool, Facebook sent a cease-and-desist letter to Lamebook’s site in Austin, Texas in March 2010. Not only that, in a tantrum-like rage, they
shut down any links to Lamebook that were on Facebook and stopped users from "liking" the company’s page.
But Lamebook returned with vengeance in November and countersued Facebook. Several lawsuits followed, Facebook’s argument being that Lamebook infringed on and diluted their brand, while Lamebook’s owners said that their site was a parody. Eventually, in August 2011, both sides finally reached a settlement. Lamebook came out still able to use its name but must add a disclaimer and cannot seek trademark protection. All’s well that ends well.
Rip-Off Food & Drinks
One company that found itself in the doghouse was VIP products. Back in 2014, they released a squeaky dog toy styled like a Jack Daniels bottle, renamed Bad Spaniels. Instead of the original bottle’s 40% alcohol, this one has declared itself 43% poo and 100% smelly!
While it might seem a hoot to us, it only maddened the whisky company, who dragged VIP to court. In 2020, the initial ruling went in VIP’s favor, with the court agreeing it was an expressive work and a clear parody. But Jack Daniels wouldn’t let sleeping dogs lie. The whisky brand brought the case to the US Supreme Court, arguing the toy tarnished Jack Daniel’s name and associated whisky with excrement. Finally, in 2023, the
Supreme Court agreed with Jack Daniels, overruling the earlier decision. Who’s going to walk out of a store trying to drink from a chew toy? Either way, it was a ruff day for VIP! Nothing makes your stomach sing like grabbing a big fistful of Prongles! Who are these porcine pretenders, and what’ve they done with Pringles?
These rip-offs first appeared in November 2017, with many customers confused by their blatant copying, signature flavor of salt and potato, and this theme song:
Prongles theme song from Cards Against Humanity by Cards Against Humanity That song slaps so hard. With a theme like that, it’s no surprise that when first released, Prongles were a hit and sold out on their website for $3 a can. However, people noticed that these things were being sold in the cards and games section, not the snacks. Well, it turns out these are made by Cards Against Humanity, those guys who make the controversial card game of the same name. The company released an official statement saying they: "retired our popular comedy card game... to pursue our real passion: dominating the snack food industry." No need to worry, the whole thing’s just a big publicity stunt. They intentionally created a Pringles rip-off, complete with a cartoon mascot straight from the '90s. If you go on the Prongles website, they promise to bring out
two new flavors: whole fish and America. Cards Against Humanity are known for their public trolling. They even marked Black Friday 2016 by
raising $100,000 to dig a big hole and streamed it live on YouTube. As for Pringles, there’s been no recorded response to Prongles; maybe they want to try the new flavors too?
Sometimes, what we believe to be the real deal turns out to be the fake! The Americans will be well acquainted with M&Ms, those little balls of chocolatey goodness coated in candy shells. But across the pond, Brits have a similar treat by a different name: smarties. The two products are near identical, so which one’s the rip off?
Candy company, Rowntree’s, released chocolate beans in 1882, later
reinventing them as Smarties in 1937, beating Mars’s launch of M&Ms in 1941. Looks like M&Ms are the copycat! The story of smarties and M&Ms actually goes much deeper than that. Both of them were actually predated by small chocolate treats from 19th century Italy and France coated in a sugar shell called dragée, which meant upper-class women could enjoy chocolate without staining their gloves. Then in 1932, Forrest Mars Sr, the son of Mars founder Frank Mars, and George Harris of Rowntree both found themselves in Spain during the Civil War. Watching soldiers, they noticed how they’d munch on small sugar-coated chocolates that didn’t melt in their pockets.
The story goes that Forrest and Harris made an agreement on the spot. Forrest would sell a similar product in the US, and Harris would sell them in Europe. Mars made M&Ms, Rowntree made smarties. Who knew rip offs had this much history! However, M&Ms have since appeared in British stores. Looks like Mars reneged on their deal. There’s been other rip offs of the rip off too. In Sudan, blogger and photographer Jim Rees found the so-called S&Ms! According to Jim, they taste pretty good, apart from the lack of sugar coating. You'd imagine anything called S&Ms would be a bit spicy.
In Britain, one cake has been a staple of kids’ birthday parties since 1990, Colin the Caterpillar. Grocery chain M&S has sold this iconic chocolate cake, along with his female counterpart Connie, for decades, shifting a whopping 5 million of them every year. But M&S has a rival: Aldi. While M&S leans towards the luxury side of shopping, Aldi is all about budget-friendly alternatives, and Colin was no exception. In 2019, Aldi unveiled their own caterpillar cake, Cuthbert, and he bore a striking resemblance to Colin. In April 2021, M&S took Aldi to court, accusing them of copyright infringement. The case took the nation by storm with headlines beaming with Colin vs Cuthbert. Rather than win the minds of the court, Aldi decided to win over the hearts of the people and launched #freecuthbert,
a social media campaign to gain support from the British public. Folks even protested outside of M&S stores! After a bitter battle, the companies eventually
settled on a secret agreement, with M&S saying they were "pleased" with the result. Soon after, Cuthbert fans rejoiced as the copy-caterpillar returned to Aldi’s shelves in June 2022, now with a different face!
Sadly for M&S, the knock-offs have only multiplied, with nearly every major British store selling their own version of the cake. Colin isn’t the only replica Aldi has served up, and they’re not the only store in the UK specializing in cheap knock-offs. Both Aldi and Lidl are well-known for creating lookalike brands. Some of them are tortilla chips instead of Doritos tortilla chips and Alcafé coffee, which is a copycat of Nescafé coffee.But how do Aldi and Lidl get away with ripping off other brands so fragrantly? Well, the UK has much looser copyright laws compared to the rest of Europe, allowing for supermarkets to operate on a legal Wild West. The funny thing is many name brands and supermarket own-brand products are made by the same companies, in the same factories! In 2023, there was even a case where name brand hula hoops turned up in bags of Aldi hula hoops due to factory mix ups.
While recipes might differ slightly, the only real difference between these products, and their price, is the packaging. Take, for example, Nutella, that gooey chocolatey hazelnut spread. In Aldi, they have their own rather chucklesome version Nutoka.
And Nutella knock-offs don’t stop there! From Turkey, we have the boldly named Nut Master, perfect for those who fancy themselves true masters of nuts. Then there’s Sweetnut, or perhaps you’d prefer a nibble on Mynuts? And, of course, there’s the pièce de resistance Mick’s Nut Lick? Where are you supposed to apply that?
Microsoft Rip-Off: Michaelsoft Binbows
In the world of computing, everyone knows the best operating system is Michaelsoft Binbows? The sign below has been doing the rounds on the internet since 2007 and no one knows who took it or when it was taken.
What we do know is that one of the first photos of this shop appeared on a Japanese blogger site,
Alf’s room, in 2001. According to the blog updates, the shop closed down by the end of 2002. After this, in 2007, another picture, the meme we know today, began circulating online. Some netizens have tried to solve this beguiling mystery. Thank God for YouTubers!
In 2021, Nick Robinson,
in his video The Mystery of "MICHAELSOFT BINBOWS", went on a journey to uncover the location of this shop. The video is a surprisingly beautiful and existential watch, and definitely worth checking out. Using Google Earth VR and reference images on Yoshinori’s blogs, Robinson discovered the exact location: 554-1 Koaigimachi, Maebashi, Gunma, Japan. Mysterious rip-off: solved!
The mystery of "MICHAELSOFT BINBOWS" by Nick Robinson (Babylonian) Rip-Off Fast Food
Fast food may be junk, but it’s delicious junk. One of the biggest franchises is KFC, first founded in 1952 by the now-iconic Colonel Sanders. But why settle for one American symbol when you can have OFC? A Beijing KFC knock-off, Obama Fried Chicken, is using former US president Barack Obama’s face to sell fried chicken.
One of the owners, Zhu Baolai, even threw in their own tagline: “We so cool, aren’t we?” However, Baolai did land himself in hot oil when activist Al Sharpton
criticized them for playing into racial stereotypes about African Americans. And in 2011, fears that someone could take legal action forced him to change the name.
In the end, the chicken shop became UFO. Did they change the logo into a spaceship with the tagline into something like "we’re out of this world?" No. Baolai kept the Obama logo. But the shop’s still called UFO. No one’s quite sure why he went with that. In 2022, many American brands pulled out of Russia. One fast food chain not lovin’ it is McDonalds, who closed down 850 restaurants in the country, leading national companies to fill in the burger void. They began trademark squatting, when companies register trademarks that mimic established ones, hoping to cash in on their reputation. Case in point: Russian businessman Alexander Govor, who bought McDonald’s Russian operations and rebranded the restaurants as "Tasty and That’s It." The menu remains largely the same as McDonalds, and most diners say the food is still just as good. An even more hilarious example of this kind of squatting comes from March of that year, when Uncle Vanya’s was trademarked. Their logo is just McDonald’s Golden Arches turned 90 degrees to the right. This change makes the McDonalds “M” a “B” in the Cyrillic alphabet, which represents the “V” in Vanya.
Russia isn’t the only country partial to a bit of fast food fakery. Iranian restaurateurs have been busy bootlegging too. Ever since the Iranian Revolution in the late '70s, no American food chain has an outlet in the country. But despite the government’s anti-American sentiments, the people have developed a taste for greasy, cheesy junk. By the 1990s, entrepreneurs became pluckier and began setting up fast food chain knock offs as replacements for the real deal. Got a hankering for some Italian baking? Try Pizza Hat!
Then there’s the remarkable Mash Donalds in Tehran. The owner, Hassan Padiav, admitted he originally wanted to call his restaurant McDonalds but feared the wrath of Iranian hardliners. So, he settled on Mash Donalds. Hassan’s opened his burger joints in Mashhad and other cities, dishing out not only burgers but also falafel sandwiches.
Let’s nip over to Dubai, where Adnan Yousef was sitting in a Starbucks with a few friends when they noticed something funny. The Arabic script used to write Starbucks almost spells Sattar Buksh in Urdu. As a joke, Yousef
created a Facebook page for a fictional Sattar Buksh Coffee Shop in July 2012 and, within a week, it had racked up over a thousand followers. This joke got Yousef and his friends thinking, what if they open up Sattar Buksh café for real? So, in 2013, they did, opening in Karachi, Pakistan. And they went for a mustachioed logo. Does anyone else see a slight resemblance? Starbucks definitely did, and, just weeks after opening, served the café a legal notice.Starbucks objected to two things: the name Sattar Buksh and that logo. But the café refused to give up. They argued that the name Sattar Buksh had been around for over 500 years, while Starbucks only came into existence in 1971, taking its own name from a Moby Dick character. As for that overly recognizable logo, the owners didn’t have much of a leg to stand on, and promptly changed it to this.
Sattar Buksh had their happy ending then? Well, the reviews have not been kind. In their now closed Islamabad branch, customers complained about the food, the drinks, the service, and the atmosphere. Apart from that it was great! In 2018, the Karachi café announced on Insta that they were taking a “short break” for renovations. At the time of writing this article, that “short break” is still ongoing with no sign of reopening. Seems like this knock off has been bumped off.If you were amazed at these funny rip-offs of well known brands, you might want to read about
Chinese knock offs that are way too obvious. Thanks for reading!
