I have quite a few bootleg and custom minifigures, and the quality varies. You have to do your homework first. The difference between the two is that bootleg are made start-to-finish by a non-TLG company, whereas customs are official, blank minifigures, printed by a seconary seller.

There are quite a lot of bootleg minifigure producers that operate out of China, most notably Shen Yuan (I think that's what they're called) and Decool (who are dodgy). I have a few of the former - Galactus, Odin, the Thing - but I tend to steer away from characters that TLG actually produces (with my only exception being the Vision). The plastic is noticably different on, say, Galactus, but it isn't by any means bad; if anything, it feels on-par with Mega Bloks. Still not LEGO standard, but not bad either. It's also nice that there is a way to get some characters that TLG hasn't produced yet. I'm planning on getting a few more soon, including a bootleg version of the SDCC Sam Wilson Captain America. If you do your homework, you can normally see whether they're any good or not. My bootleg Spider-Man 2099 looks just as good on camera as a regular TLG minifigure. This thread on Eurobricks is probably a good place to find out more or to get second opinions before buying; a lot of these guys are seriously into it, and have amassed vast collections.

Many, however, are atrocious, so be careful when buying that you don't end up with monstrosities like these.

As for customs, there's a lot of great stuff out there. I'm probably not the best person to ask, since I don't buy many (they're normally upwards of £20) though I did indulge in a Daredevil custom minifigure by poppunkmunky. It's pad printed, the design is exactly as it is in the LEGO Marvel videogame...ye gods, it's glorious. Poppunkmunky also has a Kamala Khan Ms Marvel and a Moon Knight that I want, but again, the pricetag. I only got Daredevil through careful ebay bidding. However, if you have the money to spend, I'd definitely recommend customs. Pheonix Customs (or something of that ilk, I can't remember the name) is also amazing, and dare I say it Solid Brix Studios also produces great work. Brick Ultra's customs are pretty good too, especially the Ultron minifigure.

"Nothing goes down 'less I'm involved. No nuggets. No onion rings. No nothin'. A cheeseburger gets sold in the park, I want in! You got fat while we starved on the streets...now it's my turn!" -Harley Morenstein

Thanks guys for the info.  Jampot, that is a lot of good advice for buyers of mock-up minifigures.  That image of "monstrosities" was a great laugh, but sad if people bought them.

The particular figures I purchased were in person with the dealer, who was in Atlantic City for the weekend, so I was able to touch and move them and feel how solid they were before buying.  Except for Falcon's legs assembly, which was loose, a bit light, and used prongs in place of studs (you can see the piece by itself on my tumblr page), they all were very high quality, near Lego, with some minor differences only an astute person would notice.

By the way, they call themselves THE BRICK SQUAD. (http://thebricksquad.tictail.com).  I don't intend to use any of these figures in brickfilms; I just thought they were really cool and at a great price.  The lot of 9 figures averaged 45 cents per figure above the cost of a collectible mystery minifigure.

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Here are a few more that I bought the other day, the baddies:

Red Skull (I added the Cosmic Cube from my collection):

Nazi Officer

SS Soldiers

Aditional pics of the baddies also on my tumblr page.

Last edited by HoldingOurOwn (November 22, 2015 (11:22am))

Very interesting.  What do you think of these particular Captain America figures?

Question Kieren; when talking about official MCU minifigs are you talking about the whole Lego Marvel line on a whole or just the minifigs from sets based on the films (eg: Iron Man 3, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc...)? I ask because I feel the same way towards the more comic-based figs but find that the more movie accurate ones are fairly good representation of the characters.

I would like to see Cloak and Dagger as customs.  I even have a script ready and want to write a second one, all mbased on the Marvel comic.

The script is on this thread:
http://www.bricksinmotion.com/forums/to … ak-dagger/

Here is how they look in comic form:

Maybe if you make a Cloak & Dagger custom, you can sell one to me?  I would like Dagger's navel to show, though.  The costume does have a dagger in the negative space.