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Friday, June 29, 2012

C-121 Gurafi and C-122 Noizu KO Comparison Guide

Ever since Knock-Offs (KO's) of the Dinocassettes came out a little while back collectors have been having a difficult time telling the real thing from the fakes. I don't want to get into a debate about real vs. KO, I only want people to know what they are buying. You can already find a guide on C-123 Diaru and C-124 Zauru on but there is no guide for these two figures yet. Since a friend of mine acquired these two last weekend at Savcon (fortunately he already knew they were KO's) I thought it would be a good opportunity to get some comparison pictures so anyone who was interested in trying to tell the difference wouldn't get swindled. Once you get the two versions side by side, all of a sudden the differences become very obvious.

Noizu C-122

I wanted to cover Noizu first because his differences aren't as obvious as Gurafi. Check out the picture below to get an overview of the differences.

1. The Japanese writing on the KO is less bold, and the small characters above the Kanji are much clearer.
2. The alignment on this yellow box is off. See how there is no height difference on the original.
3. The exclamation points are different and further apart.
4. Noizu's artwork is larger and further away from the right side of the box.
5. Noizu's tail doesn't really match and is much lower than it should be. The yellow box obscures most of it.

There are a ton of other differences on the front, but these are what I thought were the most obvious.

On the back the character art for both Noizu and Decibel are larger and extend beyond the black borders. These are the easiest telltale signs.

On the sides the pictures of the figures and tapes are smaller than they should be and oriented in the wrong direction.

 Once you look at the figures up close the differences really stand out. The KO Noizu is missing all the head details of the original as a result of the re-casting process. His back hump is also more squared off than the rounded original. Finally some of the lower leg details didn't make it into the KO.

Gurafi C-121

Gurafi has many of the exact same issues on the front, sides and back, so I'll only cover the differences that aren't on Noizu's box.

1. The Transformers logo and text are completely different on the original. The KO version is also slightly pixellated.
2. Part of Decibel's arm shows on the front of the KO whereas it is no where to be seen on the original.
3. This is the big one. Gurafi's KO artwork is cut off and doesn't make it all the way to the corner of the box.
4. This small white writing on the bottom is too close to the center on the KO.

The sides and back of the box suffer from the exact same problems as Noizu, so no need to rehash that here.

The big tell on the figures themselves is the rivets are completely different. Other than that there aren't too many differences that the KO makers missed. When in doubt, always check the rivets.

So there you go, hopefully this helps anyone who is looking to purchase these two figures in the future. Knowing is half the battle, right?

See also:

Japanese Exclusive Dinocassettes Part 1
Japanese Exclusive Dinocassettes Part 2


  1. Great article man!

    Are there any differences in the weapons? People might used the KO weapons to "complete" otherwise incomplete vintage pieces and sell as complete, is one of my worries....

    1. Yes, great point that I missed. Upon inspection the weapons are virtually identical. The only difference I can see is that the original weapons were molded in the color of the figure before they were chromed; that is you can see some red underneath the chrome on Gurafi's weapons and some blue under Noizu's. The KO weapons were molded with black plastic before they were chromed, but you almost have to have them in-hand to be able to tell. I checked Dairu and Zauru as well and this is the same case for them, so I imagine any weapon molded in black and then chromed is a KO.

    2. It looks like there are some tells on the weapons, too. In general, it seems to be that the KOS have more rounding to their edges - the truncated cones on Gurafi;s weapons, for example - the errace edges are round, instead of being clean, hard edges. All the edges on Noizu's weapons seem to be similar, for instance the little rings around the barrels, about halfway down, look to be round, as if it was a tubular piece wrapped around it, instead of the hard, square edge of those on the original. Same for the little grooves in the bottom back, the edges look to be much softer.

  2. i'm sorry takara loses this time,this chinese company have done a good job to reissue these rare and expensive models

    1. Perhaps you have different versions than I have received, but all the ones I have handled are very loose and feel cheap in-hand. Also as you can see a lot of the molding detail was lost when the molds were copied. I would feel much better if Takara officially re-released these rather than having the KO's define the standard by which most people judge them.

  3. Thanks for the article! i'm in -process of getting a pair of these and this article certainly helps!