The worst knock-off or pirated goods you've ever purchased

My Dad once bought a CRT television from a bloke in a pub. Looked alright in the boozer. For some reason upon getting it home it could only receive ITV1. Didn't make any sense. Remote didn't work, the buttons on the TV were useless, couldn't do anything with it apart from watch ITV. Turned out the TV was full of bricks. Shone a torch in the vents on the back before unscrewing it and there it was. The whole back of the set was weighed down with bricks.

So with that being said, what other gooseberry fool have people ended up purchasing from some dodgy geezer on a market stall.

I was honestly expecting the old, "for that price, we couldn't turn it down" punchline.

How did it even get ITV1 if it was full of bricks?

Lagamorph wrote:How did it even get ITV1 if it was full of bricks?

They thought it was stuck on the opening to coronation street

Lagamorph wrote:How did it even get ITV1 if it was full of bricks?

I have absolutely no idea. It was one of those old school sets with the wooden surround. They turned it on in the pub and obviously thinking it worked fine purchased it.

To be fair my Dad did knick a lot of things from pubs over the years, much of it I still have. Beer mats, branded glasses and coasters...

DVDs filmed from the back of a cinema as well. They were absolutely awful viewing.

FAKE EDIT: And a heavy duty ashtray. I still have that but I don't smoke.

I think all terrestrial TV channels are just as interesting as looking at a brick wall.

Lagamorph wrote:How did it even get ITV1 if it was full of bricks?

I think I’d prefer watching the bricks to watching ITV1.

I used to buy a lot of pirated audio cassettes from a local market when I was younger.

Other than buying DVDs that were crap quality cam versions of movies, I don’t think I’ve ever bought any knock-off or pirated goods. Once I worked out how to download movies, I never bothered with pub DVDs again.

Thought I'd dig out the ashtray:

So about 20 years later, may I apologise to whatever pub that one night found itself an ashtray short.

I've had a few dodgy DS games from ebay in the past. I've got a great copy of Professor Layton where someone had gone to the effort of making an instruction manual for it, by copying and pasting a poorly written review from gamefaqs or the like, added some black and white screenshots and printed it as a booklet.
Very thoughtful of them.

I wasn’t there but the best pub theft I ever heard about was when a friend of mine stole a bench. His brother wanted one for his garden and so my mate went out in the middle of the night and started dragging one out of the pub garden.

As he was doing it, a bloke shouted out at him. He figured he was busted, but the bloke asked what he was doing. “I’m helping my brother move house!” he blurted out. “Ok” said the bloke “do you want a hand”.

What sort of weirdo sees a stranger dragging a pub bench in the middle of the night and thinks “oh I’m sure it’s innocent, I’ll help him!”? :lol:

It’s not as good a story as when the same friend stole a goat though.

Some video games you buy from CEX feel like pirated software - the covers are print outs.

I got a pirate copy of Pokemon Yellow once, but that was from an official mail order retailer who sent me a pirate copy instead of a legit one.

Bought a box full of cheap knock off amiga games once, most either didn't work or were buggy as hell, though all was not lost as it did also include a perfect pirated copy of Rodland which turned out to be great fun.

Good luck trying to buy an authentic pokemon game boy cart on ebay, I gave up and got a flash cart guilt free.

I had a dozen or so pirated PS1 games but stopped buying them soon after having my own income.

I even bought legit copies of most of them later on anyway so I doubt I caused much financial damage to Sony.

My dad once brought back a bag of pirated VCDs (remember those?!) from Malaysia and one of them was a Vietnam film called Tigerland. The guys that did the front cover clearly didn't speak English and just grabbed whatever they could find online, as the blurb that they put on there was:

"A terrible, tired piece of filmmaking"

That was about 15 years ago and it still cracks me up.

Preezy wrote:My dad once brought back a bag of pirated VCDs (remember those?!) from Malaysia and one of them was a Vietnam film called Tigerland. The guys that did the front cover clearly didn't speak English and just grabbed whatever they could find online, as the blurb that they put on there was:

"A terrible, tired piece of filmmaking"

That was about 15 years ago and it still cracks me up.

I've seen knock of DVD's from China in the charity shop which have random english descriptions on the back of the case.

Just had a look on image search to see if i could find some similar examples, when i happened to stumble across this...

I recently bought a bootleg Dual Shock 3 from eBay. It's an incredibly good bootleg however, it looks the part and works perfectly. I only realised it was a fake after hooking it up to my laptop and seeing the software I use to connect the DS3 detecting it as a fake.

I should have known the price was too good to be true.

The worst knock-off or pirated goods you've ever purchased

Who is online

Affiliates