Daiwa Popper Ripoff?

[amatis]

About 6-8months ago i bought some noname poppers off e-bay for about $1.50 per lure. They are of awesome quality and absolutely slay the bass on the brissy river kayak trail- but now in the latest daiwa lures magazine i see the same lure with the daiwa name on it. Its a TD Mouthwasher but i've also seen it flogged as something 'bass'. I'd be very interested to see how much price difference the 'brand' actually makes.

[Smiderman]

Geez thats a turn up for the books its generally the other way about where the reputed manufacturer research & developmnt is ripped off by cheap clones.

[planetfonz]

well if its anything like the sx40's vs kokoda sprogs then it can only be a good thing.. coz barr the hooks, the sprogs are identical and a third of the price

[Brian D]

Am I allowed to disagree without pizzing the world off? Sx 40's out fish sprogs by the floation / suspending ability. In a straight line, very little difference but using the twitch & pause motion sx40 wins.

I haven't seen the poppers yet so can't comment except to say when I employed a R&D team to design stuff, China was ripping it off as quick as we could create it. Rapala are not in the business of coping but actually employ pros to develope lures.

[Smiderman]

If nothing else the competitive forces of supply & demand will see the price favour the purchasor.:woohoo: :woohoo:

[shortie]

Brian D wrote:

Am I allowed to disagree without pizzing the world off? Sx 40's out fish sprogs by the floation / suspending ability. In a straight line, very little difference but using the twitch & pause motion sx40 wins.

I haven't seen the poppers yet so can't comment except to say when I employed a R&D team to design stuff, China was ripping it off as quick as we could create it. Rapala are not in the business of coping but actually employ pros to develope lures.

completely agree. might look the same but the weights and tehcnology uses are different.

Ya get what you pay for

[planetfonz]

haha hell yes u can disagree! good points those too.. i got myself a few sprogs of recent and will be giving them a hiding over the next month in the whitsundays and over summer..

[flatty_catcher]

maybe the nonames ones where Diawa on ebay, just not labeled and sold out the back door of a factory in Singapore and ended up here?

Dan

[Nitris]

Yeh the sprogs will be great for what we wil be using them in the whitsundays for..

when we were up there last time trolling in the tender with sx40s over shallow reef we were getting hit all over the shop and every second or third fish would reef u.. so we decided to go the sprog for this task as im not so dirty when i reef a cheep lure.. and recently at bcf there were 2 for $10..

we were catching everything on them even queen fish and dart behing the breaking waves of beaches...

but yes the twiching action is not as good.. but for the price and when u know ur probably going to loose it..

I have also found that in fresh water the floating sx40's dont float.. guess as its not saltwater..

[Mack_attack]

"I have also found that in fresh water the floating sx40's dont float.. guess as its not saltwater.."

The sx40 was designed especially for the Australian bream as a suspending lure/slow floating lure to be used in saltwater.

Not that it can't be successfully used in fresh water or on other species other than bream it's just that it was built to target bream in saltwater

[flatty_catcher]

I think the sx40s are overpriced...

I had one once and never caught a thing on it till I snagged it and lost it...peice of crap

I bought a viking crank minow for half the price and caught a flattie on the 3rd cast

Dan

[Terry H]

dunno about a piece of crap

I've caught a 96cm flatty, and 42.5cm bream on sx40s, along with a host of other fish

Things hvae more bouyancy in salt water, which is why some things sink in freshwater environments

[flatty_catcher]

TerryH wrote:

dunno about a piece of crap

I've caught a 96cm flatty, and 42.5cm bream on sx40s, along with a host of other fish

Things hvae more bouyancy in salt water, which is why some things sink in freshwater environments

yeah but the price?

I think I paid well over 20 dollars for mine and 14 dollars for the crank minow.

bit over the top.

what do they go for? i forget but i bought mine less than 3 months ago, but it was far from reasonable.

Dan

[Cowfish13]

Depends where you get them from. Jerryl can sell them for as low as $10 at times, Motackle has them for $15 and BCF is about $18 or so. I think it's worth it, so I buy them. If you don't, you don't have to

I have caught crap loads of good fish on them:)

EDIT: If you look to your right, you will see my dp is a 46cm GT caught on an SX40:)

[Terry H]

if you paid over $20 you got bent over at the cash register.

about $15-18 is a reasonable price for SX40s from retail stores. I think they're a great lure, and not that expensive. So I'm happy to use them.

[flatty_catcher]

hey I got an opinion and im sticking to it no matter how hard you try make it out its wrong .ok

nuff said

Dan

[pinkey]

I enjoy forking out $24 a lure for zipbaits and other high quality lures, the casting distance is highly notacible and the quaility of the action and detail and hardware are worth every cent IMO. But if i want cheap good lures i just got to big w and get scorpions for $6.

[Cowfish13]

flatty_catcher wrote:

hey I got an opinion and im sticking to it no matter how hard you try and font **** me.ok

nuff said

Dan

We know, and we were just stating ours:)

Sorry if you took it the wrong way

[fishyman]

pinkey wrote:

I enjoy forking out $24 a lure for zipbaits and other high quality lures, the casting distance is highly notacible and the quaility of the action and detail and hardware are worth every cent IMO. But if i want cheap good lures i just got to big w and get scorpions for $6.

thats true

once you go megabass youll never go back haha

and zipbaits

the main benefit for me being

you can tie a uni straight to the split ring with 80lb mono or fluro and oversize the trebles to 6X and 2 sizes bigger and the swimming action is still as strong as ever

[Schmuck]

I guess another example would be with Jackalls and their imitators, but I reckon at the end of the day it comes down to personal experience and confidence in your lure choice. If you think the cheapies are better, then it's going to be tied to your line more often and fished with more patience and confidence.

[Cowfish13]

Anyway getting back to the original question. As in everything, brand name will make a difference, no question there. But usually, the brand name ones are of alot better quality than the noname ones. If you compare the Ecogear SX40 to the Kokoda Sprog, there is a big differnce in hooks, eyelets, finnish, bouyancy and action. Another one to compare is the Jackall TN60 to the Kokoda G-vibe. Again a big difference.

I've got nothing against using the cheaper brands tho:) I've got like 6 G-vibes to 1 TN60 (which I found anyway:woohoo:)

I find it extremely unlikely that the noname lures off eBay that you got are exactly the same as the Daiwa ones, but I hav't seen them so I can't say for sure and eBay does have some incredible deals so it is possible.

[amatis]

In my opinion the poppers are EXACTLY the same. The last page of daiwa's lure mag shows how the lures sit on the surface and i can't pic the difference. I subscribe to the theory that they came out the back door of the same factory. I must say i found the comparisons of other lures very interesting though.

[kriso]

i like the r2s baby cranks, there very similar to a chubby and cost 10 bucks, i also prefer the strike pro pygmies to the sprogs as they swimm a little better and still only 10 bucks. i have had jackall chubbies and a couple sx40s and they where tops but the amount of fish i get on HB's (still need training with these things) i buy the cheaper ones till i have a better technique and dont lose as many.

[Nitris]

If ur looking for something cheaper then the sx40 but better then the kokada sprog the strike pro pigmy 2 is not a bad one to get ur hands on.. just it is not at many shops..

[HookedOnTackle]

For cheaper high quality lures, don't forget the Stiffy range. Now with the devil vibes, top dog, fat one, minnow and popper, all with super sticky owner hooks and rings (anyone who has drawn blood from those owner's knows what i mean).

Brand names always hit up the price, with advertising, sponsorship etc.

The poppers in question may have been testers for pro teams, dealers or even seconds that were given to staff. I am jealous!

[kiara_poltegerist]

looks like it's difficult to make any statement or have any useful discussion on this thread so i'll only say one thing - all lures can catch fish when fish are in a biting mood. it's when conditions are difficult or when fish are finicky that the better made lures out-produce others.

why do some lures cost soo much? you have to take into consideration, japanese lures go through a minimum of two years of R&D, testing and tuning before any ABS plastic moulds are cast. the R&D involves not only involves fishing knowledge, but also engineering and hydro-dynamics, and in the later stages, feedback and further tuning by field testers. all that costs time and money, which is a sunk cost for the company involved. obviously they would have to recoup the costs involved before working on a profit margin right? when you're talking about high end lures, you're talking about precision engineered products, not cheap china copies mass produced from a cheap mould.

And please dont go touting the advantages of the cheap copies. especially Rver2S lures. Their head designer had his ass kicked by my ex-boss badly before he was fired from Duel-YoZuri. He was known as a copy-artist who copied shamelessly from other designers in the company, and touted his improvisations as his own designs. Many, if not most of the current Rver2S lures are direct copies of lures from most other companies.

similar lures may look the same to the untrained eye, but there're lots of other slight differences that make a world of a difference. do you think a imitation lure manufacturer can afford to copy a AUD25 lure and sell it with the exact same components at a much lesser price with the exact same quality? Obviously not. They will cut corners using cheaper materials and will only be able to provide a crude copy.

[Feral]

kiara_poltegerist wrote:

do you think a imitation lure manufacturer can afford to copy a AUD25 lure and sell it with the exact same components at a much lesser price with the exact same quality? Obviously not. They will cut corners using cheaper materials and will only be able to provide a crude copy.

Isn't that a contradiction of all you said Kiara?

If it cost so much to cover the R&D and field testing, surely someone who copied it using the same technology and quality of equipment would not have all those "on costs" and could sell the same quality of product for considerably less?

A Good example of what is wrong with big brand lures is the bloke who sells / distributes Jackalls in Australia - he is ferocious in stopping others from importing and selling them here for considerably less than what he flogs them for, just to protect his market, it has nothing to do with the costs of the lures ex Japan. - Remembering it is perfectly legal for that to occur in Australia.

[jeff f]

i'm with you there feral

rip off middle men are the reason the prices are so high otherwise they would be expensive overseas but they are not

[kiara_poltegerist]

Feral wrote:

kiara_poltegerist wrote:

do you think a imitation lure manufacturer can afford to copy a AUD25 lure and sell it with the exact same components at a much lesser price with the exact same quality? Obviously not. They will cut corners using cheaper materials and will only be able to provide a crude copy.

Isn't that a contradiction of all you said Kiara?

If it cost so much to cover the R&D and field testing, surely someone who copied it using the same technology and quality of equipment would not have all those "on costs" and could sell the same quality of product for considerably less?

A Good example of what is wrong with big brand lures is the bloke who sells / distributes Jackalls in Australia - he is ferocious in stopping others from importing and selling them here for considerably less than what he flogs them for, just to protect his market, it has nothing to do with the costs of the lures ex Japan. - Remembering it is perfectly legal for that to occur in Australia.

no feral, i didnt contradict myself. ok. lets re-examine my statements. i think it's better if i split them into 2 parts:

1) do you think a imitation lure manufacturer can afford to copy a AUD25 lure and sell it with the exact same components at a much lesser price with the exact same quality? Obviously not.

2)They will cut corners using cheaper materials and will only be able to provide a crude copy

the part of your statement which i highlighted in purple is incorrect. the imitators are obviously not using the same technology, materials or equipment at all. what they are mass producing is basically spin offs of the real thing produced at sub standard quality with no regard to the function or purpose of the original design. the moulds that they use are not precision designed either. they're just basic moulds made from imprints of the product to be copied.

a very good example is the Rver2S Humbug. It was a direct copy of the 2nd generation Yo-Zuri L-Minnow. But if you examine it closely, you will notice that that there is a single knocker bearing inside the original, while there is none in the copy. Furthermore, the finishing on the copy is matte, and wears considerably easier compared to the original which offers metallic finishing. Worst of all - the worst flaw in the copy: the 2nd generation L Minnow was designed to provide a constant wobble and allow for very erratic twitching. This was done through the specific bib design. The copy had a crude copy of it that allowed for no specific function except to move the lure forwards, and due to it being too thick, actually impeded the action of the lure, and thus also provided a very lousy swimming action. i could go on an give other examples if you want.

regarding the part in blue. if it's perfectly legal, then why is it wrong?

i hope i havent offended you in any way by what i've said. if i've said something wrong, do let me know and correct me. it's good to have a productive discussion. thanks alot for that. have a good weekend.

[jeff f]

kiara_poltegerist wrote:

Feral wrote:

kiara_poltegerist wrote:

regarding the part in blue. if it's perfectly legal, then why is it wrong?

putting an excessively large profit margin on anything

is not leagly wrong just morally oblectionable

but there are legalitys involved in monopolising a market

[Feral]

I dont see the contradicition at all, I still say they could easily manufacture to the same quality for much less price, as they are not having to pay for the research and marketing and trialing you claim is so expensive.

[Mack_attack]

I'm with kiara on this one, Anyone who can't see that kokoda has obviously copied jackall and ecogear is kidding themselves.

On finer inspection there are always major differences in design as a result of much testing and refinement which i feel justify the prices that they charge.

For the price gvibes are good value but i wouldn't by a sprog :X

[Feral]

Thats not we are talking about, we are talking about wether or not someone who wished to make an equivilant or better copy could be able to for less money, I say yes, he says no. We are not talking about if someone is actually doing it.

[kriso]

im with feral here, to come to a price for the item, they would look at cost of materials per item including a waste percentage, labour time for making the lure,and then you would think a percentage of R&D per unit on there as well.

Where if you copied the lure even using the same materials (which they dont but this is just for discussion sake) his cost would be less then per unit as he hasnt any R&D commited costs to the product. im not saying it would swimm as well as the original as the money would not have been spent in making a exact replica mould they would be as kiara said a press mould or soemthing similar. i think i have sorta explained how i see it.

[kiara_poltegerist]

jeff f wrote:

kiara_poltegerist wrote:

Feral wrote:

kiara_poltegerist wrote:

regarding the part in blue. if it's perfectly legal, then why is it wrong?

putting an excessively large profit margin on anything

is not leagly wrong just morally oblectionable

but there are legalitys involved in monopolising a market

it may be morally objectionable, but if you had a chance to have a piece of that cake, dont tell me you'd turn those big bucks down? seriously? it is legal, so why not. if you dont want to do it, heaps of people will be lining up for a chance.

The monopolies were not created by the authorised distributors, those relevant laws were put in place by the powers that be, and they favor the authorised distributors, so i guess we cant change anything there.

research i've done shows that australia has very limiting and restrictive laws regarding parallel imports, and i believe those were put in place to prevent price dumping and formulate a effective marketplace. that's in fact a blessing for the market in australia mate. in many other countries where trade regulations are pretty sketchy or are not enforced, people with agendas ruin the market and put others out of business by doing parallel imports and price dumping. a very good example is malaysia, where certain organizations carry out parallel imports followed by price dumping to launder money.

dont you think that having one licensed distributor who can be regulated and worked with more efficently is better than allowing anyone and everyone to just do as they like, ruining the market through price competitions where noone wins in the end?

[kiara_poltegerist]

Feral wrote:

I dont see the contradicition at all, I still say they could easily manufacture to the same quality for much less price, as they are not having to pay for the research and marketing and trialing you claim is so expensive.

why the implied accusation? ....

or as the Joker said in Batman - "why so serioussss???"

[flatty_catcher]

kiara_poltegerist wrote:

jeff f wrote:

kiara_poltegerist wrote:

Feral wrote:

kiara_poltegerist wrote:

regarding the part in blue. if it's perfectly legal, then why is it wrong?

putting an excessively large profit margin on anything

is not leagly wrong just morally oblectionable

but there are legalitys involved in monopolising a market

it may be morally objectionable, but if you had a chance to have a piece of that cake, dont tell me you'd turn those big bucks down? seriously? it is legal, so why not. if you dont want to do it, heaps of people will be lining up for a chance.

The monopolies were not created by the authorised distributors, those relevant laws were put in place by the powers that be, and they favor the authorised distributors, so i guess we cant change anything there.

research i've done shows that australia has very limiting and restrictive laws regarding parallel imports, and i believe those were put in place to prevent price dumping and formulate a effective marketplace. that's in fact a blessing for the market in australia mate. in many other countries where trade regulations are pretty sketchy or are not enforced, people with agendas ruin the market and put others out of business by doing parallel imports and price dumping. a very good example is malaysia, where certain organizations carry out parallel imports followed by price dumping to launder money.

dont you think that having one licensed distributor who can be regulated and worked with more efficently is better than allowing anyone and everyone to just do as they like, ruining the market through price competitions where noone wins in the end?

Bloke you obviously have a financial interest in this,the one problem with lisenced distributers is

they own the market and can and will charge you a lot more because of this.

one evens up the other, if a sole distributer had reasonable prices then your yarn would ring true but it doesn't.

in the end its still up to you what lure you buy.

cheers

[kiara_poltegerist]

Feral wrote:

I dont see the contradicition at all, I still say they could easily manufacture to the same quality for much less price, as they are not having to pay for the research and marketing and trialing you claim is so expensive.

as you said, "they could". but if they can, it remains to be seen.

actually, i'm starting to wonder what we're arguing about here. none of us benefits from being ultimately correct, and even if we are correct in whatever we're trying to say, it wont change the way things are in the market today.

[Feral]

Kiara, didn't mean it as an accusation mate! I like a robust discussion but dont get personal or hurtful (or try not to!) sorry if I came across that way!

I was just trying to say if someone wanted to do a good job of it, they probably could for less money (than what we pay in the shop, as mentioned there is a very healthy middle man market in imported lures).