Fighter Gliders - Introduction

"Fighter Glider" is a search that I routinely do on E-bay to find gliders that I have not seen before.  Quite a while back I did a search and found a lot of 10 "Fighter Gliders" for something like $7.00 which were labeled as being made in China.  Most of the gliders I have that have come from China have been gigantic pieces of garbage, but for whatever reason I decided to buy these.  All of the packages look the same so there is no need for a group shot.

Fighter Gliders - front side of package

Fighter Gliders - reverse side of package

I automatically assumed that these were counterfeits.  When I looked through saved images of gliders that I have, I found the following pictures that confirmed my suspicions that these are counterfeits.

First I found this picture which I had saved long ago.  It looks like it is an authentic glider to me.  One of the lot of 10 Fighter Gliders looks almost exactly like this one, but this one is more detailed and has the looks of an authentic glider.

Then I found this picture, which I had also saved long ago.

The glider in this picture looks a lot like one of the gliders in the set of 10 I bought.  The quality of the picture is poor so I couldn't zoom in on the package detail any closer.

And then I found this picture on E-bay being sold by the guy whom Eric & I each bought a box of Tsubame glider from.  His description says "World Acrobat Team Airplane" which is familiar as I believe I have seen similar gliders for sale on E-bay in the past.  The Fighter Gliders that I bought were definitely counterfeited off of the gliders shown below which appear to be the real deal.

I was able to zoom in close on this picture and read the detail on the packages.  Looking at the packages pictured above from top to bottom, the packages say

"Snow Birds"

"Blue Angels"

"Thunder Birds"

"Red Arrows"

"New Blue Angels"