ORIGINAL: aussiesteve

That company had the "U-Can do" shamelessly on display at the Shanghai and Beijing expos last year (as well as a few other "very good replicas" - I mentioned to them that they should probably change the names (or put no name at all on them) if they wanted to sell them on the international market but they didn't seem to think it was a problem. - I wonder what will happen now.

Maybe they come from the same factory that makes certain other "Name branded" planes.

Very often the factories get commissioned to supply a certain number of planes by a client. The client then inspects the finished product and rejects ones that aren't up to scratch. Very often those rejects are seen on the likes of flea-bay as "bargains" which are snapped up by the unsuspecting public.

As an example, There is one very well established "Asian based" (but not from Mainland China) "manufacturer" that pays the manufacturer a 30% deposit for the planes (which is not enough to cover all the materials for the order). They then inspect the final product, reject whatever needs to be rejected and the money paid so far comes off the total for the accepted planes.

When you consider that many of the factories farm out the assembly to smaller places, then the total rejection rate from the original order quantity can be very high (the factories themself reject some before the original client gets to inspect them). Just keep that in mind when you see a "look alike - bargain" for sale in a non branded box.