Having just become the proud owner of a pair of black Oakley SI Assault gloves which, incidentally, emptied me piggy bank for the month - I was a bit gutted when I read AirsoftNews.EU this week...

Land Army have just released a copy (good one apparently) of the Oakley's - right down to the 'O' logo (naughty, naughty)...Of course at 29 Euros the LA gloves (see below) are about £15 cheaper than the real thing...

Photo credit: Airsoftnews.eu
 
There are a couple of issues though...

First of all, I'm a wee bit uneasy that LA have chosen to rip off the Oakley logo - although I am sure that this is actually one of it's big selling points!

Next I am starting to get little alarm bells going off in my head about cheapsoft as a whole. Chinese rip-off products are cheap for a reason - lax (ie non-existent) labour laws and un-environmental production techniques mean that this is where you - the consumer - saves money...

There is also the issues of underage and conscripted prison labour and non-safe production materials (as we have recently seen in the news with Mattel toys).

It's because China can cut corners on all these aspects that 'we' can enjoy 'cheapsoft'.

At the end of the day I am still very pleased with my real Oakleys (review to follow) - they are superb quality, and I get the added perk of being able at act all smug and ethically superior when I put them on as I can moralize about Cinese exploitationa and environmental issues!

(Confession time - I have a pre-order in for a CYMA AK74SU - so perhaps I shouldn't be moralizing about 'cheapsoft'.)