>>6614474What
>>6614497 said is a big part of it, but one thing you need to remember is that in the early days of bootlego. Bootleg products were primarily marketed to families who couldn't afford the real thing. Companies either just straight up copied official sets, or released weird poorly designed stuff like pic related, but then companies like SY and Decool came along, and started copying minifigs done by customisers. This of course sparked the interests of people outside of China, and eventually companies started doing more stuff that would be of interest to people here in the west.
