By 2002 a Lego American Hero became A Real American Lego and later that year a new layout was planned with some new additions and content. The previous site had issues with web browsers other that IE. The new website was designed to be more compatable with these other web browsers. Time became an issue and I never got around to finishing the site the way I intended. In my absence several disturbing events occured that I was given a heads up on and made me re-think ever updating this site.

Since the start of this online project, despite establishing my work online over the years, the posters on message boards who remembered my early debutes, news coverage from several noted websites, archived articles, my guestbook entries dating back several years, simple google searches, a trip on the Internet Archive wayback machine, ect... several imitators poped up some claiming to never seeing my site even though many elements and techniques of these customs and website designs blatantly mirrored my own and interestingly enough all came out after 2003-on. From borrowing a theme with the twist on the "A Real American Hero" subtitle I used since day one, to straight up copying the "Real American Lego" title for their own pages. Even simple elements were copied like how I created a green background for GI Joe pages and blue for Cobra pages. But I can say at least those individuals used their own work. Two other individuals (that I know of) stole my own pictures and posted them on other sites, going to lengths to remove my water marks and croping them to new sizes. And there were posters on message boards who took advantage of my absence and created their own customs specifically mini figures that looked so similar to mine and shown them to a newer audience without mention of my own. One person in particular posted several lego customs as well as minimates with similar designs in early 2005 and everyone was crediting and praising his "talent" and he then spoke of selling the work. It wasnt untill someone else had to twist their arm and post a link to my website that the "oh yeah my inspiration was from there" finally came out and the custom posts stopped abruptly shortly after. I just shook my head. Thats the way the community of collectors and customizers behave? Sufice it to say, there were people that had the "hey I can do that too!" mentality with the added amnesia and neglect to mention or at least admit to where the inspiration came from. I found it hard to believe anyone so interested in Lego and GI Joe could miss this site when half my traffic is generated through google image searches or believe anyone is so new to the internet to miss this site yet able to build their own websites.

Stealing credit was not the only issue floating around. What I created to show the world soon became a money maker to oportunists. Soon after the "custom GI Joe lego" auctions poped up on ebay. An online storefront opened that was selling custom Lego mini figures at inflated prices and suddenly had a GI Joe section with the designs I used and parts currently available, this site was later shut down for multiple copyright infringement from a variety of property owners. And another individual studied and traced over my pictures to make his own printable mini figure labels and then went on to sell them.