Yoshi and Tsuki: Shiba Inu (二 かわいい 柴犬)

Yoshi: Big in Kyrgyzstan?

A couple of weeks ago, I discovered the absolute weirdest thing. I was searching around on eBay, and found that Yoshi is pictured on a set of (likely fake) postage stamps that were supposedly issued in Kyrgyzstan in 2004.

The reasons I think they are probably fake are:
A.) They don't appear in the list of officially-issued stamps on Kyrgyzstan's postal service web site.
B.) The style of the stamps is completely different than any of the official stamps shown on the web site.
C.) Apparently, fake stamps are a problem there.

Here are the stamps:

And here is the original picture:

Of all the pictures we have of Yoshi, I have no idea why they'd choose that one! It's certainly not one of his most noble moments. I mean, it's a funny picture, but it isn't the type of thing that usually gets printed on a stamp. If you're going to make a fake stamp, why make it so obvious?

I wonder who else's dogs are pictured on these stamps. Anyone? Anyone? If you see yours pictured, you can still buy three sets of these stamps on eBay (just do a search for "Japanese dog stamp").

In case you're wondering, I'm not upset, I mostly just think it's really strange and funny. If I thought they were officially-issued, I might be kind of annoyed, but since I'm pretty sure they're fake, I just think it's really weird.