By Marigold K.
Welcome once again to Sonic Fridays! The series where (in honor of Sonic the Hedgehog's 25th anniversary this year) I take any and all excuses to talk about Sonic the Hedgehog the character, plus the franchise itself and its characters, on a biweekly basis.
In today's article, we're covering... toys! Yes, merchandise, plushies, action figures, physical representations of the things we love. Tomy the Toy company--not an actual character in the Sonic canon, in fact--released a new catalog for 2016, featuring some of their new Sonic Boom (I promise, we'll get to that) merchandise, plus a look at how Tomy plans to celebrate Sonic's 25th anniversary! This all excited me very much, because A.) I'm a huge Sonic fan, literally, you have no idea, and B.) I love toys and plushies and stuff and I wanna hug all of these things so gosh darn much, so since Sega's set on making us wait until what looks to be late March before they show us anything substantial for their big 25th anniversary game for Sonic (no, Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice doesn't count), I figured it'd be fun to take a look at the little huggables, so, without further ado, let's check out some toys! Woo!
So first off (skipping ahead of the ad for the TV Show) we get a look at the action figures, some old, some new. This includes the already-released Dr. Eggman and Sonic figures, and (from what I understand) the new figures for Shadow the Hedgehog, Metal Sonic, and a variant figure of Sonic with sunglasses that I can't say look too unlike the sunglasses Sonic donned in the Sonic Riders spin-off series... that probably doesn't mean anything like, oh, I dunno, a return-to-form non-motion-controlled new Sonic Riders sequel set in the Sonic Boom universe. It's more than likely just a hint at what we'll see in the oncoming second season of the show, which I bet isn't that big of a deal anyway since it was apparently so little of a spoiler that they let them reveal it in the merchandise just like that. In any case, it is nice to see the Boom-universe's Shadow and Metal Sonic... which are, interestingly, relatively unchanged from their original states. Given how Sonic Boom treated Shadow's appearance in-universe, I think it's safe to say we know why they chose to stick to how they were. Smart move.
Next page we have a display of the new two-packs for the small figures, which... honestly? I really don't get. Now, I think it's safe to say that anyone could take a cursory look at the pairings up for sale here and notice the huge emphasis on Sonic. What this means is, if you're to get your figures this way (which... I can only assume is the reason these packs exist in the first place?), you're gonna have a lot of extra Sonics lying around the house snarking their mean mouths off with their bloated egos except for when Tails is around and they're standing up for him and basically it's just gonna be a huge mess and I wish Sega or Tomy had foreseen this before this happened so we could've avoided this happening. Even with that aside it's also confusing, what with the variants of the figures and... and I don't know if Beebot is available in any way outside of his bundle with Knuckles? I could go on, it's just so confusing for me, I'm not a very big fan of it, and I wish they'd gone a different route with it.
|
On the next page is a much-needed palette cleanser after the confusing mess that was the 2-packs. Accessories! I love accessories that go along with the regular action figures, and these seem very awesome just from looking at them! I would have preferred they at least have them be sold seperately as an option for those who already own the figures, 'cause... well, again, duplicates are no fun. Seriously, how many Sonics is the average family gonna have around? How many Sonics??? Eh, in any case, the accessories look very cool, so, if you mean to get these characters, I recommend trying to get them this way so you get the cool accessory thing for them as well. There's also vinyl figures! Neat! That Sonic comes with his hoverboard, and Knuckles has some... some uh... some of those. And here we have Metal Sonic, or, rather, Vinyl Sonic! They all look very good and, even if you're not too into Sonic Boom, I'd recommend picking up the Metal Sonic vinyl figure, since it looks identical to its regular Sonic universe 'counterpart.'
|
Next up is... okay, Tomy, how exactly do you want people to get your figures? I'm a little confused right now, and my confusion is nothing compared to the confusion that will no doubt be felt by parents of Sonic fans on their birthdays and Christmastime. And what's this about Amy, Sticks, and Tails being Sonic's favorite cast of friends? What about Knuckles? Isn't he one of Sonic's friends? He's one of the main protagonists, right? Ah well. Below are some playsets, Sonic Versus Burnbot and... oh my gosh, he has the sunglasses on and he's riding the hoverboard, this is so Sonic Riders! Like, wow, was this on purpose? Is Sega purposefully teasing Sonic Riders fans? Wait, hold on a moment, Sonic Riders was released for Sonic's fifteenth anniversary, making this year its tenth anniversary! I was just being silly before but could it be possible that we'll see a new Sonic Riders entry this year? I dunno, we'll see, maybe I'm just desperate.
|
This page has to be at least tied for best of the Sonic Boom-themed pages. Here we have this super awesome toy of the Tornado--I mean... "Tails' Plane" with Tails--that's got LED lights, engine sounds, a rotating propeller, and a spring-loaded rear seat, plus a fully-articulated Tails figure inside! And then down below we have new Sonic plushies, with Shadow, Metal Sonic (both you can pick up without even liking Sonic Boom, since, again, they're identical to their original forms), and Sticks! And with Sticks in plushy form you can finally have the entire main cast of heroes together and hug them all together 'cause they're plushies and stuff! Awesome! Also, what's up with Shadow's left ear? Did the Sonic plushy reach over and do that to his ear? Is that why Shadow looks so upset? Well, I guess he always looks upset anyway. Not like Metal Sonic. Metal Sonic's all like "I feel good" and Shadow's like "who asked you??? I'm going to my room to listen to more Crush 40" and it's like Shadow, chill out.
|
And now we have these... big-headed plushies?... I honestly didn't know what to make of these, really, but then I saw that there were ones for Orbot and Cubot and now I want them. The catalog's description of them does say to "collect them all" (making this the first of any of the items presented in this catalog to be advertised as something to get every single one of), and... gosh, it is so tempting to just get them all, they're all so cute! Anyway, upon further inspection, they look similar to the previous short-lived (if this isn't its continuation) "Super Deformed" series of Sonic Boom plushies, so there's that. And at the bottom here, lastly for the Sonic Boom portion of this catalog, we have yet another variant of the 3" Sonic figure, this time riding on a radio-controlled hoverboard. It looks a whole lot like Sonic Riders, which makes me happy and makes me very hopeful for a new sequel, but gosh I wish they could just stick to one accessory for each figure? And sell them seperately? I don't know - in any case, this one looks the coolest, so I recommend picking this one up if you've got to have another Sonic in the house!
|
Here, at last, we have some representation of what is colloquially known as the Classic Sonic-era, for the niche of Sonic fans that prefer the older games to the new ones, meaning, for Sonic's grand twenty-fifth anniversary, we're appeasing two of the three niches of the Sonic fandom. I'm sure that's got someone upset, and they have my half-sincere condolences.
With regards to the page itself, when I first laid my eyes on it I was excited enough to get the idea to write this article in the first place! The plushies look so good based on the concept art here, I am making it my mission to get all four. As for the action figures... I'm gonna level with you all here, I had this one bad experience with a Sonic action figure made by Jazwares. I got it for Christmas, it fell apart moments after I got it out of its packaging, and it ruined action figures of Sonic the Hedgehog for me ever since. And I can see just from the concept art exactly how it'd break, it's those articulated legs with the teensy connector thing that're impossible to put back together durably. I don't trust it, even if it's made by an entirely different toy company. Plushies are more huggable anyway!
... Wait a moment, on the plushies... they have "1991" written after each character's name. Of course this is because the original Sonic the Hedgehog video game for the Sega Genesis was released in the year 1991, but... Tails and Knuckles weren't in that one. Tails was introduced in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in 1992, and Knuckles was introduced in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 in 1994, so shouldn't it be Tails 1992 and Knuckles 1994? Oh well, I guess that required a little more care than the ones in charge had in themselves at the time. I'm still excited for these plushies!
And that's the second edition of Sonic Fridays! Thanks for reading, I hope you all enjoyed it, I know I had fun writing it and even noticed a thing or two as I was writing it! Are you interested in any of these toys? Gonna buy any of them? Do you think they might be hinting at a new Sonic Riders game or am I overreaching? Go ahead and let me know down below!