TSS Reviews: Sonic the Hedgehog Art Print

Not too long ago, Sega revealed a bunch of Art Prints for Sonic and several of their other franchises, advertised as high quality prints, limited in number based on official and original art they’re just crying out to be taken home, put in a frame and hung with pride in someones game room.

But commanding price tags of between £12.99 and £16.99, that’s quite a risk to take if they’re not that great, are they worth it? Well, funstock.co.uk asked us to take a look at one of their most expensive prints, the Sonic Spinball print, so we agreed, and I’m happy to say, yes they are. However there is one thing you should be aware of when ordering, we’ll come to that in a moment. For now, lets start the review.

So here’s the deal, we have one print which funstock provided, however I have one of their ‘cheaper’ prints which I paid for a few months ago with my own money. So if you like we have the ‘higher end’ product, and the slightly ‘cheaper’ product, we’ll be mainly focusing on the higher end one, but we’ll reference that cheaper one as it helps illustrate a number of key differences between the two.

Paper Quality

The Sonic Spinball print was kindly provided by Funstock.co.uk 

If you’ve read the description of the higher end product, it mentions that it’s printed on ‘super high quality 300gsm textured paper.’ How many of you also said ‘what does that mean?’

Well, basically, think a canvas that an artist would paint on, you know if you go to an art gallery or watch something like fake or fortune and you see that bumpy textured paper that they use to paint on? It’s like that.

The cheaper product is printed on glossy card, think something like what you would print photographs on.

The paper quality means that it’s not going to easily rip, you would have to apply some force to it in order to damage it, so don’t worry about accidental damage on this one, it’s quite durable.

Print Quality

Now, if you go to the online store, look at the thumbnail of the print, you might think that the print quality looks a bit poor. However, this is due to the way the print has been designed. It’s supposed to look like it’s old and slightly faded, it reminds me a lot of an old movie poster or some kind of ancient artefact, especially when combined with the paper quality.

Hand Numbered

In both the descriptions for the higher end prints and the cheaper one, it mentions that they are limited in number, the cheaper prints being limited to 5000 units, whereas the Sonic Spinball prints are limited to 995.

Here we have another key difference between the two print types. The cheaper prints are not numbered, whereas the Sonic Spinball and we assume the higher quality prints are. And believe it or not, I think it really has been hand numbered. The number is very small, it doesn’t distract from the print itself, but it is actually on it.

Anything Else

It’s now we come to potentially the only issue with the print, how it was posted. The artprint was rolled into a tube, this has had the unfortunate consequence of the paper being ‘rolled up’ meaning it will have to be flattened out or placed in a frame for easy viewing.

This is really the only thing wrong with it and it’s a difficult criticism to make because I know that artwork printed on canvas style paper is usually transported like this, but due to the fact the print now rolls on it’s own, it does limit your options on how you can store and view it.

For instance, the cheaper print is sent out flat against hard backing cardboard, meaning you can view it easily or place it in a frame or some other storage with greater freedom than the tube.

Eventually it will flatten out and the rolling has cause utterly no damage at all to it. But some of you might not like that, I’m a bit unsure on if I like it rolled up or not.

Conclusion

Several months ago I immediately pre-ordered and bought the artprint from Funstock which shows Classic, Modern and Boom Sonic with the 25th logo, because it looked awesome, I was very happy with it when it arrived.

I did that because I loved the design, I thought it was great.

The problem with the other prints is that, with the exception of maybe the Streets of Rage and Golden Axe print, I don’t particularly have any interest in the others, because I don’t like the design.

That’s the key issue here, do you actually like what you see? So the question is, if you like the design, should you drop the cash and get them? Well. Yeah actually, there’s nothing wrong with the prints, they’re of high quality and with the Sonic Spinball one my inner child feels like he’s opening an ancient scroll, it really is a cool feeling to do that for the first time.

Finding a decent frame to put them in will make these look fantastic in your room or a dedicated game room.

Effort has also gone into making the limited prints stand out from the others, other than number volume the paper quality is superior and it actually has a hand written number on it.

So if you’ve been on the fence or unsure, the prints are great quality, treat yourself.

You’ll Love:
+ Print quality is high.
+ Paper quality is high.
+ Will look amazing framed in a game room.
+ Feels like you have an ancient scroll.

You’ll Hate:
– If you want them all, it’s quite a lot of money.
– You have to flatten them out due to postal tubes storage.

The full range of prints are available on Funstock.co.uk, yes they post worldwide. There are also voucher codes if you look around google.