This is a bit of sad news if you’ve been collecting the character plush toys that GE Animation have been putting out; they have confirmed that as of April 2017 they will no longer have the Sonic licence, therefore they will not be producing any new plushes.
GE Animation’s range became known for the sheer range of franchise favourites that became realised in a plush form, including Shadow, Amy, Rouge, Big, Charmy, Chaos 0 and Jet just to name a few. They also did other miscellaneous products such as hats and mugs.
Within the same confirmation, it appears GE Animation confirmed that the licence was now with Tomy, so they’ve at least got the opportunity to continue with what they were doing on top of handling the Boom licence. In addition, there are still the various products that were revealed at the Toy Fair just last month to look forward to, as well as the F4F Silver up for pre-order, so it’s still a good time to be a collector.
Source: GE Animation (via Facebook)
Would love to see Tommy doing new action figures of the modern characters again, or at least re-releasing the discontinued ones.
I’ve really noticed 2017 is NOT going my way. ABC has tried everything they can do to get rid of the shows I like, Archie is maybe cancelling the comics, there’s hardly any good movies this year(with the exception of The LEGO Batman Movie which I already saw), and now GE lost the Sonic license? What’s next, SEGA will go bankrupt? This really is a sad year for SEGA and Sonic.
“Animated movies”
You see…I hate this recent development. GE has made some of the best Sonic toys. Most of the people who get the Sonic license are content to do ONLY Sonic, ONLY Tails, ONLY Knuckles. Maybe Amy if you’re lucky and Shadow if you’re EXTRA lucky. Not GE. They did as many as they could; Super Sonic, Rouge, Espio, Vector, Jet, Wave, Blaze, Charmy, Storm, Chaos 0…
It’s sad they’ve lost the rights, but I guess that’s just what happens. So I can accept that. What I CAN’T accept is TOMY getting the full rights in its place. TOMY’s merchandise has been AWFUL, to say the least; half of the “amazing” stuff we’ve seen from them at Toy Fair were all just action figures based off one episode of one season of one show (painting the perfect picture of what Sonic Boom was designed for), and the general quality of those toys have been downright inexcusable in some instances.
Right with ya on that front. GE made good stuff….Tomy does not. It really is that cut and dry.
Here’s hoping some more companies with decent quality control pick up the Sonic brand.
Tomy will NEVER make an Amy item, and try to market it to boys. A girl of her design is more deserving of a Fashion Doll, where you could give her different outfits to wear, in a nifty pink wardrobe. Oh, yeah? Well, let me give YOU an idea! People think she’s the cute one. The girly one. Oh, sweet little adorable Amy Rose. Wonder what kind of outfit she’ll wear, today? She blends in with other girl characters, but like Harley Quinn, she carries a BIG HAMMER! And she never forgets! Do you know what she does to her enemies? She CRUSHES them, and she eats them for breakfast!, even if she already ate breakfast and BRUNCH! So don’t push her! She’s not as exclusively-meant-for-girls as you would think!
I’m disappointed. I really liked what they did. I got Blaze, Silver and Chaos Zero plushies. I was waiting for the Metal Sonic one to be cheaper on ebay. But that’s going to be impossible now. I just don’t want to pay like £40 – £50 for him. Shame, he’s one of my favourite characters.
So, does that mean no Modern Knuckles?
@Raw
Tomy no has interest in putting out anything collector focused if you haven’t guessed by their output and sadly this also points to Sega not wanting to either seeing as how they’ve effectively killed almost all outlets for it except for the highend First4Figures statues. Sure they want to put out the classic figures in collectors style packaging but the actual content is no better than anything else they’ve been putting out. Sega should have immediately wanted to replicate the World of Nintendo line.