Sonic the Hedgehog may be a well-known gaming character, but SEGA want his popularity to reach beyond gamers. How do they plan on doing that? With more licensing and merchandise. SEGA’s Jurgen Post, COO of Sega Europe, hopes that one day Sonic will be as iconic as Sanrio’s Hello Kitty.

“Sonic is a well-known character, but we’ve got a lot of room to grow in merchandising,” he told MCV.

“We dream of Hello Kitty. We’re still far off from that but we can see that our profits are growing year on year in the US and Europe [on merchandising].

“We’ve got a licensing team on the ground in the UK who are focusing on that and that team will expand. We’ve got a team in the US and which will also expand. We used to run it all out of Sega of Japan, but having people on the ground is making a big difference.

“We will always do the computer game but the merchandising is a very important aspect to Sonic.”

I guess we now know why this is happening.

Source: MCV UK