Sambro – The Sonic Stadium

About 2 months ago, there was a Sonic product event over at Mercedes Benz world, at this event, a single photograph showed what appeared to be a Sonic product guide. Naturally fans of sonic merchandise were curious as to what it contained. But the guide didn’t ever resurface. Last week, another photograph of the guide was spotted, this time at a second event, the interesting thing about this picture was that you could just make out some products which haddn’t yet been announced. By now, Sonic merchandise fans really wanted to get ahold of it.

Well… We’ve got one. Thanks to our friends over at toybuzz.co.uk we now have a copy of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2013 product catalogue. Would you like to read it?

Keep in mind, it only shows products that will be released in the UK this year. So you won’t find the huge range of Jazwares toys that the United Stages gets, nor will you see any Japanese products. Furthermore, due to items which you can buy/pre-order here in the UK, this guide is not the full range of products. The guide does however contain some new items and awesome looking items.

Here are a few highlights.

Note: Click the images to see them at full size.

I can hear you saying ‘Oh no! Not the clothes!’ But if you recieve that jumper/sweater on the bottom right, you might be jumping for joy. That looks fantastic, I love the random patches on the back as well as the Sonic logo on the sleve. I just hope it comes in adult sizes. Due to be stocked at Next, no price/release date was given.

Nothing really new here, everything is known, however I’d like to draw your attention to the 2014 annual that we reported on a few weeks ago. You can see a sample page from it showing “Doctor Eggmans Maze.” Unfortunately it looks like it’s going to be full of random stock art which is a shame, for some reason the ‘Sonic Generations’ logo is also randomly placed on that sample page… why? But that said though, I’m really looking forward to that and will be picking it up/reviewing it on TSS later this year.

This is the one we want! Action figures! Well… it’s slightly disapointing. Whilst it’s good that the UK is finally getting the Chaotix and Blaze pack (Blaze is out now in UK Toys R Us stores by the way) a year after the US has had them, the inclusion of the 10 inch Sonic is disapointing since it’s been out for well over a year already. The plushies have been around for even longer. However the confirmation of the figures with accessories is a big welcome. Though personally I’d be much happier to see the Metal Sonic plush or some of the ASRT Jazwares toys make their way over to the UK shores.

But, the biggest suprise is from Sambro. The pinball game has been seen in a few photos for a while now, but the giant floor jigsaw is a new thing. The image is fantastic, Sonic & Tails look really good in that environment. For you older fans. Consider getting the jigsaw and putting it in a picture fram, you now have one awesome looking picture.

Everything you see on here has been out for well over a year. But the bigest suprise would be the inclusion of London Cakes. It seems that Sega has partnered with London Cakes who will make you a cake with an official Sonic image on it. Checking their website, there doesn’t appear to be any Sonic cakes up for order just yet, so this might be a service which will be added later in the year.

If I’m honest… The Sonic the Hedgehog Official Merchandise store has been very disapointing. Just take a look at it right now and you’ll see a small example of what I mean. Nothing new has been added to the store for months, what ‘collectables’ that are there can be bought very easilly at other stores for much less. With the exception of one or two imported items, most of the products can be found elsewhere for much better prices. Remember that Sonic Monopoly? I was able to import that from Canada and it ended up being cheaper than had I bought it from the Sonic Merchandise UK store!

That said, this image would indicate that things might be changing. It seems that they’re going to be selling giant posters of archie comic covers. This is actually… quite a good idea, archie comics covers are usually a lot better than what you find in the pages of the comic and some of the covers are really nice looking. Giant sized on glossy paper? Thats a great idea!

In addition to this, we seem to have unique branded merchandise. It appears to be limited to coffee cups at this point and whilst they have been advertised on the Sonic Merchandise facebook page, there’s not been any sign of the items on the store. With any luck the site will be getting a relaunch or a huge boom in products. It’s a great idea but is crying out for a huge stock update.

And finally, Mike Pollock if you’re out there. Eggman under pants are just under £4 from Primark.