Has Jazwares cancelled its entire 2014 Sonic Toyline?

So this is an update/article that I’ve wanted to make for a few weeks now, however I kept telling myself ‘wait until New York Toy Fair, just wait and see.’ Well… In the run up to Toy Fair,  few other bits of information came to light which didn’t fill me with much confidence… following images of their booth at Toy Fair, I think the party is over.

There is a lot of mounting evidence to say that Jazwares have cancelled or lost the rights to make new Sonic toys.

Back in September, we brought you news that Jazwares had cancelled it’s highly anticipated Metal Sonic & Classic Amy plush. Since then however, there’s been a development. Classic Amy has in fact been released in a so far very limited form from online retailers, SSMB member PatMac posted images of it a few days ago.

However… despite this surprise release, Metal Sonic is nowhere in sight, and another worrying sign is that Jazwares have changed their product page for their Sonic toys. Here is what it originally looked like after Jazwares redesigned their website in late 2013.

However, a few months ago, Jazwares since removed the ‘New Fall 2013 product’ from their site, there have been no additional products added to their Sonic page of any kind. See for yourself.

More significant a hint that the Sonic line is no more comes from the Jazwares Facebook page, in the run up to the New York Toy Fair, Jazwares has out rightly stated that multiple products in the Sonic line have been cancelled.

Rouge the Bat, Classic Knuckles and The Sonic & Shadow Reversible Plushies have all been stated to have been cancelled.

There has needless to say been quite a backlash on Jazwares’ Facebook Page to this news, this is quite understandable considering Classic Knuckles and Rouge have been teased and hinted at as far back as early 2012.

In fact, on the 28th of March 2012. Jazwares posted this on their Facebook page.

So ladies and gentlemen, unless this was an outright lie. A classic Knuckles figure was not only in development and ready, he was just waiting for a release line to fit into. Since then there has been no mention of this particular character. So were we all lied to on this? Or was Knuckles ready to go?

As for Rouge? Well…

You might remember how we reported on this particular product page? The one which clearly shows a comic book pack of Shadow and Rouge with the word ‘new’ next to it, suggesting it was indeed on the way. Unlike Classic Knuckles which had nothing released to support it other than the Facebook outlet, Rouge had a product number and even this promotional material to back it up.

Which begs the question… why was this cancelled?

Following the huge backlash on the cancellation, Jazwares have been sporting this reason.

 it’s up to the retail stores for what products get made.

Placing the blame firmly on the retailers, if they don’t order them, then they don’t get made.

There’s just one thing with this reasoning that I question. That being there’s evidence to suggest that this isn’t the case. In the Sonic Black Knight line, the following figures were spotted and in some cases are still up for order.

• -Sonic – Excalibur
• -Knuckles – Sir Gawain
• -Silver – Sir Galahad
• -Shadow – Sir Lancelot
• -Jet – Sir Lamorak

This information and listings dates back to June 2012 and can be found across several toy news and retailer sites.

This is also the case for some of the ASRT toys which were announced and even shown at last years Nuremberg Toy Fair. Many of those toys over 2013 appeared as pre-orders at the United States branch of Toys R Us… that’s one if not the biggest toy retailer in the world isn’t it? There was even a product photo of it, this is taken from the old listing on TRU.Com’s website.

Anyone own that? Anyone ever seen that for sale outside of the internet listing? So why was it cancelled?

The same applies to Metal Sonic. Announced, then cancelled. Only this one is even more strange, not only has the Metal Sonic plush appeared on Jazwares’ website (and at the time of posting is still there). But it has also appeared as a product on the website for ‘Smyths’ who are one of the largest toy retailers in the UK.There was even an official product photo of it on a UK site… this was very rare since normally there’s a 1 year gap between US and UK releases.

It’s around now you might be thinking… wait… they were announced in prior to 2014, what about this years toys?

There aren’t any.

So far we have The Black Knight Silver figure (just released) and a Silver Super Poser. And that’s it. Everything else, all those toys from Nuremberg last year, all those toys which popped up on retailers, not happening.

At least that’s based on what Jazwares itself are suggesting from their own booth at the 2014 NYTF. The following image are the press releases for Jazwares at NYTF.

Sonic has no 2014 product list.

In conjunction with this, we now thanks to figures.com, have photos of Jazwares’ booth at New York Toy Far. They show no new Sonic products aside from Black Knight & Super Poser Silver.

There’s even an image of the plush box which has appeared predominantly at 2013’s toy fair, only this time both Metal and Super Sonic are missing from it.

This is the biggest toy fair of the year for America, and Jazwares have no new Sonic products at it for 2014. If there were new products, it’s absolute madness that they’re not here, even if it were just a prototype or concept image. But there’s nothing. You can view more images of Jazwares NYTF booth at Figures.com, but there is nothing new, everything is already out or about to be released.

Even at Nuremberg, there were no new toys aside from Black Knight Silver and ‘that sign.’

So, what is going on? We went from being told ‘those figures are coming’ for over 2 years, we had so much new toys promised an shown in 2013, yet now the whole product line seems to have stopped.

You might be thinking ‘maybe Tomy is the reason?’ Possibly… but Tomy has a license for Sonic Boom toys, Jazwares has the modern and classic games.

It does sound like the Jazwares run of Sonic toys is at or nearing it’s end, no press releases, no new products on show and cancellation notices. It seems that the party is over on this one. Which is a shame because despite what you may say about the quality of the products, Jazwares did give us figures that fans have been crying out for since 1991.