Sonic Tomy Gacha Capsules: Russian Roulette with Toys

I've seen these little Sonic toy capsules quite a bit over the past year. They're at Target, they're at Wal-Mart and they were at the local "$5 or Less" store. It was at the last location I finally caved and picked up three, in hopes that I wouldn't be screwed over with two werehogs and a Shadow. So just what are these things? Well, think of those 50 cent toy dispensers, mark the price up eight times and instead of your chance resting on what the bottom toy capsule is, your figure depends on which capsules you blindly grabbed. Each capsule contains one of six figures: Sonic, Super Sonic, Metal Sonic, Knuckles, Shadow and the Werehog. Each figure must be built, and usually consist of three to five parts. I think most people think that there is a method to picking the best capsules, but really grabbing the first three or every second one that rolls out of the box will have equal chances of getting a good one.
After the break, lets see what I got! Did I get screwed over? Or did I snag three Metal Sonics, thus winning a jackpot (if you apply slot machine gameplay to the capsule toys).

*POP!* goes the first one! Let's see inside... Can you guess from the arm?

It's Sonic, in three parts! Great way to kick off the capsule toys! Even if I get two crap figures next, I'll be happy that I got the titular star of the series in capsule toy form. Shame it isn't as awesome as the ones found in Shenmue. The neck is a bit long, and his feet are uneven. Also, they failed to paint his buckles yellow. I guess "quality" does not exist in Tomy's dojo. Next figure! *POP!*

SUPAH SONIC! I considered changing up the real life order so that it appeared that I opened this one last, but I hate lying to my readers. Super Sonic is clearly one of the top two toys in the collection, the other being Metal Sonic. Unlike regular Sonic, his arm will not stay on. Blue poster tack to the rescue. The pose, seen at the end of this post, is very much like Silver using his telekinesis. Okay, third and final figure. Please be Metal, please be Metal, don't be Shadow... *POP!*

It's knucklehead! Long time no see. Knuckles comes in five pieces, and is a bitch to put together and to keep together. Should call him Fuckles. Well, once again, I goo'd him up with poster tack and he stays together rather well. Knuckles looks really creepy without the top of his head. Just check out the extreme close-up:

What's with Knuckles toys looking freaky? Compare the above photo with the photo below. Which is scarier?

And so ends our Sonic capsule toy opening fun. Are these worth $4 each? Well, it's fun taking a chance for good figures, but the quality is quite low on these so I can't really recommend them. I say if you're a thrill seeker and really want a Super Sonic or Metal Sonic figure, go for it. But don't buy too many. three or four should be enough.

The Elusive McDonalds Eggman Toy Appears Once Again!

Regulars to SEGA Memories should know about the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 McDonalds toys and how Japanese fans were treated to a very different looking Eggman toy. Gagaman covered it not too long ago. While Westerners received an Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog design of Robotnik, the Japanese received the original in-game Eggman design. Since 1993, the alternate Eggman toy occasionally appeared in books (as Gagaman mentions in the above link), the Sonic 10th Birthday Pack and online. Most recently, the McDonalds Eggman appeared in an online auction at rinkya.com. The auction also includes Sonic, and both toys are unopened. The only downside, the price is set at over $50 and that doesn't even include whatever shipping is. Still, it's great to see more images of this elusive toy! After the break, check out two more images of Eggman and Sonic.

The toys in their protective baggies:

The inserts complete with goofy drawings of the toys:

As online auctions don't last forever, and some crazy Sonic fan will soon drop $50+ on two McDonalds toys, consider this post as archival proof of the elusive Bigfoot- er, I mean Eggman.

This Sonic collection is AMAZING.

Sonic Collectibles is rapidly becoming one of the best websites to check out for videos and updates about Sonic bits and bobs, updating far more often than we get to and with videos of individual pieces of rare merch popping up on the youtube account semi regularly as of late.

The owner of the site and channel Pete has just recently uploaded a 20th Anniversary video showing of his entire collection (I assume) that is all set up in a room full of glass boxes that honestly makes the one at Summer of Sonic look a bit feeble in comparison because they are just so cram,med full of ultra rare and exciting stuff!

I've been watching the Youtube account for some time and figured Pete's collection must be rather large but I could have never expected this! Almost anything you can think of is here: one of those 10th Anniversary wine glasses, the Super Sonic plush, loads of the Australian Sega World stuff, and many things that are one (or two) of a kind like an original SATAM group shot cel painting, a commissioned painting of Sonic by Milton Knight, and a statue that was owned by Tom Kalinske, CEO of Sega of America during the 90s!

Of everything on show here I think one of the main things I truly envy and adore is the Japanese classic Eggman statues and smaller toy he owns (see from about 10:55 in the video). Those are simply outstanding.

A response to Sonic Retro's 20th Anniversary Photos..

Sonic Retro posted photos both here and here of games laid out in a "20" and seeing as retro is all about the games and we're all about (mostly) the merchandise, here's my response to it with toys and statues! More angles of this on the photostream.

Tiny Tomy Sonic Duel Toys

What's this mysterious purple box that I found recently in a retro toy store for a few quid, and what does it contain? Find out after the jump!

Well here you go. I have honestly never seen this toy before, but I looked it up and found one on Ebay and it turns out to be a Tomy set called 'Sonic Duel', released at the same time as toys i had as a kid such as the Mountain Quest, Pinball machine and many others. It's copyrighted 1987 on the back, presumably because like many of the other toys Tomy had just taken a toy they created back then and gave it a Sonic make over.

They are a pair of little spinning tops that you insert into the odd gun things, twist about and then shoot which should make them spin into each other. You get one of Sonic and one of Robotnik with their own designs on each gun.

The spinning tops themselves are absolutely tiny, and rather cute evn though they are a little beaten up from *shock* a kid and/or grown up saddo like me playing with them. Not sure if Sonic had a longer nose and it broke off or if the paint just came off, but the one on ebay is excatly the same so who knows.

Robotnik is particular seems to have scrapped the skin off of his knuckles from sliding on the concrete too much, the naughty scamp. Sonic has really gained weight too, possibly even passed Robotnik in the flab department. Maybe they were in an episode of Supersize vs Superskinny that I missed? Or perhaps by 'Sonic Duel' they mean 'Sumo Duel'?

Either way they are so tiny I think they might even be the smallest sculpts of the characters I have seen to date. Just look how the Sonic stacks up to the 2" First4figures Sonic, for example. If it wasn't for the gold spinning top part it wouldn't even be half it's height, as it measures at 1 inch.

Because this is the only other 'classic Sega' Robotnik toy I have (not counting the AOSTH cartoon Robotnik) here it is standing tall above the spinning top toy.

Finally to wrap things up, let's feed tiny Tomy Sonic to the badniks. Don't worry he'll do fine, Sonic has been in this situation before.

McDonald's Collectibles book Sonic set insights

 

So I found a book lying in the loft about McDonald's Collectibles (this one to be specific) and found a couple pages in there about the Sonic set of toys made in 1994 to promote Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and there is a few interesting bits of info in it along with scans. Above is the American promo art for it and below is the British one.

Check after the jump for scans and info taken from the book about all the different international releases and the toy variants.

 

The set first appeared in America between February 4th till March 3rd of 1994, later showing up in Canada and Puerto Rico later that year. The UK got the set from January 27th to February 24th 1995, Germany and Belgium in March, and in June both New Zealand and Japan finally caught up.

The American set and the European set have some differences. Firstly the US set had a little Sonic ball as an option for younger kids which was only available there. Also the Tails toy was completely different. In America, the toy was in two parts and flew off when you pulled the handle on a string. This version was recalled during the last week of the promotion according to the book due to problems with the pull string.

US Version (left) Euro version (right)

The European Tails toy has the same flat base of Tails himself but the toy itself was changed because they were worried kids would get hurt by a flying lump of plastic. On this one Tails is on base I presume is based on those floaty UFO things from marble Garden zone, and this one has a plastic zip pull thing that when pulled through the little holes makes the Tails (and er...his tails) spin about, but he doesn't fly off the base.

But even more interesting is the Japanese set. They didn't get the tails toy at all, and the Sonic and Knuckles were identical but the Robotnik toy got re-designed to match Japan's original Eggman design as opposed to the Adventures of Sonic cartoon one we got. I haven't seen this variant in particular mentioned or photographed anywhere online though I could be mistaken. EDIT: I was mistaken, there is a photo of it over at the Eggman Empire. If anyone owns this toy we'd love to see some more proper photos of it! Check out this cute artwork of the Eggman toy!

Thanks go to the authors of the book Ray and Ruby Richardson and David and Lesley Irving for these bits of Sonic toy info.

Sonic Colours Pre-Order Figure...with Wisps!

If you are reading this blog, own a Wii and have not played Sonic Colours yet, why are you reading this blog? Go grab this game because it's actually rather good. Not even just rather good but rather brilliant. I know, I was shocked too. I haven't enjoyed a Sonic game this much from beginning to end since probably Sonic & Knuckles, and somehow even the writing and voice acting is light years ahead of "Watch out you're going to crash ahh!" of the Dreamcast days. Blimey.

As many may recall there was a pre-order bonus for this game in America was that now infamous Sonic hat (so much so that there was a whole ice rink of Sonic mad hatters tripping about for the games' launch), but elsewhere in the world we got this figure (above) instead. In Australia and possible some other countries the game came in a special edition box of the game with the figure, but here in the UK it was given in a little bag stapled together by some cardboard and was only available from the catalog store Argos. More after the bump..

 
Argos have also been selling the figure separately for £15, and I presume because of this the figures were not in stock until a week after the game release. Still, I did get the figure in the end, and for what is technically a freebie with the game it's not too bad, though there have been better Sonic figures recently.

 It's very similar to many of the Jazware figures with articulation in a lot of the same places, but it has chunkier arms, huge hands, slightly odd looking pupils and no mouth.

 

The hands also have little holes in them. All this is so the figure can hold the Wisp toys that come with it. You get a orange (ROCKET!), Cyan (LAZER!) and white (erm...boost?) wisp so one of the toys has to be a loner from Sonics' grasp. I tend to just balance the Cyan wisp on Sonics' head, that seems to do the trick.

 Not much to say about the wisp toys: the characters are simple so there was no way they were going to mess these up. They look enough like them so they do their job. It kinda makes me wish there was a set of the rest of the wisps now mind, especially that cube one. Still, these are the first lumps of plastic based on these characters so who knows maybe we'll see more in the future.

And finally just for comparison here it is next to the Black Knight toy and the regular 3" Sonic (or rather the one that came with the All-Stars Racing car), as height wise it stands somewhere between them. he stands a lot better than the Black Knight toy and it's lanky legs despite having the weight of the wisps in it's hands.

So I'm not sure if I'd say it's worth the £15 asking price on its own but included with the game it's a nice addition to the over abundance of blue hedgehogs gathering dust on my shelves, especially when said game was such a pleasant surprise. They even found a way to make the underwater levels FUN. What is this witchcraft Sonic Team have been dabbling in?

10" Sonic and the Sonic PVC 6-pack!

 As 2010 comes to an end, so too does a great year for Sonic toys! This year we saw toymaker Jazwares make a huge step up in quality and number of new figures. Meanwhile, First 4 Figures covered the collectible side of things with an awesome Super Sonic statue and a great collection of PVC figures. Today I thought I'd highlight two recent acquisitions: Jazware's 10" Sonic and First 4 Figures PVC 6-pack!

The 10" Sonic the Hedgehog figure is relatively new, having hit online stores within the past month. The coolest thing about this figure, aside from the impressive likeness, is that it is of the same line as last year's 10" Metal Sonic.

The figure shares the same dimensions as 10" Metal and resembles the most recent Sonic design, as seen in Unleashed and Colors. Personally, I really love this iteration! Not as lankly as what we saw in Sonic '06, and not as freaky as what we saw in the Sonic Adventure artwork.

As you can see, the figure is very articulated. The box touts over 12 points, with everything from joints to even wrists and ankles receiving joints. The one weak point is the figure's hands. While I really like the thumbs up and fist pairing, others may not like how this limits Sonic to giving a thumbs up, thumbs down and a punch. Still, for under $15 this is a great figure!

Sonic and Metal decide to relive old memories and pose in front of the Sonic CD box art

Classic and modern

My only complains about the figure is that they oddly chose to have the circle on Sonic's chest cut off just below the pivot point of his waist. Also, my figure had a small space between where Sonic's left eye met his muzzle. But those are two minor complains, overall this figure is a must have. Especially if one already owns the 10" Metal.

Next up is First 4 Figures PVC 6-pack! The pack collects series 1 and 2 of the individually released Sonic figurines, featuring the classic Genesis era designs. From my knowledge, this is the only way for Americans to acquire the set, as I don't think the individual figures were sold here in stores. Gagaman already covered Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Metal, so I'll show off Super Sonic and Amy Rose.

I never thought I'd say this, but Amy Rose is my favorite of the set! Why? Because it's the classic Amy as seen in Sonic CD! I always thought it was a shame that classic Amy never carried over to the Dreamcast games, as the tennis shoes and tutu combo are the bomb. I secretly dream of a world where big black sunglasses, tutus and big bulky tennis shoes make a return.

 Super Sonic is pretty cool, though I prefer the levitating screaming Super Saiyan powering up pose to this. It's almost like Sonic is shaking his fist at those kids who won't stay off his lawn. Or maybe he is vowing revenge on Metal Sonic after catching him in the act with Amy Rose. Must have been Stockholm syndrome:

DRAMA!

The Sonic PVC 6-pack can be found on First 4 Figures website for the reasonable price of $30. When you figure that each figure sells for $5 each and that the Super Sonic and Metal Sonic are quite hard to find individually, it's a good price. These definitely get the "Buy it!" recommendation from me.

Stay tuned to SEGA Memories, I have a very cool item on the way from Japan that I can't wait to write about!

Bonus photos:

Sonic OVERLOAD: 74 Happy Meal Toys

There are eBay auctions, and then there are Totally X-Treme eBay Auctionz! This one is the latter. Just look at that! I have no idea who would need that many Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Happy Meal toys, nor would I have any idea how one came across that many. The price is actually decent: between $20 and $40 depending on bidding or buy it now. Unless you plan to resell the toys to make a profit, or are some crazy conceptual artist who wants to make a sculpture out of these, I see no reason for one to place a bid. Still, they make for a great photo.

Note: despite there being 74 toys, it still is not a complete set. Tails is M.I.A.

Original auction: http://cgi.ebay.com/74-Vintage-SONIC-HEDGEHOG-1994-McDonalds-Lot-TOYS-NR-/380278726473?pt=Fast_Food_Cereal_Premiums&hash=item588a60df49

Toys"R"Us Shows Sonic & SEGA Some Love

I felt like a kid in some kind of store!

Just as things were looking grim for Sonic and SEGA at my local Toys"R"Us, a recent visit brought with it a surprising number of new items! Last month I checked in on the video game figures aisle only to find that Sonic had been relegated to a foot length of shelving, with the only toys available being Knuckles in an ATV and a dozen werehogs. But enough about the sad past, the Sonic and SEGA section is bumping! Let's check out what is new in the world of figures and take a closer look at what I bought!

First up is the Vector and Espio comic 2-pack! While I didn't pick this one up, it is a real cool package. The Vector is spot on, and Espio is very detailed. I had to abstain from this one just because if I did get it, I'd be opening the door for even more figures. I have enough collecting addictions as it is, so I've told myself I am only allowed to buy the following Sonic figures: personal favorites Eggman and Metal Sonic, classic sculpts of the original Genesis cast, quality sculpts of modern Sonic, Tails and Knuckles and non-Sonic characters from the Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing line.

Oh heck, I know in a week I'll be picking this 2-pack up. It's too cool to avoid!

Next up is the Super 3-pack! This is a very cool pack, with the super forms of the main three hedgehogs as well as seven emeralds. Super Sonic is awesome, however the inclusion of Shadow and Silver caused me to not pick this one up. I just can't see them standing in my limited display space, and I have a feeling we'll be seeing single figures of the three in the near future. Still, if you like Shadow and Silver as well and collect the 3.5 inch line, this is a must buy. Note: nerds such as myself and those at The Sonic Stadium forums noticed that the emeralds are incorrectly colored. For shame, Jazwares!

Here is something I DID buy, the SASASR figure 4-pack! There are so many awesome elements to this set, the first being the inclusion of Beat. How often does Jet Set Radio get a figure? Well I can tell you right now: two times. Once as a figure from Joyride studios and the second time in this set. There is also a very cool JSRF Hot Wheels car however no figure is included, it's just a detailed car. The second awesome element is the box itself, emulating the Seaside Hill track found in the game. While I'll admit, I only bought the set because it is the only way to obtain Beat, the other three figures are equally cool.

Eggman is riding in his converted Egg-O-Matic monster truck, appropriately called the "Egg Monster". This is my favorite of the set, simply because it is so rare for Sonic's arch rival to receive his own figure.

Tails is riding in his Tornado Racer. The detail of the face, especially the eyes, is great considering how tiny the figure is.

Sonic's face suffers a bit as his nose is not entirely painted, making it look like Sonic has a goofy Simpsons-style nose. I checked out all five copies that TRU had in stock and all five looked the same. Oh well, at least his car looks cool.

Here's a closer look at Beat. Yeah, he looks rather wonky but then again for the size of the figure it looks quite good when not held under a magnifying glass.

Check out the sweet JSRF logo on the hood of the car. The car itself is known as the "De La Custom GGs". Did I mention I love Jet Set Radio?

The second and final figure I picked up was a single package of Amigo in his Sun Buggy. I honestly think this is the first time Amigo has received his own action figure! There may be some rare plushies out there from Japan, but this must be the first figure.

Like Tails, the face is surprisingly detailed. He has his eyes, little nose and trademark toothy smile. I still wonder why his car is number 38. I also wonder how a monkey learned to drive. In addition to Amigo, the store also had Aiai, Amy and Shadow in single packs. I didn't pick those up, but I have a feeling those will be hanging on the pegs for a while.

On my way out of the store I passed this SASASR Sonic in remote controlled car. Pretty cool item! If only it shot spring loaded boxing gloves.


BONUS ITEM
While that concludes my visit to Toys"R"Us, upon arriving home I found a tiny envelope that had come in the mail. Inside was a tiny plush Wisp I had won in a giveaway at The Sonic Stadium. I'll allow 10" Sonic to show it to you.