How to Avoid Fake Sonic Merchandise Page 26
Fakery and junk abounds when bootleggers think they can get away with knocking off Sonic the Hedgehog!
Fight back by educating yourself on what NEVER to buy with these pages of photos and tips!

Remember, you vote with your money...any buying of fake junk only supports and encourages them to make more. Wouldn't you rather have awesome official items? Wouldn't you rather enjoy cool good quality stuff you know you can depend on? If you want the real deal, bootlegs are never the way to go.
Remember what a 'bootleg' item is:
It is an unofficial or unlicensed product being sold to the fans- by NON FANS. These can be home-made or made in a factory. They are not approved by the company who holds the license and are NOT made to any standard. The quality is usually low, leading to items which may break or wear out. Fake items may also be unsafe. Remember, bootleg makers are only after your money. They don't care at all about Sonic the hedgehog and are only out for a quick buck. Don't waste your money! Buy official SEGA Sonic things only, look for copyrights, and demand the real deal.
Iron On Transfers Submission: CLOSED (every single art on the internet can be one of these, know that it exists & if it's a transfer of any type it IS A FAKE.
How To Avoid Sonic Bootleg Merchandise Hub Page
Bad Boomfake Knuckles Sonic Boom merchandise getting popular? Better fake up some lame doll to try to capitalize...Here comes fake Boom Knuckles. He's missing some details, like his actual...big fists are small, no chest stripe & no spike 'bandages', but, it looks like the head is based off of a previous doll's pattern. (Fakers do have the ability to take patterns) He doesn't look super terrible, scary or lame...but he's also not good enough to substitute for the real thing. This is a tricky-er fake though, because it's not super obvious like some of them are. Photo discovered by: SuperSonic Gaming
Hands Knuckles Fake Doll Another Knockoff Knuckles to knock out of...wherever you fidn it because this one's got HANDS! And bad ones, at that. No official doll will ever have 3 fingers & any non-Boom Knuckles needs fists so these feeble fingers give this fake away right away. Then, the plastic eye pieces have no 'shine dot' anywhere on them & he doesn't appear to have a mouth. However, all the other details seem in-place and fairly ok, like proportion size, stuffing, & his classic style face/spikes. It's not a terrible fake, but with fingers, he's not fooling anyone.
Photo discovered by Pichu97
Paint Kids Coloring Fake Game A terrible game that actually got published to the app store...
But not for long! This is another one of those really shameless "double stealing" type fakes. They're not only ripping off Sega & Sonic, but they're also clearly filching from fans. None of the 'coloring book art' here is official, it's all stolen from kids who were just making fan art. For someone to try and make a buck off of fans' hard work is double terrible. Fortunately, the authorities in the app store tore this game down after a short while. Screen cap by Princess PandaLover
Eye Scare Fake Sonic What is it with applying eyes onto eyes and why is that so frightful?
This sad nasty fake Sonic is clearly suffering from the problem, with his ugly giant cartoon-plastic eyes stuck into his white eye-area. Of course, it's just a case of "stand alone" eyes for any cartoon generic plush being mis-used here, but they have the black borders of the self-contained eye. This makes them look much worse, because the whole white thing is Sonic's eye so he's got extra eyes in his eye...which isn't even done right anyway, the center part is very pointy & the too-big nose is distracting. It looks like it could be a feeble-fake copy of the old Caltoy Sonic plush (notice the shoe shape, un-attached socks & body/arm proportions) but the head is messed up. The ears are too small & there's no real sign of the spikes. It's an all around bad doll, no-matter what it is based on. Photo discovered by Pichu97
Dot Eyes Fake Doll Another fake doll with a bad eye problem, though this one's not as scary as the one above. It has solid black oval dots for the eyes, without the 'shine spot' or the actual proper shape. They're also a bit close together making the plush look somewhat crosseyed. However, that's far from it's only problem. The too-low ears have white instead of beige interiors, no fingers at all for the poorly done little mitten hands, a big nose, some kind of wierd 'under mouth' thing going on, and the 'belly dot' is instead attached to the neck instead of being a proper 'dot'. This doll though, likely isn't based on a stolen pattern like the one above, it's just a fakers' attempt to imitate Sonic. Photo discovered by Pichu97
Upside Down Eye Plush Lot Here are a bunch of bad bootlegs with...their eyes put on upside-down!
The plastic eye color pieces are all on upside-down on each of Sonic Tails & Knuckles here. The last one though, is a bootleg Silver. He's faked up off of a GE plush though, while the others aren't. This group of fakes together illustrates how bootleggers try different companies & styles of dolls to fake off of, to try and fool the fans. (And, fortunately, fail) Look at Knuckles there with all his fingers, then, Sonic's glove cuff is slid all the way up the arm like a bracelet, Tails's lower face is giant & going out of control & Silver is suffering from sloppy stitching, sort of poorly formed spikes, giant nose & badly set eyes. It's just un-quality stuff all around...which is fortunate because this motely crew isn't going to be fooling anyone with all the obvious errors. Photo discovered by Pichu97
Squasho Bootleg Sonic Well well well.
What nonsense do we have here? It's Squasho Sonic Bootleg doll! This stupid looking badly made doll won't be fooling anyone with its flattened head & blue arms. They did remember to add the buckles for his shoes, but they're in the wrong place. Also note the mitten hands with no fingers. With such a flat head and tiny ears he looks a little sloth-like.
There's a watermark here too for something called "Bakamoon" which, if it's the Japanese word is 'stupid moon', which sounds like just the place this doll would come from...and where everyone should avoid! Photo discovered by Pichu97
Awful Eyelash Super Wrong Amy
Another Awful Amy!
And this one's worse than most! There's almost every single thing wrong with this disgusting doll. First and worst are the horrible scary eyes. They had no concept that the white part is her actual eye, so they put nasty little eyelashes INSIDE her eye, on top of her wrongly-colored pink embroidered eyes. It's a mash up of terrible, with her black eye borders too--it's like eyes inside of other eyes. Then, the ears are done wrong so they're flat, the shoes are just...completely unrelated and lace-ups from something else? Giant socks. The dress is way too long and not the right shape, her bangs are terrible, the spikes are fat/blunt/bad & the nose is big. About the only thing that's ok is the hand size & the gold glove cuffs. This thing is just a disaster! Fake spotted by Pichu97
Eye Line Amy Fake Doll Here are 2 phony dolls that give themselves away as fakes in 2 different ways. First off is Amy where they have completely missed the boat on where to put her 'eyelash line' and gotten it totally detatched and on the surface of her eye whites. While the other details are ok, like the gold cuffs & nose shine dot, she also only has 3 fingers per hand because they're still not paying any attention.
Silver, on the other hand, has a tag for "added authenticity" in trying to fool people but...it's a Sonic X tv show tag and Silver was never actually IN the show. So the tag has the opposite effect, it actually flags it as a phony. His eye-shines are upside-down, and again, 3 fingers because they don't care, but otherwise the detail & even spike shape is ok. Both photos discovered by: Pichu97
Sonic X Tag Silver Fake
Serbia Movie Scene Fake Doll Prop A fake makes its way into a movie scene?
It sure does...you can easily spot a bogus plush doll here in the background of this movie scene behind the gloomy man. Fakes aren't that common as props, but it can happen sometimes. (This is likely the 3rd instance Gear has recorded) It takes a sharp eye to spot them though. But why is this one here? It is in a movie named after Serbia (an actual place--that doesn't have much to do with the film) where only
bad things happen at all times. So the wall art is bad, the doll is bad/goes by unnoticed and does nothing, the man is bad and characters only do bad things the entire time. Sometimes devices are made to damage things on purpose (a mouse trap squashes mice to death) and some movies are made to damage watchers on purpose due to malicious intent, much like the mouse trap. Screen cap discovered by Victoria Vaporeon
Fake Embroidered Sonic Patch
Far less common than the nasty fake iron-on is the embroidery fake.
This is an example of that complete with missing ear-interior color, wrongly positioned other ear, confusing fingers, fat boddy and kind of shabby stitching. This patch, like most fake things, is based on an acutal patch, but because they stole the art, it's certainly not as good. Details are slipping away or becoming muddied with wrong lines (a case of 'big body' spikes are thin and strange) and not so great stitching (the mouth line is attached to the edge rather than being properly finished/self contained, as is the ear-interior triangle) All this happens because fakers are only interested in churning out minimum quality quick to fool folks before they get caught. Fake patch spotted by: Joe
Draw Glow Bad Bootleg Game App How do these nasty fake apps keep getting into the Google Play store?
This one has since been caught onto & smashed by Google, as well it should be. The company "Draw Glow" made the bogus app "Coloring for Sonic Game" & put it up into the store. They stole all the line art they could find, didn't do a very good job of it, and then said it was an app. Of course, they had to color their 'example' down there as ugly as possible to try and throw Sega off the trail. (Fortunately, they failed)
Stuff like this will absolutely not hesitate to steal fan art too, and try to profit off the works of fans, which makes it even worse than just infringing Sonic for a dishonest buck. And, if it's rule-breaking enough to steal stuff, who knows what else malware could be included in the game itself? There's no telling how low it would stoop. Screen shot by Chey the Human
Dumb Amy Cap Here's a lame Amy cap.
This bad hat uses the same crummy pattern the Sonic one did (it appears elsewhere on Avoiding Bootlegs) with the bad arch-shaped eyes that are too close together and floppy boring ears. They also get the ear interior wrong, it's white here, instead of beige. You can also see her 'headband' sticking up there in the background as it's not tacked down. The cap doesn't really look like Amy much, but these fakers don't care, as they add it to their tacky lineup. (This faker was more active in 2013 or so) Photo discovered by Pichu97
Bus Bootleg Red Sonic Ripoff A bootleg...bus?
Well, that's a new one! But yes, it appears to be a red Sonic ripoff on the side of this shifty bus. It's mascot is poorly done, with random pointy lines, differently sized eyes & wierd colors, but it's way too 'Sonic resembling' to really qualify as trying to be it's own character....so it's certainly a ripoff. (Much like the frightful ogorki pickle creature) However, no one's yet busted the bus, so it's still driving around somewhere. Photo by Princess Panda Lover
Ice Cream Fake Truck CG Side From a bad bootleg bus to this tricky truck!
This is an ice cream truck, but look at the big, nice, side panel. It's all CG images of Sonic and friends with various treats photoshopped into their hands. But look, they've added CG Sally Acorn from the Archie Comics to stand there beside Blaze the cat. A few Archie covers featured CG work that was made to look like the Sega style, but with their own characters. This truck stole the art, then mixed it in with the Sonic Boom gang who are all to the right side.
This truck went to some trouble to create such a scene, and have it look fairly natural (though everyone looks rather mad or annoyed because they couldn't change anyone's expression from the stolen art) with them holding ice cream treats from the truck's menu. However, that doesn't mean they didn't steal everything here (they did), & it's still not right to do because they are using Sega & Archie characters to promote generic items and endorse their stuff. Plus, the artists who made it all don't get any credit or any money for their work this way. This is a fine lesson that bootlegs can look good, and be fun to see because someone went to a lot of trouble & money to have this done (and clearly likes Sonic a lot) but it is still using others' things without permission or credit to trick others into beliving Sega somehow endorses this ice cream. Photo by CrystalSonic Fan
Cheese Shoe Terror Doll The Cheese Shoe Terror Strikes!
Oh no, this doll isn't even for Halloween but it's plenty scary and stupid at the same time. It's another of those "eyes are inside the eye" dolls where they put completely wrong smaller eyes inside of Sonic's eye. This starts it off looking awful, then you can notice his backward/broken thumbs, giant nose, tiny wrong ears and finally...that there are cheapy cheese slices tied to his shoes with a flimsy cord! His socks are also bad. But really, the shoes are a terrible interperatation of....anything. Instead of a buckle it looks like some 'single wrap slice' cheese is just strapped on there with a shoe lace. This rotten plush is so bad that it's not going to fool anyone...so why even bother making it? It is a mystery. Discovered by Pichu97
Bad Eye Crazy Fake Shadow Plush Well they couldn't leave well enough alone with that awful Sonic above, so here comes 'eye crazy Shadow' possibly the scariest version of him yet, and for all the wrong, lame reasons. He's got those plastic 'eye inside of an eye' things going on, a dumb string frown, measly little ears, no fingers just puffy mittens, poorly done shrivelling shoes...and obviously awful eye-edge. Plus, what happened to the body? The doll can't even sit up right, it's just a folded, fake mess. This thing isn't going to fool anyone, and for how little effort was clearly expended upon it, why even bother to make it? Maybe so awful 'cheese shoes' up there won't get lonely. Discovered by Pichu97
Free Riders fake tee terrible
A design was attempted.
And it did not succeed! This tee turned out trashy when they decided to fake up some Free Riders content. They took the Sonic X graphic & mashed it in with the Free Riders logo. (Remember, all the Riders games have the characters in specific outfits or gear) They added some star bumpers & chose a non-plain tee in an attempt to spice things up. But it goes wrong again with the 'power up jars' they stole. Look what's in them: a kitty-face (badly done) and a cake? Those were never power ups. The result is confusing instead of cool, and, with the web site plastered right there, you know where NOT to shop because it's full of fakery. Discovered by Pichu97