How to Avoid Fake Sonic Merchandise Page 30
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. Bootleg Avoidance HUB Page
It's described as a 'red resin', but it highly unlikely to be made of resin because resin is hard but also fragile when it is thin. Something like this would easily snap. More likely it's some transparent red plastic. But why does it exist? It's just super strange! Let's begin the analysis...
First off the head is one of the old Toy Island Sonics, the one where he was looking up from the "X" flipper thing. (Probably why it doesn't fit on the body at all, giving it a super long wierd looking neck) Notice that the ear interiors are black too. Then we've got the Boom bandanna, hinting that it's a Boom body but did any of those have a swivel waist? And then the bandanna is yellow & not brown. The arms have no elbow joint...and who's gauntlets are those? (and why) Next there's transparent red shoes but yellow socks. And it's big too! Look at the battery there for scale. Just for good measure, someone's given him a strange sword. This thing is just a long list of mis-matched wackyness. Photo discovered by BagelOfTime
However, this unpopular trash no matter what is a terrible rendition of modern (note the red eyes) Super NOT Sonic. Look how fat, blobby and round the body is. The edges are wide & the belly dot is small. He also has super short legs and arms. The gloves have odd, large cone like cuffs. Where are his spikes? Why is the head so spherical? Where are his ears? No one knows because they don't care about this fake. Sure it has the details like properly done shoes with buckles, normal coloring & an actual ok (ish) expression...but the general over-all bad construction messes it up. Photo discovered by Pichu97/Charlie
DONT try a blue one instead! It's still no good. This is the same thing as that stupid blue 'acryllic' (its not) figure above, but this time the whole thing is cast in a semi-transparent blue material. This means the shoes are blue too, because it is (always in both instances) too lazy to paint the shoes right.
This time though, you can see what kind of package the figure comes in. Packaging is generally uncommon for fakes because it adds another layer of expense to the item. However, in this case the packagin is wrong too, the figure is attempting to be either Boom or Modern, but it uses the classic logo and some stolen 'classic-like' poor CG of a Sonic face. Then, they applied trashy filters to it to change the color. Notice that the weapon (whatever it is) DOES come with the figure. It's generally expensive too, at over 10 dollars. Photo discovered by BagelOfTime
This bogus doll has a stupid looking case of 'big body', but it's made extra-bad looking by the overly small belly dot. Then, it's clear there was some confusion going on when you see the wierd cave-man bad 'brow' thing that's going on. It somehow goes across the whole upper part of his forehead? Skipping the eye divider area? That just looks odd. Next, the eyes aren't evenly placed, one's much lower & listing off at an angle. The nose is big, the ears are wilted and it's copped that lame "cone finger" poorly hand design. Look how far apart the legs are spaced too. This dumb doll is just a phony wreck of bad features. Discovered by Pichu97/Charlie
This very boxy plush is a phony Shadow. However, at a glance, this isn't terrible. It would certainly fool many people if it appeared in a UFO catcher / prize machine. He's very boxy, short & compressed. The details are all there (oddly enough) but upon close inspection you start to see things wrong with him. First, the ears are on the sides of the head, their position is totally wrong. The eyes have the shine-dot at the bottom (why???) The white chest fur piece is wrongly shaped, the glove cuffs are all ridden up the arms because they didn't bother to sew them on. He also only has 3 fingers per hand & a bizzarre flappy 'eye ridge'.
Some company has made a useless app that...what, fakely gives you phone calls from famous characters? Why? But, as a part of the usual tricks, they choose Sonic to headline things because he's so famous. Also naturally, they use stolen art, this time from a fan Mugi Mikey to build their game/app/whatever you'd call this. No one's off limits from rip-off artists (sadly).
As with any app, always look for Sega copyrights & other signs of official items before buying / downloading. Unlike with a phony plush, a bogus app can actually wreck things on your device so you want to stay safe & far from fakery. Discovered by Clintendo
Sometimes there's a fake of it. In this case, this disgusting doll is a fake off of the "News Power" plushes that were sold in China. (Made in China for China audience in the 1990s) Naturally the ripper-offers botch up the pattern with their cheap tactics...and so we get this frightening fake. The body & legs are too fat and short, there's only 3 fingers per hand, the nose is mutating, the head is just oddly shaped & they've totally botched the 'brow' thing into a square. What's worst is where the plastic eye chips are applied (in a wall-eyed-too-far format) and that they're way too small. This makes the doll just a sad disaster that would likely frighten kids. Discovered by Pichu97/Charlie
Whoever made this rotten rip-off had (probably) some ancient Amy pattern laying around that was no good, so they tried to hide it by throwing on her modern dress. It didn't help. As you can see this doll has the classic black eyes, & classic 'shoes' (It's only a feeble attempt at her classic sneakers) but the simpler modern dress. Also note the 3 fingers which guarentees this is a bogus item. Her ufly flappy and wrong spikes/bangs don't help anything.
The monkey-like giant mouth and big nose are also messing up even more. Notice the key ring though...with it's size you can tell that this is a small doll. Rarely is a fake this rampant with rotten errors but...here it goes. Discovered by Pichu97/Charlie
Sonic's head is shaped almost exactly like an egg. The ears are way too low on the sides of the head...and where are the spikes? You can't even see an indicator/hint in the shadow cast behind the doll...so where are they? What makes it stranger is that the fabric looks like the same plush/fuzzy quality as some normal plushes use. The whole thing isn't un-quality, just the pattern is super strange. Also note that the black plastic eye pieces have been sewn on upside-down, with the shine-dot on the bottom. No offical plush will do this.
This is likely to be a 'stolen pattern' plush ripped off of a normal company & altered a bit somewhere along the line. The arms are too short, there's a bit of big-body going on...but the shoes & gloves are a fine/normal size and shape. This one is a bit of a puzzler. Discovered by Pichu97/Charlie
What does it mean? The ugly, stupid 'red Sonic' character is saying "Strike One" in a speech bubble. (More like 3 strikes, just throw this thing out in the bin) Written at the bottom is "Cal Dist 62 F.V.S.L.L." ) Or maybe one of them's an I with poorly font.
Changing a character's color doesn't mean you didn't steal it! This thing is a rip off, no-matter which organization it's for. They have also changed the shoes & did a worse job with the wilted ears, giant mouth and...what happened to one of the spikes? It's a mystery that some organization big enough to brand their stuff and pay for pins would steal Sonic graphics & uglify them. What is Cal Dist 62? Photo by ClintonPOW
How about a Bootlego, because that's what these things are! First seeing Sonic, Shadow...and even Super Sonic you can be like "hmm, maybe it's ok" and then you get....Knuckles the red hedgehog. NOPE. Clearly, some Chinese company is at it again, giving the same stolen hedgehog head to their generic little mini-fig-fake bodies & adding a 'gold ring' to try and trick people. While they did bother with Knuckles' shoe colors (surprising) and Shadow's frown....the generic heads are an insta-deal breaker faker. Discovered by ClintonPOW
This small, noodle-nosed ugly Sonic plush isn't constructed very well, but the first give-away that it's a phony is that it only has 3 fingers on each hand. NO official plush EVER has the wrong amount of fingers. Sega wouldn't sign-off on something so obvious/inaccurate. However, they're trying to be extra tricky as they've stolen a paper tag/art to use to try and trick people. Look at the checkered border there...it's VERY similar to the Caltoy tag that is official. This tag-copy practice is more common around the Sonic X era, but it did happen classically as well. His shoe soles & borders are black as well (which they never were) & the eye plastic pieces are on upside down. The shabby socks & poor glove cuffs, plus bad sculpting all lead this fake into ugly doll territory. Photo by
And this time they're all faked up by the same nasty company. Each one has poorly done glove cuffs that just slide up the arm or leg/sock and look bad. Sonic has the upside-down eye-shines (again) & oversized lower face plus badly placed ears and spikes. The Tails has been seen before (by itself) it has a huge lower face that's spread out
Instead of those 'zillion in 1' carts, or the usual portable system fakery, this is a bootleg Genesis cartridge of JUST Sonic 2. So what's the problem? Chinese bootleggers got so hype for the S2 release, they ripped off a rom of the early build of the game, put it on here, stole the art from a magazine & pasted it on too, then sold it. The attempt was to capitalize on the hype and say they 'somehow got the game early' and get people to buy it. Well: disapointment would ensue because early builds have lots of problems that aren't worked out yet, and would likely only serve to spoil the game for a future, real play-through, or take up money that could be better spent on the real game, once it released.
Because here comes "Corn Flakes" the super generic mascot for Zolote foods....Corn Flakes in Sugar Glazing. This is another one of those "They didn't steal him but whatever it is shares too many elements". In this case it's a blue hedgehog character....with green eyes....and white gloves...who has beige arms/face. However, it also goes to show how different you can make something from Sonic while still ripping off elements on purpose to give the character familiarity. This hedgehog is more realistic with a long snoot, whisker dots, many individual spikes and 2 eyes.
He's almost NOT a bootleg because it's not directly trying to fool people into thinking this is Sonic Cereal....but he's too similar to just ignore all the elements of. "Corn Flakes, more like Corn FAKES amirite" Photo discovered by BlueEyedJoe
It's this ugly stupid fake doll and it's surely "flipping the bird" / doing the middle finger. This stupid Sonic fake is offensive in more ways than one though, as it has the usual nasty flaws like lack of glove cuffs, blue arms because no one is paying attention, big nose that's the wrong shape, lazy pattern bad eyes, (randomly some embroidered eyebrows?) and a flat ugly head shape.
But he has an extra feature...that contributes to the badness. A neck! Sonic isn't supposed to have a neck....and it's actually pretty odd when you think about it. He should actually look better if he has one, because it's anatomical/logical but....he never does. Rarely when something puts his head too high (action figure/etc) that's official, it also does not look good. But why? It is a mystery.
And also it is a mystery how this offensive garbage ever got made. Who would want a doll that flips them off? Photo discovered by Pichu97/Charlie
Fake Fur Suits are on the prowl again, looking to fleece fans and furries alike. While Sonic characters aren't actually furries (They're too abstract to particularly fit the definition) mascot suits are close enough to draw the attention of bootleg companies, especially in China.
They are up to nefarious tricks to fool fans (of anything) into buying ugly, cheap & lame suits often with stolen patterns and inferior workmanship. If you know anything about a furry fandom, it is that it is generally full of very industrious individuals who can get really devoted to their craft of fursuiting. Ripping these folks off is terrible, and stealing their photos (of their good suits) to trick people is also awful.
This videos explain more about what's going on Avoid DHGate Fursuits & Stolen Photos
*Video has swears
It should also be noted that fursuits are generally "That Person", so it's not fair to copy them, it's like a ripoff or a clone. Avoiding listings/sales sites such as these is super necisary because you DONT get what you pay for. When you try to save money, you WASTE ALL the money because you end up hating what you get because it's cheap and looks nothing like the stolen photo they use to list it...or even have a video they ripped off.
Buyer Beware video found by CrystalSonicFan