How to Avoid Fake Sonic Merchandise Page 36
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 & Coloring Books: 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
DONT DOWNLOAD "Sonic Mods" for Minecraft or anything else - They'll use stolen assets, may not even contain Sonic content, and can break the main game.
A rash of Bogus Backpacks appears on Amazon in fall season 2021. Everyone knows a garbage quality backpack can ruin the year with fraying straps, uncomfortable fit and flimsy construction that doesn't last. Bookbags take a beating, so it's important to have REAL products that are quality so you don't end up wasting money.
These things?
They're a waste...but fortunately, they're fairly easy to spot the fake and get a lesson about bootleg avoidance at the same time.
The Sonic/Mario soccer pack is a single item but it falls for the usual issue "crop anything anywhere" and 'character cut-off'. Who wants an item that looks stupid with HALF of poor Donkey Kong? Tails also has an unfortunate ear just hanging out at the edge. Real products use real art composition so it doesn't look like a baby did a magazine clipping and plastered it onto something, like what's going on here.
*It is ok to publish about what fakers are doing wrong because it is proven that they don't read & also don't learn. But fans DO read, learn and avoid wasting money...so, time to post!
A fake Tech Deck mini skateboard? It seems so. This seems to be "X Boy" the...what? It's obviously gotten Knuckles' stolen face, but what kind of stupid animal is this supposed to be? There's little round ears in a bandanna ball-cap combo, but then look at the long tail. It isn't a bear, and it isn't a rat/mouse. It is a fake that looks bad!
It is holding what appears to be a snowboard (snowboard...on a skateboard...) and a phone? a gun? What's that wierd black square? What's curious though, is that whoever ripped this off or kit-bashed fan art apparently put a little trouble in to design it. Notice the shoes have a star-bumper theme, and the necklace creates Knuckles' 'white strip' that he has on the chest. Usually fake things only put forth the worst of efforts. But then that starts up the question if whoever is actually designing, ,why not just design an actual all-new and appealing character? Discovered by
This bootleg doll has a football-shaped head problem. The oddly shaped head then in turn messes with the ear position (almost on the sides, too small) and does nothing to save it from 'big body' which makes it look dumpy. The worst part is the upside-down eyes though. The shine dot makes no sense at the bottom. The other issue is the lean of the plastic eye chips, they're "goat style" where they're tilting with the eye white and it looks horrible. (Remember Toy Island did and ruined action figures)
The hands, arms, legs and shoes seem pretty normal though, for an early era. If they had actually bothered to do a good job with the head (notice you can't tell how the spike are...or even if he has any!) this might have actually been able to pass for a real item. It's very odd how things can get so close but then that last bit of work is never done and you get this wacky thing. Discovered by Pichu97/charlie
EVERYthing's wrong and dumb! This is an ad for Feisu Shoes which is in China, and they're clearly like...really bad at stealing things which then makes you think they'll probably also be really bad at shoes. The image gets worse the more you inspect it so...let's go. Did a baby trace this? Who would even approve this rotten art? Uganda Knuckles looks more like something than this. The up hand is missing most of the fingers, the down is missing the cuff, the back foot doesn't exist, the up arm extends from a flap and the down one from part of the spike. WHAT IS GOING ON with the far-eye? It's got a ring in the white part? Other ear is faced the wrong way. Why is Padme Amidala's Royal Naboo space ship up there? (It is) Also, there's a soda & a juice box character dancing around in the corner which makes less sense because this is trying to sell a shoe....yet they cannot even draw a shoe. 100% terrible. Photo by Panda21
Here's a phony figure bootleggers are trying to shill over at Amazon (who clearly didn't catch them at it yet...though they ought to be reported) This fake figure isn't super terrible because it is most likely based on one of the better/later Toys Island ones, however it is going wrong anyway. Look at the back of the head, what's with that extra...half a spike? It looks like scrap plastic is stuck on there. Then, of course, there's the loads of missing paint applications like for the shoe-heels, arms (which are now wrong/blue) and ears. The most obvious & worst one is that the whole mouth is missing so he looks really strange. Then, be sure to notice the cheap quality of belly dot paint so the color looks poorly over the blue. They mis-color the glove cuffs to yellow for some reason also. The body has likely been retooled so that the articulation would be excluded for the hips (on purpose--make it cheaper!)
However, instead of trying to be trendy they should do more research about making things that aren't super tacky and stupid looking. This is one of those popular "Fidget Bubble Poppers" flat rubber items that it seems every bargain basement seems to be spamming. You can have whole seconds worth of fun when you...press the domes down so that they become domes in the other direction! Not wow! The goal of these things are to 'replicate the feel of popping bubble wrap' which none of them particularly do but ok whatever sort-of-sensation-toy. It's always listed as 'fidget' but really thing thing is probably like 5 to 8 inches tall and you can't carry it with you because it's just a big flappy flat noodly rubber piece.
All practicality aside...it's an immediate red-flag for fakery because why is Sonic 5 different tacky non-matching colors? The domes are in nonsense places (his eye) and the colors confound the design. Otherwise though, the actual cut out/line work of it is ok because it is a direct steal off some stock art & then the 'bubble dots'
These are 12 bogus 'mini masks for party'. Why do you need mini masks at a party? Why waste felt on these fabricated fabric fakes? Who knows, but they all look like trash! What's interesting is their dudly design which...some unfortunate person had to do (and mess up at). Normally bootleggers just steal art and try to clone it, but this isn't the case. They've clearly made mutant versions of all the character heads to fit the stupid eye-holes and wrong-proportions for the kiddie masks.
You can see sorta-Sonic, tiny-spike Knuckles, giant lower face Tails, wrong colors Eggman (slightly fretful!), a bizzarre attempt at...Sally??, not at all Sticks, lazy Silver, stupid bent down Shadow, angry Amy with devil ear horns, Rouge the dog-proportions face, lazy Cream and blobby fat face Blaze. None of these are any good, but they are on Amazon because they don't police the site very well at all and let trash on it.
This is a set of phony straws that use cruddy character art and then they steal a fan character to rip people off more, just for 'good' measure. You get somewhat poorly drawn Mighty, fretful stupid looking Tails, squash-head Sonic, strangely traced Knuckles, some poor sap's fanchar, and startled looking Ray.
While nasty art and fakery are of course concerns, the REAL concern here is to NOT BUY anything bootleg concerning drinkwear. First of all, you can't clean the twisty part effectivly so bacteria will build up and make kids sick. Then, the straws and characters can be made of anything. Including NON-food-safe materials or stuff with harmful chemicals like BPA or nasty plastics/paint. Fake stuff has 0 quality control and they don't care about health or safety. Stay away!
This is a set of 5 phony paper sacks for...some reason. I guess they are to be party favor type bags, though they're larger than those are traditionally. They're the usual format of a rectangle flat bottom back with white twist carry handles. Each has a red/white stripe base and borderless character face for the art. (To make the bag edges their head edges which is stupid because nobody's head is a rectangle and it just looks worse)
You get aggrivated Shadow, mis-traced Sonic, huge lower-face tiny eyes Kunuckles, traced Tails but where's his nose? and worst of all Amy with her ears mutated into the bag corners. These are boring and they don't look good.
Another misrable mascot inspired by a tacky shag carpet and crafted by people who don't know what Sonic is supposed to look like. This is obviously based on 'modifying' (more like mutating...) a dog costume because of the strange nose and terrible lower face area. The ears are just a mash of hairy fabric and...does it even have head spikes? Why are the shoes so long? What's up with the scrunching, slouching shoulders and baggy arms? Nothing about this costume is any good! Photo discovered by Pichu97/Charlie
It is indeed...this "Garfield Sonic Mug" isn't trying to fool anyone. It's clearly a faked up item done for a laugh when it combines the worlds' slowest cat with the worlds' fastest hedgehog...by...apparently coloring Garfield blue and replacing his feet with Sonic's shoes. (and adding some spikes) But why a mug? Who knows!
This one just goes right into the super odd things that didn't really need to exist but do now because people are strange.
Something that makes kids cry on Christmas or ruins holidays / birthdays. Those types are in with the worst because being disapointed at a young age, for your 'gift' is very terrible. Moreso than just an adult who can return something, and wasn't counting on it because they have no money other than allowance or something.
This is particularly dirty.
Notice how all the figures are facing away in all of their photos to trick the Sega lawyer watchers (they hope) and the windows on the box are strategically opened to hide the stolen character artwork faces too. Notice also that "Sonic" isn't anywhere on the branding, but the listing for it on Amazon mentions all the character names in print.
These losers PAID FOR A VIDEO of a kid opening this on Amazon and then MADE AMAZON REPLACE THE REAL CALENDER with this. There IS a real Sonic Advent for 2022 (this isn't it) but you had to go 5 PAGES DEEP in Amazon search results for "Sonic the hedgehog advent" to even find the official one...while this piece of utter garbage has a featured video and appears at the top of every single search page.
How is Amazon letting these jerks get away with this?
Everybody's been a bit cross with them since the 'wacky alphabet' off-brands of things that weren't copyrighted (like a wrench or a space heater) started popping up but do they have any control what-so-ever? It seems not. You just know this thing is going to trick so many parents and grand-parents into giving this trash to a child this holiday season.
The stuff is all awful and irrelevent, of course.
You've got a stolen Lego Reindeer they took from something else, random Santa things, Shadow but he's not even colored properly, Sonic & Knuckles but they're both Boom, and so is the Robotnick and then a 2nd Sonic because they don't care. The figures are those super low quality ones too, from the set that has the Werehog in it quite often. The other doors (not all items shown) have only unbranded trash they picked out of the dumpster to make this as cheap as possible, naturally.
Figures that don't even do anything, a majority of non-Sonic stuff, and just cheap trash all around is beyond the grinchy thing to do, but fakers don't care. Avoid this thing at all costs and maybe rat it out / report it to Amazon for bootlegging.