Mutant Gear now irritates even more people with a 8th page of supid looking dolls, mutant merch and other lame items made in Sonic's name. Bad design, rotten quality, poor products, and terrible likenesses will abound. Help stamp out this bad junk by refusing to buy it! Remember: when mutant makers don't get money, they won't make more mutants. However, when you don't have it, you can come here to make fun of it!
GE brings a surprise to 2020 by making Sonic Spheres. But why? Sonic & co all are able to roll up into a ball for spin attacks in the video game,
Here's a strange idea from Kid Robot's plush line, the Plastic Face Plush. (Also plastic hands and plastic shoes) You can see what they're going for in the principal of the idea: use good and accurate plastic sculpting to make the difficult parts of the doll that are usually poorly done/costly on other dolls. By making the feet, hands and face from plastic, you'll get the right shape easily every time, no patterns required. (This can work on some things! It is not impossible or a bad idea)
However...it is their execution of it that lands this guy here onto mutant gear.
This is at Target in summer 2022
First their plastic mash-up (above) and now they try their fumbling hand at Phunny Plush Super Sonic aaaand they don't succeed.
The "Phunny" plush are meant to be 'chibi' little big-heads style simplified renditions of the characters (so like a 'phunny cartoon' version) However, their Super Sonic misses the mark. What's up with the eye dots going OVER the exterior of the eye? None of the others do this and it just looks wrong and stupid. Also, why is one shoe heel pointy? (They didn't sew it right) Then, the head shape is just terrible, the lower face/jaw area is somehow ultra wide and mutant. Then the head is like bizzarrly shaped. Yes it's supposed to be a 'flattened' version but like in what way does this resemble the head at all other than 'it's yellow'? The dumpy body and arms that appear to be growing out of the base of the head don't help this dumb thing any either.
(Though this thing looks close enough to those white bean creatures that it could be poking at the copyright...)
But this is 2 bad ideas that look bad together!
Mr Potatohead, in a flailing effort to stay relevent in the time of video games, creates a new line, "PopTaters" where the brand is dressed up as a pop culture thing and repackaged. It's NOT a coincidence with FunkoPOP, having 'pop' in the title to be popular and evoke the more popular brand.
So why did it go wrong?
Because it does not look like EITHER Mr. Potatohead OR Sonic. Having an actual Mr Potatohead where he's got a cute little Sonic costume and comes with some snap on accessories (Remember PH was a switch n' mix n' match toy to create funny looks.)
It looks like a fall guy complete with non-potato but bean shape, the '2 halves' costume furthers it. Then, the eyes aren't Mr. Potato eyes, they're wierd (as even evidenced by the logo) It's like something trying to be Sonic but just be ugly and you can't even play with him like the original intent. It's neither Sonic nor Mr., and so it lands on Mutant Gear for missing the mark.
Yes movie stuff is supposed to be quarantined onto its own section of Gear (because Movie Sonic/etc is different) But this thing is just TOO mutant and TOO creepy to just land on the movie page. Movie Sonic is...whatever enough, but mutating him into a tombstone shaped back pack with wierd shrivelled gremlin arms is way worse? The face with the big eyebrows is creepy too as it looks like it's rising out of a mishapen carpet that is the backpack background. Having large bizzarre features like off-angled spikes and ears growing out of the wrongly shaped 'head' area doesn't help. Neither do the odd flat clown like shoes and pointy square base of the 'body'. It's a frankenstein jumble of parts! And it costs 22 dollars to frighten away all your friends with this absurd junk of a school bag. It should just go back to design school! (Not regular school because literally everyone will make fun of this)
Small plush have been done before and done better, so their step into the game is a faulty one, starting with this Super (stupor) Sonic 'doll'. Like who thought this was a good idea? It's supposed to be like "chibi and cute little toy" but it's just...totally not.
The first/worst is the horrible face, the eyes have no highlight/shine dot so it has an awful blank/dead look, the eye white area is too small for the ugly sphere head, and the scowly expression doesn't help.
The body just makes the whole thing scream low quality poor design. No legs, the shoes are fused with the socks/detail-free and the arms are flat flaps. Simplification CAN work but this is a horrible example of it where it just looks so low-effort, cheap and rotten. There's nothing cute or cool about this dumb doll. And because it is Hallmark, it's probably expensive. Hopefully this line goes away.
What are these awful things? Well, besides a bad stupid idea...they're GooJitZu, the stretchy/gel figure maker's poorest idea: make a squishy top car out of characters. And then, apparently do the worst job possible at it.
These nasty things try to form the character heads into 'roughly' car shapes and fail at absolutely every step of the way. They're like awful zombie dogs with huge snouts, or bizzarre clipping of half a character head through the stupidest car ever made. And what's up with the art? The Sonic car is somehow extremely long? Hopefully these dumb things never see the light of day because they're offensive to the fandom. This is a toy show photo and it needs to go in the bin. Discovered by Taaron
UGH, what is it with cursed cars lately? Now Hotwheels is in on the ugly with these 'character cars' that are...well pretty much terrible. How hard is it to take a cool vehicle and then give it a character theme? Not MASH the character and car together into a disgusting abomination looking nonsense that will probably scare kids.
The Tails car fairs a bit better because it is more abstract but more toddler-stupid looking. Of course a propeller on top for the 'tails', tiny wheels (but only one is red) and it's a little-tikes looking boxy-nonsense type car. The 'eye windshield' is still going on, but it's more abstract, and the interior is black. Like this one doesn't have as much 'cursed horror' about it, but it's still pretty dumb. Who approved this nonsense?
This golf club head cover is an example of that. For uh, some...golfing-reasons...you should cover the heads of the golf clubs. Of course, after about 1 minute of doing that, people began thinking of fun ways to do it with branded items, goofy gags, ads, and fan stuff. Because golf is a big deal in Japan too, and they like plush, they combine a Sonic doll with a club cover.
But...you can see where the problem is here...perhaps they didn't consider hard enough what the poor thing looks like when mounted on the club or how exactly you jam the club head into the doll. It's...not a good look.
The doll itself though is ok, sure it has 'big body' but as a storage-doll, it was going to. The construction seems fine otherwise.
*Notice the nails!
Look at the model woman's fingers, they have bothered to give her Sonic themed nails as she applies the doll. It's a nice detail.
This is the "Sonic Plush Scrunchie" which is a thick cloth tie for your hair. And...just like...why? This is just bizzarre! It's NEVER going to look good? It's incorrectly colored? Where are these ideas even coming from!
So it's a blue/tan loop with strange micro shoes tacked on, tiny gloves, and a flattened classic 'cuties' Sonic face at the top. The hair goes through the giant hole in the body, and then it's twisted around. It's going to be a hodge-podge of Sonic features with a face at the top. Also notice that the lower face is white, not beige while they clearly did have beige fabric so it doesn't look right/he's too pale. The tops of the shoes also seem to be gray making them look like strange sandwiches? There's absolutely not much that makes sense about this thing, and it would be immidetaly suspected as a phony, but it's being sold in stores at retail in Hot Topic in 2024. Strange!