But that doesn't mean they're not interesting! USA Random Items overflows onto the fourth page. As usual, things on these pages are subject to change or move as more catagories are created.
Sonic Random Items 4 * Sonic Random 5 *
You can get this slightly different expressions Sonic, determined looking but wrong spikes Super Sonic, Knuckles, and cheerful Tails. Each foam head is 15 dollars, but is supposedly fairly large. (Still seems costly for just a head that doesn't really do anything.)
Why did they let Super Sonic with wrong spikes? The bottom ones MAY be abled up a bit but the top one sure isn't changed enough. Content Knuckles is an interesting choice also, he's rarely depicted classically as anything other than somewhat frowning. This is a factory photo/turn around pending.
Now, "Sonic is full of rings" can be a literal thing, as it's like a snowglobe with shaker glitter in there. He's still stretchy/squishy toy. It comes in this fancy pixel art Green Hill Zone box, with the SDCC exclusive labeling on there.
It's a fun idea that they seem to have executed well. The box and figure clearly have thought put into it an it is a good collectible, but it will likely be rare. This is a factory photo.
Well ok then. Why should tiles be collected? Why are they in slime? They don't actually do anything other than be unseen when buried in the opaque colored slime that is inside the clear acrylic box with a lid. There are going to be 10 of them on wave 1, and...as usual with rather gimmicky things (and JustToys itself) they're blind boxed. Each one will have a character face portrait on a background.
Unless these are super duper cheap somehow, I don't see them doing well. Tiles don't do anything, they're not even a magnet for your fridge. Slime is heavy which makes them pay more to ship these to the store they want them in. Blindboxing is expected of something like this but also annoying because you can't trade them as nobody wants "used slime" (bacteria goes in there whether you see it or not) and having to clean the tiles to trade them? Who knows.
What's also not known is how well these are going to hold up to squishing and also aging. Metallic paints (used to) not hold up too well on non very-hard surfaces, so it's a bit unusual to see Squish Me going straight for the metallics for a toy like this. Hopefully they have figured out something new. This is a factory photo
And...it appears to be proof that companies CAN change things between prototype and final release. It's seen here with the retail box it will come in, and how it looks ready to play. The gimmick here is that it's a launching toy that uses helicopter motion to fly across the room. You pull that anchor-shaped thing on the side, which spins the top very quickly winding up the toy before releasing it to spin away. (It is a very old toy gimmick, and does not require batteries)
Once you head on over to SonicGear Prototypes page, you can see how bad and fake it originally looked. They had mixed modern/classic things, the Tails was horribly mutant with gummy hotdog arms, and it was just sad. Now, it looks much better, the Tails is proportional enough (has to have huge tails to actually fly/but that's part of the gimmick) everything is classic looking, and they fixed the box. Did you catch their errors though? They never fixed Sonic's blue arms OR Tails white ears.
Hopefully time & engineering has cured "string tangle" on toys like this. The pull string of old ones could tangle up within the toy somehow & make it permanently never work again. See the Burger King Meal Toy launcher for instances of that here at Gear. (This is not Sonic's first pull n' fly)
Also how is this toy back on the market again? If you remember there used to be a line for girls called Sky Dancers where fairy ballerinas would launch off of very elaborate sculpted stands like this with foam 'wings' sculpted to their arms & twirl through your room. However, they actually got a 'banned list' because somehow kids were shooting them at each other with the intent to stab. It caused nightmares for Ebay sellers because "list a lovely vintage toy gets you banned" as it was such an unsuspecting item to get on such a government list. Maybe technology of some sort makes this safer?
Toys sure do have interesting histories.
Most Christmas tree ornaments used to be thin, brightly colored glass items in various shapes (obviously balls, pears, points, etc) decorated with layers of color or various other shiny things. The flat round shape is traditional too, but here, it's been turned into a shiny gold Sonic ring. It has modern Sonic on one side, and a red star (for the red star ring collectible thing from games) on the other. He is somewhat simplified because of how glass can be created as this hollow form thing. It still looks good, and is interesting to see a very old art getting a modern Sonic treatment. This is a Hallmark 2023 item, price pending finding out what it is.
This year, their figural ornament is rolling classic Sonic. He's in his 'curled' pose before the sprite changes to the 'sphere' for his rolling animation. It had been done as stock art before, but it translates well into 3D because whoever they have either sculpting this or taking it from the 3D model in games did quite well.
Hopefully this is made of sturdy stuff/not fragile like a typical ornament. It is likely to be somewhat costly, as Hallmark exclusives usually are, expect about 20 dollars in 2023. (Do not miss this during the year if you want it, the price always goes up later) This is Hallmark's factory photo.