Sonic the Hedgehog
For the person who played on a Mega Drive growing up and never really got better. The one who is no doubt humming the Green Hill Zone jingle in their head as they read this. The one who has strong feelings about which period of the games were best and will explain those feelings to you at great length if you allow it. This is for them. For the collector who would deny being a collector yet seems to find more stuff. The one whose eyes will do that involuntary thing when they see that exact tone of blue.
Lots of time was spent on this. Sonic merchandise exists in mind-boggling amounts and so so much of it is utter garbage, like any licensed product produced by somebody who just happens to own a factory. We didn’t want any of that stuff. What we wanted was items that a Sonic nerd would want to own, not just something they were given and stuck on a shelf. There’s a massive difference between loving something and tolerating it as a gift and we’ve tried our best to keep this on the side of the former.
Part of this will speak to fans of the classic games who have bold opinions about Sonic Adventure. Other pieces will resonate with those who jumped in later, through the films, spin-offs, or were just indoctrinated by years of the mascot being shoved under their collective noses. Sonic has a way of permeating generations without fading in the process. An older fan and a kid can get equally excited about the character and that’s a rare thing for a gift.
The selection here is small on purpose. We didn’t want to fill it up with rubbish to bump up the number of products. Every single thing you see was personally curated by us based on one question; would we give this to a friend. If we had to convince ourselves to include something, it didn’t make the cut. This is the list we would send a friend who asked us for it. Nothing more or less.