An Extensive Look At Bootleg Sonic The Hedgehog Toys & Merchandise

[Music] it's almost like a law now whenever there's a popular franchise imitators will always be there to produce knockoff products to cash in and the Sonic the Hedgehog series is absolutely no different that's right today we'll be diving into the seedy underbelly of Sonic merchandise bootleg sonic products while I've covered certain bootlegs in the past I've never focused an entire video on the subject until now and I'm not just gonna be talking about figures or plushies now in this video I'm gonna be going over as many types of bootleg Sonic merchandise as I can find unlicensed sonic products come in many shapes and sizes you can slap Sonic's face on anything and people will buy it right we've got figures plushies CDs clothing backpacks and more if there's something inherently fascinating about unlicensed merchandise seeing knockoffs of your favorite characters and brands is always interesting and it leads to wacky humorous or sometimes even cool results when a group doesn't have to hold themselves to a license standards anything's possible and that's what makes these interesting I'm sure a ton of you are already familiar with bootleg products but in case you aren't here's the rundown a bootleg product is a piece of merchandise made in the likeness of a property without the blessings of the license holders in hopes of tricking fans of said property into buying it basically taking advantage of a popular series without going through the trouble of getting the license if it's popular there's bound to be unlicensed merchandise made of it and lemme tell ya Sonic's got its fair share of knock-offs many of these have become infamous for just how bizarre they are so it's about time I pay tribute to them so with all of that said let's talk about the world of bootleg Sonic the Hedgehog merchandise [Music] [Applause] I'd be crazy to make a video on bootlegs Sonic merchandise and not start with the classics I'm talking the granddaddy's of Sonic knockoffs the ones everyone knows and remembers oh is so dearly let's start with one of the most famous Sonic bootlegs this backpack this beautiful Harry Potter Obama Sonic backpack this image has haunted me ever since it popped up in early 2010 I remember first seeing it on an old knockoff products blog and it has perplexed me ever since this is a classic bootleg you've got the stolen incorrectly coloured art the mismatch of licenses is the random name in this case assumingly in the likeness of Barack Obama the fact that this thing was real and existed at some point is crazy enough but here's the thing I've only been able to find a single image of this to my knowledge no other images of it have ever shown up online who made this was it just some custom backpack shop why is the design so oddly specific why does this off-colored sonic have a 10 on his stomach could they really not have been bothered to even attempt to color him correctly what's the deal with the clipart of the flowers here I've seen other questionable bootleg backpacks but nothing this absurd the origins of this thing are truly a mystery I mean we can assume that was made no earlier than 2008 as that's the year Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States which I assume is why the name is here I don't get the connection to Harry Potter though though that series is very commonly used in fake products so it fits the earliest posts I can find what this image have no source but were posted in early February 2010 so the image must have appeared online sometime around then but again I'm not sure there are a ton of excellent bootleg merch blogs so chances are it was sent into one of those in early 2010 and became popular from there though I'm not sure for certain the thing that makes a lot of the products we'll be looking at today interesting is the mystery behind them why was this made who made it could we still find it today many bootlegs are made in very small quantities to make a quick buck making it really hard to track down their origins years later if you happen to know anything more regarding the history of this elusive backpack I'd love to hear it though I fear that maybe lost a time as for other classic bootlegs we've got stuff like this strange-looking sonic clock which takes at scope from a promotional sonic money box figure because of course it does if there is also all of the bootleg products that have questionably sonic esque mascots like this pack of ravioli or these Jojo chips and we all know our classic friendo Gorky probably one of the objectively best sonic ripoffs I'll get more into these random sonic art knock-offs later but for now let's start looking at specific examples of bootleg sets such as figures and plushies [Music] one category of bootleg merch that personally gets me is the type of bootleg that simply knocks off existing figure molds or plush patterns as there is nothing more soul-crushing than seeing official figures or plushies be completely obliterated by bootleggers and in many cases it completely ruins the legacy and value of the original piece for example do you recognize this set of sonic figures you do okay let me ask you this do you know who made these sonic figures did you know that there was a company named first four figures well if you didn't don't worry they're practically in the public domain at this point this set of six mini figures were originally designed about the company first four figures and were released in 2010 at the time if they were the best set of little figurines of the classic designs of Sonic and Friends and people loved them so much in fact that in 2011 for the 20th anniversary the company jazz words would obtain the rights to distribute these figures under their Sonic through time line and through that they were released not just in the UK but in stores in America as well if they would continue to be released for years and you can still find the original releases fairly easily today well somewhere in that timeline some bootleggers got a hold of the figures and started producing cheap knockoffs of them and they've never looked back since seriously for as long as I can remember if you look up Sonic figure on eBay there'll be an endless amount of listings for these guys coming from China and at first the fakes looked pretty alright but they've slowly been degrading over time first Sonic's nose stopped being painted then the colors started to look off and now the paint jobs have just been completely destroyed this is really sad because these used to be a great set of sonic figures and sure the original still exists and are still really good but nowadays I just can't look at them without thinking about how there's probably a landfill out there full of nothing but cyan peach know as Sonic figures I swear when the heat death of the universe happens in all of mankind's history is erased there will still be factories producing these bootlegs some bootleggers of these figures have even gotten crafty and released them in their own unique boxes take this release for example which packages them in Sonic mania packaging they were pretty close to making these look alright but they accidentally used artwork from the sonic stadiums big the cat in Sonic mania April Fool's Day joke and then of course we have the incredible Sonic Colors release of these you know what yeah I like these figures but I really they looked more like this thankfully these exists to fill that void I guess some bootleg company out there must have saw these and thought yeah these are good and all but we want our tails figure to look like this I guess they took the Sonic Colors branding a little too seriously the packaging on these is amazing we've got the colors logo of course but these renders are all over the place a majority of them are from Sonic Heroes but then we've got this Mario and Sonic 2010 render of Amy and none of these are from colors well at least these are true to the game if the first four figures set are the most fake Sonic figures then the popco and global holdings Mario figure line would be that for Mario these figures originally released by banpresto in Japan have been produced modified and destroyed by bootleggers for years they've transformed the original scopes made new characters and done some truly unspeakable things one of my favorite boot like Mario figures in this style would be this peach figure it already looks weird enough on its own but this figure is actually based off of this piece of peach fan art these bootleggers referenced fan art while sculpting this figure that's so weird I mean they got the pose right but the face totally ruins it why do I bring all this up though well the fellas over at the bootleg mario figure Factory must have thought yeah we need a sonic figure he needs to be a part of this and with that the creation of the man I affectionately referred to as snoot boy was made why well uh he may look fine from the front but let me tell you he looks a legendary from the side this guy started showing up sometime in 2017 and he comes in a box based off of the packaging of the global holdings release of the Mario super sized figures but with a sonic twist of course all of the renders have been replaced with sonic ones and the Super Mario logo has been replaced with oh come on the logo for the fan game sonic World bootleggers have this tendency to not just steel companies ip's but fan work as well personally I'd be flattered if a bootleg company thought my fan art was good enough to include on their phony products but still that's almost more insulting than making a knockoff figure itself with that said though the box still has the global holdings logo and even the official Nintendo seal hi Am I I'm sure that's genuine I love the back of this Sonic's box because for the mario figures they would show other characters you can find in the range however this sonic is the only Sonic figure these bootleggers made so the Tails and Knuckles advertised on the back sadly don't actually exist with that said though recently these alternate colored Sonic's have started showing up now you can get snoot - boy in four flavors sonic shadow red sonic and yellow sonic what more could a man want the packaging for this release seems to be more of the same though and also new to the global holdings sonic World Figure ranges Pikachu yep if they went through the trouble of customizing the box to be around Sonic but not for Pokemon so this bootleg Pikachu figure comes in a boxed out after a Sonic fan game what a world we live in it's pretty clear that this guy sculpt is taken from the first four figures Sonic or at least it's based off it but they did make the attempt to add the details a modern sonic it doesn't exactly look too good but fear not if snute boy isn't doing it for you a new version of the figure has started showing up he's in a similarly styled box but has a completely unique sculpt and honestly it doesn't look too bad I kind of like the proportions he's got going on I never buy it but it's a much better effort than this guy the box has been slightly updated too for example and now has new renders and on the back it still advertises the non-existent Tails and Knuckles but the designers decided to give them a bit of character sonic says hey tail says oops as he is known to say and knuckles characteristically says what the maybe he's just saying that because once again these figures don't exist but a shadow variant of the sonic sure does you just gotta wonder who's making this stuff who sculpted this sonic who designed this packaging is a group effort or just one guy will probably never know the Jazwares sonic line was one of the most influential and popular sonic figure lines of all time so naturally it had its fair share of ripoffs this set of six fake jaws were styled figures started showing up sometime in the early 2010's and includes figures of shadow Tails knuckles silver werehog and uh sonic most bootleggers repaint their sonic scope to make shadow but this time they've used shadow to make sonic and for that not only did they make shadow blue but a translucent blue thankfully these Jazwares bootlegs didn't sell too well and they stopped being made not too long after their production started well that's what I would have said if they didn't start popping up again recently these guys were gone for years but oh boy are they back now with the sonic brand being more popular now thanks to games like Sonic mania sonic bootlegs have been showing up more and more and someone must have realized hey we've got these scopes in the back maybe we should start making them again and they're getting the full treatment bootleggers have given these their own boxes with more stolen fan art including this one piece of Sonic with a Gorky the green bootleg sonic found on that pickles jar I don't know if they intended on referencing a bootleg product on their own bootleg product but that's way too perfect a lot of different versions of these fake Jazwares figures have started showing up it almost seems like different bootleggers are making fakes of fakes at this point and that's something truly scary another fake sonic figure that has stood the test of time and just will not go away is the bootleg sonic nendoroid the nendoroid sonic figure was released in 2012 by Good Smile Company and is one of the coolest sonic figures out there unfortunately though a good smile company suffers from the infamous literally everything we make gets faked syndrome and as such fakes of the Sonic nendoroid were made thankfully the fake looks a lot worse than the official one so it's pretty easy to tell if yours is fake and Good Smile Company did re-release the sonic figure as part of their easy mend annoyed line and sure it does lack many of the accessories but this release was never faked so if you wanted a hundred percent official Sonic there you go in November of 2016 a lego dimensions Sonic the Hedgehog level pack was released nearly satisfying the global desire for lego sonic products and while the level pack was certainly cool it left a lot to be desired you're telling me you're gonna reimagine this much of Sonic's world in Lego form designed so many characters for potential releases and then not do anything with it at the time of me making this video the Lego dimensions pack is still the only official Lego Sonic release and that is a huge shame how cool would it be to get actual Lego Sonic sets Sonic and his friends would be perfect for minifigure blind bags too I could go on and on about the potential of Lego Sonic and while it doesn't seem like Sega or Lego want to go forward with it at the moment bootleggers have definitely taken notice there is an infinite amount of unlicensed Lego styled products you can find out there but the most interesting ones to me are the fake minifigures for example there are no official Lego Mario sets however the fine people over at JLB have produced this set of unofficial Mario Lego inspired minifigure sets we've got Mario Luigi with a backwards L Wario green toad toadsworth hmm now as there are no official Lego Mario figures to bases scoped off of these look pretty strange but there is an official lego sonic figure and bootleggers have taken that sculpt and produced fake minifigures based off of it this set here was released by the company caught and includes Sonic of course but interestingly similar to the sonic world figures we've got a yellow sonic a red sonic and shadow now red and yellow Sonic who I assume are supposed to be knuckles and Super Sonic are just basic recolored Sonic's but this shadow is a pretty decent attempt I mean sure he has black gloves but he's got his chest fur his red highlights on his eyes a uh sorta streak on the top of his head yeah these don't look too great but hey props for trying at least if these remind me of stuff like these Lego sonic custom minifigures from before the days of lego dimensions these aren't necessarily bootlegs but I remember a ton of them were for sale on sites like eBay and people tried to pass them off as official when they're obviously not some do look good some not so much yeah hopefully we just end up getting more official Lego Sonic sets someday I think we've covered enough figures for now but what about fake plushies one of the most famous sonic plush sets is the 1997 Sonic the fighters UFO catcher plush set and it's no surprise being a set of 11 plushies it's one of the most complete classic sonic plush sets you can find it's got characters like bean bark and Fang in it Metal Sonic super sonic it's a great set and lives up to the hype what a lot of people don't know however is that it was bootlegged here's the real set and here's the bootlegs oh wow what were they just vaguely told what the plushies looked like and went from there did they have any reference at all probably not because none of these look anything like the real deal in fact their touch tags aren't even the same with the bootlegs having a copyright of 1995 despite fighters coming out in 96 and the plushies coming out in 97 there's no way anyone could ever be fooled by these but they look so bad they're actually pretty funny they faked every plush in the set except for Super Sonic oh just assume they couldn't find a super sight to fake it's pretty insane that fake plushies of characters like a beam bark Fang and espyo exist as there's such unique plushies to the set I guess that's kind of cool cuz even though they are unofficial it's almost like a second plush of those guys in these designs exist and hey the fake Metal Sonic isn't made of that awful peeling vinyl material like the real one so he holds up better than the real thing however believe it or not that's actually not it to boot like fighters plushies as a fake Fang plush much closer to the original also exists once again it's pretty easy to tell if he's real or not the bootleg one never came with a tag the colors are off his eyes and those aren't plastic like on the real deal Andy's just overall a worst-looking plush I wonder why out of all the plushies to fake they picked Fang did they secretly know he was going to become an underused cult character in the future good choice bootleggers a similar case of one plush in an old UFO catcher set being faked comes in the form of this child plush this supposed bootleg is based off of the Sonic Adventure Chow now the details on this guy aren't totally known but from what I've gathered this guy started showing up all over evei in the late 2000s all coming from China if the plush itself is a lower quality take on the si1 original gone out the plastic eyes and it doesn't have that airbrush effect for the yellow highlights but besides that it does look all right is the weird thing about this plush though is there may actually be an official version of the child plush that looks suspiciously similar to the bootleg this is the only image I could find of what appears to be a sonic Xbox to retail re-release of the si1 shell plush I can't make out what it says on the box but this image was uploaded to a French collection blog this is the only time I've ever seen anything like this so I have nearly nothing to compare it to it does seem to be of non-american origin though so this may be an international rerelease of the Chell plush with slight differences to make it cheaper to produce what's weird though is yes this would be a sonic X re-release of the ciao plush but the bootleg plush uses a poorly copied version of the sonic adventure touch tag so I assume this is a fake of the original well this sonic X release is unrelated and probably has sonic X branding on its tag could this sonic X release also be fake or just a really obscure release it's so weird how these two look so similar and unfortunately the owner of the blog and the sonic X Chawla who went by the name linkle of Zelda doesn't appear to be active anymore so I can't ask them anything regarding it hopefully someday another chap lush like this goes up for sale as I would love to get to the bottom of this it just goes to show that even with bootlegs there can still be a lot of mystery in 2003 sonic x hypeee was really kicking off if the show had just premiered and with it brought tons of merchandise in Japan two separate plush sets were made the most popular set is the one by Sega prize released in UFO catchers this set released in two waves has characters like cheese the chao rouge the bat even beau kun that's the main Sonic X plush set everyone knows however these were only released in arcades so for retail the company Sega toys produced this smaller set of Sonic Tails and Knuckles plushies for what they're worth they're pretty good they've got a few odd things about them notably knuckles having fingers and lacking details on his shoes but hey not a bad set they also made this larger size sonic that you can pose this guy is so cool these were released in 2003 and were kind of forgotten over the years but around 2015 they started showing up for sale again huh Sonic X was long gone what's going on well of course these new ones were fakes how bootleggers got this old and pretty limited set of sonic flushes is anyone's guess but somehow they did and since then they have become the most faked Sonic plush set in recent years these bootlegs are pretty much what you'd expect if the plushies are cheaper if they got simple things wrong like Sonic's eyes are always upside down stuff like that with that said it's super easy to tell if your plush is fake if the plush itself doesn't give it away which most of these do the bootleggers decided to rebrand these with their own company yes all the bootlegs have touch tags that read kid galaxy not Sega toys not really fooling anyone with these just like the first four figures minifigures these have slowly but surely gone down in quality as time progresses in fact some bootleggers even put their own spin on these like this Sonic with embroidery instead of plastic eyes however if you thought making fakes of at the time twelve-year-old plushies was weird enough get this in 2017 if they added a new character to the lineup wait what but the set only ever had three characters how'd they make a new one well allow me to introduce you to the Sonic X silver the hedgehog plush based off the GE silver plush but modified to be styled like these old Sega toys plushies this is pretty mind-blowing to be honest these guys took a pre-existing plush but changed it to fit in with an older plush set what makes this even weirder though is that silver never appeared in Sonic X now of course there are all those rumors of silver being in a mythical fourth season of Sonic X which makes this fake really funny to me but still funny how they picked silver out of all characters to fake there isn't a fake kid galaxy style shadow or anything the case of the Sega toys to kid galaxy plushies wasn't the first time that happened though as there are also fakes of these older Sonic Adventure plushies made by the company fun for all what you're looking at here are the official ones released in the early 2000s in the US for well over a decade now bootlegs of these plushies have been plentiful if they've seen many changes over the years but they're still all based off these original adventure plushies the official set contains Sonic Tails and Knuckles and while tails was commonly faked at one point they eventually faced him out for Shadow if a Sonic X silver plush wasn't weird enough here's a Sonic Adventure 1 shadow plush there was never an official fun for all shadow to my knowledge I believe the main three are all they ever did so once again bootleggers took it upon themselves to mimic the style of another set we see this happen all the time nowadays especially with stuff like fake Mario plushies toadsworth toadette dry bowser dark all of these are styled after Sanae plushies and hey some of them don't look half bad in fact a lot of these I wish were official oh well like I said they've been making these for years and at this point it's hard to find a real fun fro Sonic plush as there are just so many fakes it's crazy how long bootleg plushies can remain in production for example see this guy he was first seen in 2010 but you can still find them for sale today how could something looking like this stay in production for so long there are just so many sets of fake Sonic plushies out there there's no way I'd be able to cover them all in this video there's the fakes of even more Sonic Adventure era plushies fakes of sonic boom plushies and so many more however another example of recent knockoff plushies are these the history of these is pretty confusing this is a sonic a back pack plush that was released sometime in the early 2010's and it looks pretty good and while this one is official its pattern does look suspiciously similar to the joint Paula Sonic plush only of course this is modified to be a backpack not exactly a very functional backpack but I'm sure it meets the mark for those wanting to store things inside Sonic the Hedgehog it was made by the company accessory innovations and they would later put out ones of Tails knuckles shadow and even a Super Sonic those five all had official releases however bootlegs of them have existed for a long time and in recent years a bootleggers have taken the plush pattern removed the backpack straps essentially making it a worst-looking joint palo sonic plush and then using that pattern as the basis for tons of variants and characters we've got a metallic Super Sonic Super shadow hypersonic whoa what that's awesome dark sonic 2 from Sonic x-men these bootleggers know where the good stuffs at how about Super Sonic Rose Super Saiyan God Super Sonic when you're dealing with fake products anything goes some of these are legitimately awesome and if I somehow saw something like a dark Super Sonic plush at a flea market I would at least think about buying it not sure if I would since you know it's still an illegal bootleg but hey at least it's a really cool one [Music] as unfortunate as it is sometimes bootlegs are all you're able to find that's the case with people who live in territories where Sonic merchandise is rarely distributed I didn't know this until recently but there is an assegai of South Korea most of Sega's games have simply been published there as there's no real in-house branch of Sega over there for instance if the original Genesis Sonic games were released under Samsung in fact the Sega Saturn was originally released as the Samsung Saturn over there because of the lack of a Sega of Korea there isn't really anyone to distribute the sonic license and as such there's not much merchandise to be found that's of course we're at bootleggers an unlicensed product step in here's an image taken inside of a Korean arcade showcasing what seemed to be five unlicensed Sonic plushies Sonic Tails knuckles Amy and Shadow gonna be honest here these look great and I was convinced they were official when I first saw them sure some aspects of them like the melds sonic spikes and Amy as a whole look pretty weird I wouldn't pass up an opportunity to get them they seemed to be really hard to find though and we'll probably made in very low quantities so even though these aren't officially licensed they still make for great collectibles it's too bad in areas like South Korea there isn't much Sonic merchandise to buy because here in America or Japan we get so much and are so spoiled I appreciate this set of plushies for throwing a bone to fans less fortunate while I obviously don't like bootlegs too much and a majority of them are all around pretty bad there are some that I do respect because of stuff like this now Sonic the Hedgehog is a video game franchise and there are so many bootleg Sonic games you could make a video on just those but my channel and this video are focused on merchandise however since it's such a huge topic I couldn't go without bringing up at least a few examples I could talk about ones like Samari Sonic and Knuckles 5 Sonic 4 in the Super Nintendo or the gaming legend known as Prince banana 2 but now everyone already knows the stories behind those let's go for some more deep cuts the sonic rom hacking community is something I don't think gets nearly enough attention when I was younger I used to play ROM hacks all the time I'm talking sonic eraser sonic 2 retro remix all of the many character in Sonic the Hedgehog hacks and many many more if the one sonica romhack i see be brought up the most is sonic megamix and for good reason now sonic megamix is not a bootleg game it was a labor of love by some really talented fans and it should be remembered as that however megamix has the distinction of being one of the first examples of bootleggers taking popular ROM hacks and slapping them onto a cartridge that's right some Russian pirates took some fans hard work through together a decently nice-looking casing cartridge and released it onto Russian markets and the version of the game on here is the 3.0 release as the last release before was moved over to the Sega CD the thing that makes this release interesting to me outside of it being one of the first bootleg rom hacks is that they actually did put some effort into the packaging it's unique it's got a basic but custom logo a background that I'm sure is stolen from somewhere an art of the three playable characters in this build Sonic Shadow and yes mighty the armadillo you can easily trace the origins of the renders of a sonic and shadow but where did this art of mighty come from this is clearly fan art but who drew it after doing some digging it was found on an old Sonic fan site planet sonic on their character page from mighty dating back to 2004 the page features at the time info on the character as well as some really cool fan mock-ups for what a modern style mighty might look like one of which being the mega mix art it was apparently drawn for what might he might look like in a hypothetical Sonic Heroes 2 which sadly never happened and thankfully in the low-resolution image you can just barely make out a signature from that I was able to find their deviantART account OC or as is their name well the mighty piece is enough on their page at least not anymore there is this great sonic adventure styled sonic drawing also from 2004 which basically confirms yes they were the ones who unknowingly drew the megamix mighty art I wonder if they know that their fan art was used on a now infamous bootleg that's a pretty big accomplishment I'd say here's one of my favorite examples of a bootleg game no a bootleg anything really because this bootleg being made spearheaded one of the most incredible discoveries in the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom after sonic ones release all eyes were on Sega where's Sonic the Hedgehog to end wall was set to be released just a little over a year after the first game hype for Sonic 2 was insane to capitalize on said high bootleggers were quick to release pirated copies of the game some early Pirates of Sonic 2 even contain an early prototype of the game wait huh how did they get that the story of the Sonic 2 beta and the many versions of the game is way too long to get into in this video but in the late 90s a man named Simon wife found a ROM dump of an early prototype of Sonic 2 on a Chinese website people discover that this ROM originated from bootleg copies of Sonic to you that were floating around how did these bootleggers acquire an early version of the game well in a 2005 interview with Yuji naka he was questioned regarding this phenomenon he wasn't a hundred percent certain but he told the interviewer that at the New York Toy Fair in 1992 a display copy of situ was stolen they never recovered the cartridge but the cartridge had the exact same bill that's on these bootlegs the theory is that whoever stole this early build went on to sell it to bootleggers or make bootlegs of it themselves that's how huge sonic 2 was at the time some person or group went to this toy fair probably with the sole intentions of stealing sonic 2 that's insane and makes for one of the most interesting pieces of knockoff sonic goods you can find let's talk about one last bootleg game today while they usually try to keep secret for obvious reasons some bootleg games have companies associated with them for example makan soft better known as Yong Yong who made games like Sonic 3d blast 5 and Sonic Adventure 7 and 8 then of course there's Samari team who made Samari one pretty legendary bootleg game company give us by the name of syntax over the years they've produced many fake games we've got classics like Super Mario DX Digimon Adventure Crash advance 4 and the one we'll be looking at today sonic 3 fighter sonic with a name like that you already know this game's gonna be incredible now this game isn't that interesting on its own it's a basic platformer just with a sonic advance skin most of syntax games are simple edits of the same engine and the gameplay of set engine isn't that remarkable you can watch a full playthrough of the game on YouTube so it isn't that mysterious nowadays too however it's good we have that playthrough as syntaxes games are notorious for being near impossible to get cracked roms for yeah how ironic is that these bootleg games have better copy protection than official releases no one's been able to successfully rip any of taxes Game Boy Advance games and that's too bad because I would love to play this one or well okay the game itself is pretty bad but I would love to own a copy of it at least because this would make for such a fun collection piece I first learned about the game on sonic year years ago and it's been a joke holy grail of mine for years it's all just so absurd Sonic Advance assets in the game Sonic the screensaver boxart the game's literally called Sonic 3 fighter sonic like come on just recently images of a complete and box copy were posted online showcasing all sides of the game's box and even the manual for years all we had archived of the game online was the cartridge and box art and then eventually we got that full playthrough but now we have the full box preserved too and man it's all I could have ever hoped for check out the back of the box what a beautiful design we've got a psychedelic rainbow background a 3d blast render of Sonic on this Sonic Advance style game and it even gives us a synopsis of the game's story the evil genius entus dr. Eggman broke into the military base looking for information about the top-secret weapon called shadow wait a minute if the manual continues this with a similarly otherworldly design and stolen poorly translated Sonic Adventure 2 write-ups the manual even includes blank pages for you to write notes on not gonna lie the box and manual are a complete mishmash of assets but they don't look too bad this game isn't exactly that interesting but it's been a personal want for a long time it's just so wacky and that's what bootleg products are all about I've only seen this game for sale once on eBay UK years ago and it was just the cartridge I unfortunately didn't buy it when I could and now I may never be able to get it because these show up so rarely maybe someday I'll have the honor of owning such a goofy game mascot costumes have been a part of the sonic franchise since the first game and they've always been made for special sonic events some look pretty good some and not so much but with that said none of the official ones even hold a candle to the ocean nay the vast black hole that is the bootleg sonic mascot costume market if you go on any sites like Aliexpress you'll find countless fake suits based off of Sonic characters and they all look incredible what surprises me the most is the variety of characters you wouldn't think a bootlegger would want to make a cream the rabbit costume but hey here we are it seems fake mascot costumes is really a huge business in of itself there are so many of these for so many series do you want a fake chicken little costume boy do I have the product for you if you've looked into these before though you'll notice that a good majority of the stock images for these showcase the mascots in a warehouses come on the costumes look scary enough did you really need to take a picture of it in a dilapidated lousy hoarded up warehouse like this in many of them you can even see other fake mascot suits in the background these are honestly pretty scary to look at a few years ago I was in Times Square I had the pleasure of meeting these bootleg Mario Luigi mascot costumes thankfully images of the exact ones I'm talking about exist online take a look you can imagine I just couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this man I suppose all of these do serve a good purpose though like if your kid really wants a sonic birthday party or something this could be useful for something like that but then again maybe not because a ton of these looks so terrifying let's take a step back and talk more about bootlegs like a Gorky one of the most common forms of bootlegs are those who just take artwork probably stolen from Google Image results and slap them onto their products with little thought for example and take all these fake birthday supplies and gifts sure if you're a parent and have a kid he was just the biggest Sonic fan maybe you do want to get them a totally situational literally good for just their one a birthday shirt with Sonic on it but you can do better than this you may be wondering though aren't these just customs well I guess some of them are but they're still using completely unedited artwork and others work for profit but it can sometimes be hard to tell when something as a custom and not a bootleg people making custom figures making prints of their original art vais drew custom plush makers all of you guys are awesome keep making the great stuff you make but if you're producing a ton of something that has next to no originality to it and simply rips off existing content that's a boot like merchandise I could go on and on about cheap artwork ripoffs how about this incredible shirt how about this firecracker with sonic on it why is this even a thing there's so much of this stuff out there I'd honestly love to someday be able to explore markets with stuff like this in it cuz there's so much fake stuff for so many licenses it'd be such an experience looking through it all I don't live near many places that stock stuff like this but I'd love to see this stuff someday in person I wonder if some of you watching I live in areas where you can just go to the store and find stuff like this I'd love to hear any experiences you guys have had with bootleg stuff [Music] now when ordering stuff online how can you make sure your item is legit this can be tricky but it's generally agreed that if something is coming from China it has a good chance to be faked that stigma makes sense as so much fake stuff comes out of China but that isn't always the case yes a ton of bootlegs are made in China but bootlegs are made elsewhere too often made in places like Mexico Brazil Taiwan heck even the US no place is safe and of course a lot of bootlegs would be coming from China that's where a ton of official merchandise is made in fact since the factories that produce the official products are often in China there have been many cases of straight stock from the factory slipping out and official products being sold by sketchy factory sellers in China there's a big difference between a fake bootleg and what's simply factory stock take these resource sonic adventures series two figures for example are they real are they fake well we don't know for certain in the mid-to-late 2000s it was commonly believed that the second series of restores sonic figures were bootlegged why because a ton of them were showing up online coming from China however I've extensively compared to the alleged fake items with the official releases and as far as I can tell they're identical I don't think resources figures were ever bootlegged here's what I believe these are the company resource went under in the year 2000 in the middle of production of the second series of Sonic Adventure figures that must have meant that a ton of stock that was produced couldn't be sold well what are factories to do with the leftover figures sell them on the gray market of course and that's why so many of these started showing up from China they're the same as the official figures just taken off the production line before they could be boxed up and shipped off to stores not everything that comes from China is automatically fake in my time collecting merchandise I've been fortunate enough to find a ton of samples and prototypes and nearly all of them have come from sites like Taobao directly from China my Jazwares big plush came from China Kelly toy werehog did too and so many more a lot of this comes down to context and knowing what's real what's fake what's been bootlegged and what hasn't been stuff like that and there you have it an overview of bootlegs sonic merchandise fur franchise as huge as Sonic it's no surprise there's as much fake stuff as there is there's still so much more out there I didn't even talk about and with that said sonic hasn't nothing on the amount of bootleg stuff Mario or dare I say Pokemon has bootleg stuff has been fascinating to me ever since I got into collecting I don't collect it myself as a majority of these items are a worthless trash that are likely unsafe but they're so interesting there's so many ways you can look at a bootleg product you could easily laugh at them and write them off as hilariously off-model products with no purpose but if I'm being honest a lot of these fakes have some really deep histories stuff like the fun for all bootleg plushies have existed for years and at this point I'm sure unknowing kids grew up with some of these there's people out there whose childhood sonic plush was this and in the future people will probably have great memories of stuff like the kid galaxy silver plush and of course in some territories stuff like this is all they have maybe not much sonic stuff is distributed to their countries so this is all they've got like those Korean arcade plushies I mentioned earlier but at the end of the day you should always support the real deal whenever possible sure bootlegs may be cheaper than genuine goods but you get what you paid for and if you can't afford the real thing I would still recommend not supporting bootlegs even if they do look really funny sometimes and you may be wondering why doesn't Sega or any company that's being ripped off try to step in and stop these well at this point you can't you really cannot stop bootleggers once the product has been faked and has gotten out there so many different sellers buy up stock of them so many factories produce different bootlegs if you take one bootleg down they'll be tend to take its place the boot like industry is much deeper than many people realize it's not like there's a single boot like Sonic Factory out there Sega could walk up to and take down it's a hive mind of individual producers designers and sellers this video has gone over a ton of fake Sonic merchandise but there's still a lot more out there there's probably so much that hasn't even been documented online too however a ton of it has been documented online thanks to the likes of the website Sonic Year is there how to avoid a bootleg sock merchandise section is entirely what inspired me to make this video it's one of the best pages on the site I highly recommend you check it out if any of this interested you while it's true these bootlegs are on a and really only served to harm the sonic brand in the long run you can't argue that bootlegs are an important aspect of merchandise is that at the very least are worth noting [Music] you [Music]

Channel: PatMac

Views: 1,868,291

Rating: 4.8983006 out of 5

Keywords: toys, bootleg, sonic, sonic the hedgehog, merchandise

Id: raGea998TOY

Length: 39min 42sec (2382 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 24 2018