Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Quality & Quantity with Compromise on Sonic Shirts

For once, a compromise is a good thing!

This season brings one to TopHeavy, who seems to have decided to release 2 different kinds of Sonic shirts, but isn't slacking on the quality or quantity of either type!

As you know, size was a BIG problem for people who wanted to wear or collect awesome Sonic the hedgehog shirts--because they were all too small. It has been ranted about in this blog before. They seem to have caught on though, and are now releasing 2 types of shirts: little ones for this supposed market of babies who are out buying Sonic, and larger ones for everyone else.

The smalls have your pretty standard stock-art and the usual geometric patterns and flames and things from SonicX, which is great if you are able to wear or want to collect things you can't wear. The designs are pretty cool, make no mistake. You can view them all at www.sonicgear.org, of course.

The larger ones though, they've actually got someone GOOD/CLASSY designing for them. The new designs don't seem repetitive or obvious that they're using a set amount of images. (which as Shadow proves in this last update, they indeed, are) They're also incorporating really interesting and cool metallic inks and subtle colors to make refined and cool designs. The metallic inks appear to be thick and of good quality as well, which is great to thwart bootleggers or other copycat types. They should hold up well to wearing, which is the main goal anyway.

Metallic inks are better than just glitter, which can get overdone, and also tends to come off after a while. Fortunatly, this hasn't raised the price or done anything negative for the line. The regular size ones are usually $14.00 each, but the places that carry them (Sears Penny's etc) tend to put them on sale frequently, which keeps the price down nicely.

With good quantities and availability of designs in both lines, TopHeavy is illustrating that Sonic can be both fun AND refined in design!