Monday, June 08, 2015

1st of a Kinds & Seldom Seen Sally Mystery Solved

This week's update worked out to be rather special.
It has the kind of things long-time fans tend to want to see (mainly because they'd never been seen before...so the "seen it all" types can still have something to enjoy) 1st of a kind items & rare old items that didn't have photos.

Which brings the post to...
Item of the week:
Sally Mask. 100% the Sally mask. HOW is it SO GOOD? I mean, it's like they manifested a 3D of the character from the TV show? Like...nothing else 3D did they ever do as good as that mask. It also has a bit of a history & raises some questions. Stick around to learn a little internet history:

History:
I have actually had that mask photo for YEARS in the image bin. It was ancient, about the size of a postage stamp. This was the result of it being taken long ago on less sophisticated equipment. It never got posted because no one knew what it was. It was suspected to be a "toy head", that SWS was going to make an action figure line & that was the prototype. Notice how there's nothing really in the photo to suggest the size to you. I never added it because I didn't want to fuel some rumor mill about the defunct SWS.

Questions
SWS liked ALL the characters: why aren't there ugly Tails masks & silly Sonic ones?
(They never seemed to grasp Tails in a cute way) If SWS was making items, they tended to have 1 for each character, so why only her mask?

Was it released?
Well clearly some fan's got it on their head in that photo, surely that person doesn't have the 1 single mask they did as the prototype there. Some of that SWS merch is super rare, like the little toddler girl dresses and stuff so "because no one's seen these about" is hardly "proof".

Maybe now that both photos are up someone may know something to add.

For as good as the mask is, the poor mascot...
Why did they neglect the vest is my biggest question there. She should have been simpler to do because she always clearly had a human body & limbs, just a giant head. Buuuut she's wrinkly and sort of saggy.

Why were there no photos of this before?
No one even ever knew there was a suit of her. SURE it makes sense...but why no photos? Those things are walking photo ops, you'd think no matter how poorly it looked people would be snapping pictures. (Yes snapping, this was a lot before the common digital camera)

1st of a kinds:
Glasses! - Usually themed/designer/promotional type glasses are subtle, these follow suit and are tasteful while still retaining enough "Sonic" like details. Without the special ends/spikes shape though, it would have been too generic. A good style touch was used here, a worthy first.

Cream solo mug - I'm not real sure how many fans Cream has, certainly more than Big...but not a ton of them. It's nice to see her getting a solo item though. It's well designed also, doesn't look stale or boring.

Shoutout to GE Entertainment!
Fan photos of the Silver plush prove they added a finger for him AND detailed out the bottoms of his signature boots! EXCELLENT plush, these guys are really on their game now.

In all, it's a very interesting update thanks to fans sending in items.
This used hardly anything from the back-log of stuff, which is nice to see.

Next week:
England will get some Boom news (on a separate blog update) and probably some housewares.