Monday, September 21, 2015

Fall Merchandise- Good Stuff Ahead! (And delayed?)

It's fall...and fall merchandise is in at a good pace.
Tees are appearing in stores, and more new items are appearing. Of course, at regular shopping retail, Star Wars is still interfering/hogging shelves etc. but keep in mind that this is likely one of the century's biggest hype-trains. (So, in place of lots of different character tees, for example, one might find 70% star wars, 30% everything else.) However, such hype trains have no ability to squeeze things out of the endless "shelves" of online retail.

Character Items!
There's exciting stuff already out and on the way. The Blaze only wallet & Chao only Mug are just for starters. There's also the...

Item of the week: Vector Plush
Vector plush takes this slot this time, even though he's not out yet and it's just a factory photo. The plush looks great from the front, and with GE's good track record, you can be reasonably sure his tail is fine as are his spikes. This is super news for Chaotix fans, because it means it's HIGHLY likely that Charmy the Bee will be on the way too, meaning someone can finally collect plushes of the entire Chaotix set, unlike any other point in time. The very fact that they're making him is excellent.

Companies generally don't seem to feel 'solo' characters who aren't Sonic could do well. There for, there isn't a lot of stuff of say...JUST Tails, or JUST Espio. However, GE doesn't seem to be afraid to experiment, and that's a real good thing for collectors. Of course, this also really pleases fans of that particular character, having stuff with just them on it, makes the item extra special. Plus, having a variety of cool colorful items to choose from (ex. mugs) makes it more fun. Chances are, if you like Sonic, you probably also like more than 1 character or aspect and would gladly pick up stuff with it. (Like the Chao mug, or the Shadow-only mug, etc)

Rumor has it:
Sonic Boom Fire Ice is DELAYED ?
Well, everyone knows how...not greatly...put together...the first Boom game was. When it released that "Knuckles infinite jump" thing got out of hand quite quickly, as did "lets plays" on youtube where the people would fall into the wall or shove a character out of the level by accident even when not glitching around on purpose.
This leads people to ask the question "Well, if it's delayed, then how atrocious did it actually have to be, if they'd let the first one out as poorly as they did"?
(Also it is rumored that this is the first time in history a Sonic game has ever been delayed.)

However, it leads me to ask:
What's this going to do for that Hardee's fast food tie in toys?
How will it affect the show?
Will it affect the regular Tomy toys, or anything else?

Likely answer:
Probably only the fast food tie in would be affected. Notice how there's tons of Star wars toys out now for a movie that's not out. Nobody's even seen this "Kylo Ren" guy do a whole lot, yet here comes the figures and tees. Tomy will likely let out anything regardless of the game's status. Plus, Tomy is so slow anyway, it's not like they were set to rush the game's boss onto shelves now anyway.

Next week:
More modern stuff. Hopefully another store update too. Now that fall is here, there should be an all right amount of items to go around for a while. Plus, it's time to maintain the costumes area in time for Halloween as well.