How to avoid fake Sonic merchandise page 4

How to Avoid Fake Sonic Merchandise Page 4

Sonic Gear Main Merchandise Page * Bootlegs 1 * Bootlegs 2 * Bootlegs 3 * Bootlegs 5 * Bootlegs 6 * Bootlegs 7
Bootlegs 8 * Bootlegs 9 * Bootlegs 10 * How To Avoid Sonic Bootleg Merchandise Hub Page

Avoiding buying phony Sonic items may become harder as technology increases.
So Sonic Gear is here to point out the fakes and the bootleggers so you only get the real deal when you're looking for Sonic the hedgehog stuff to collect!
Remember what a 'bootleg' item is:
It is an unofficial or unlicensed product being sold to the fans- by NON FANS. These can be home-made or made in a factory. They are not approved by the company who holds the license and are NOT made to any standard. The quality is usually low, leading to items which may break or wear out. Don't waste your money! Buy official SEGA things only!

The first item is one on the fence.
This lunch box duet is on the line between 'fan made' and 'bootleg'. Clearly, the person did NOT make it for their own use...and eventually try to sell it. This was 'made for sale'. They took some 3D art from Sonic Team, printed it out as stickers, and then applied them to generic metal lunch boxes to try and make Sonic items. They didn't bother to decorate it in any other way, and the stickers aren't even official. It is not recommended to buy these on ebay, where someone is attempting to sell them. Photos discovered by Streakthefox

Skins, colorful plastic coatings to put over your consoles, are relativly easy to fake, if you're a company.
This DS skin is rather suspicious and features Amy Rose. It LOOKS pretty good on the surface, with all SA style art, and a fairly fitting color scheme. But you'll notice there's no 'sega' anywhere, nor copyrights, and the seller has multiples of the same thing on ebay. The top art also looks like it may be unofficial. Photos discovered by Streakthefox

Remember the rule!
If you suspect ANY seller it's your right to ASK THEM to see the tags/copyrights/etc. on the item. If not, don't buy!

Here's a whole run of lame fake junk.
This seller on ebay (the same one for both items) just prints up cheap paper disks and snaps them into the merchandise to make it "Sonic". The cheapest wall-clock-works you can find, and some old watches you can open up...and anyone can snap in stock-art they steal from Sega! Boo!
But look at the clocks even!
To fit the graphics into the circles, they've even distorted the art. Real Sonic watches and clocks are much cooler than these paper-fueled knockoffs!
Photos discovered by Streakthefox

This is a room-border. It's meant to accent a wall by pasting it on over wall paper...if you want your room to be tacky and fake, that is! This bogus border was made on a specialty printer...

but that doesn't make it special! Clearly, they're mixing up the art again to bad effect (3D and SA1 era 2D) plus, the design repeats itself quite closely, leading to a lame look! The cheezy 3D background doesn't look good at all with the 2D art. With no quality control on bootlegs like this, you don't know if it will peel off in 1 day! So lame. Discovered by Hypersuperchao

Beware of ebay sellers specializing in "buttons"!
If someone's got a batch of buttons on many auctions, chances are they're not the real deal. It's too easy to steal art and then put it in a button-machine to turn out these bogus pins. You can see that the ones on the left even directly STOLE Sonic Team's logo! The others are just random art from Sonic 2 and a rip-off of a Hot Topic sticker. Discovered by Hypersuperchao

These 2 items are made by the same UK based faker.
You can see they use a similar clip art lines background for both, while copying and pasting some 3D images over top. Their claim to fame? WOOD. Just because something is designed on wood doesn't make it quality. You can stick cheap-o stickers onto anything--so when they fade or peel, it's not your problem!
Once again, "personalization" gives them away as they print any lame name onto their bootleg goods. Remember to stay away from ALL personalized goods as they're not the real deal! Discovered by Hypersuperchao

Another boring snoring bootleg.
This one made it on because they're trying to add something different to fool people into buying (a star with circles in the background) But the design is still too small for the shirt, not creativly placed and is nothing more than some fragile iron-on that's bound to crack and fade once you wear it!
This time, the auction even states that it's a "Transfer" so at least it is honest about it's anti-quality stance. Despite the addition of the star, this shirt is still too plain and lame to be cool. Discovered by Hypersuperchao

Well, something obviously went quite wrong when the baddies behind this sent away their plans for bootlegging to their nefarious manufacturer!
They got "Sonic the Blue Cat" instead of anything resembling a realistic phony. Fortunately for fans this terribly bogus bootleg could not be mistaken for Sonic, while it is clearly attempting to be based on him. This almost resembles the nutty toothbrush from China where they combined Sonic & Tails, then colored the whole thing blue and tried to sell it. When these fail to sell at all, they'll likely just give up.

IS this REALLY "Adventures of Blue Cat" costume? It's a Chinese TV show with a blue cat...who happens to look rather Sonic-based. So the costume may not be a fake Sonic, but is the character itself? Info by Syberwolf. Photo discovered by kaji123

What's orange and brown and doesn't go fast? I don't know, but it's not Sonic! This is a curious bit of nonsense, that makes you wonder how it happened. Clearly someone has gotten hold of a similar-to-Caltoy plush pattern, but then took up some terribly orange fabric to make it! The spikes are curiously brownish/orange and his nose is huge. Also: double eyes! They've put an odd (its reddish!) plush eye inside of the "eyewhite" to the plush...essentially making it 4-eyed. The result is very strange and non-Sonic like. It appears to be from Germany, as the tag says "Kaufmann Langenhagen" Photo discovred by: SonicAdvance.deviantart.com

This GBA game is clearly a fake!
Anyone can easily see that whatever's inside the phony box won't be the real deal. They stole ancient art from the Japan Sonic ScreenSaver (it doesn't even match with the new look) and then took Sonic 3's logo (still written in the old style) and added a random "fighter Sonic" onto that, while clearly the picture shows everyone surfing. This collage of junk is a great warning to not buy any fake games! (after all, who knows what's in there...you might well get an empty box or a baskeball game or something) Photo discovered by: Streak the Fox

All terrible costumes in this section discovered by Link

Oh no, it's the attack of the barfy bootleg costumes! Someone in China trying to turn a quick buck has created these rather mutated costume characters. They're meant for you to wear, but who would want to? Tails is fat! Amy's dress has gone totally awry...and look at her head! Kncukles...I guess they failed to realize that's a 'stripe' on his chest...whoops! Not to mention leaving out part of his shoes...You can't even tell what Espio is supposed to be. Jet's chest feathers have gone out of control, and Cream's dress looks like it's made of laytex. No one is going to spend $140 on Ebay for these kooky costumes.

You can't say they didn't go for variety! Here is fake Silver, blobbly Blaze and zombie Mighty! You can tell they were paying a bit of attention but they just keep not quite getting it all right.
And then you see Rouge the Bat. She's super fat! Where are her wings? Why are her ears like odd pancakes? Who would want to be Rouge the Fat Bat? No one!

It can be cool to make your own costume when you are a fan. But it's clear that when non-fans try it, the result is less than ideal. These bootleggers may be stuck with some giant costumes for a very long time as no one buys them.

Someone has made a little kid very sad...Look at this poor gloomy child as it is forced to wear this goofy looking fake Sonic costume. The wiggly mouth, the floppy 'arms' and stripe-free shoes all give him away right away. No one should be made to support bogus junk! Do not buy any costume from MyWorld or Sellmars on Ebay. Their Sonic things are FAKES.

What's this, someone ironed on the Chaotix and Mario together and tried to get anyone to believe it was the real deal? Apparently so, but they can't even sell it for .99 cents. People are doing the right thing, staying smart, and turning OFF the iron ons!

Here are some terrible ripped off games. People who bootleg things are never out for quality, they're just out for money! They may try to show you a screen shot to 'prove' something but mostly they'll just get it wrong. See the one to the left? They said it was "Sonic 3d blast"! Then, look to the right at the 'Game' cartridge. They've erased "Boy" off of it so you know its not for real. Then, what's flying Mario doing on there with PART of a shot of a totally different Japanese Sonic game's cover...with another logo pasted on there for good measure. BOGUS.

GBA Sonic for Genesis. NOT. It's using Sonic Advance art, and they're slapping the 15th anniversary symbol on it *instead* of the official Nintendo Seal. It even TELLS you on the box that the 15th icon IS the Nintendo Seal...duh it so obviously is not.

Clearly, you should never buy a game you suspect in any way of being fake. You probably won't even get that game on the cartridge or disk! So shabby....

The carts that say "GAME" at the top will play in your system, but they are full of glitches and won't save. Bootleggers also favor 'multi game collections' where they try to enclose many hacked or phony games on 1 media hoping to lure people to buy. Often, they put the same fake game on many different 'collections'. If you want to learn more about these fake games and how to avoid them (or what happens when you don't!) You can use this site, as it has screenshots and lots of information: http://sost.emulationzone.org/ Additional info provided by: MetalMandible

Risurch Shoe is up to no good.
Stealing Sonic to try and sell their shoes and dumb shirts! They've clearly gotten a hold of a decent art, but they've switched Sonics' classic kicks for a pair of their own Nike-wannabes. They also colored his tounge hot-blue for some reason. The text at the top blathers on about how cool you will be if you wear their dumb shirt. It says Sonic is wearing the shoe trying to get to some store in time. If the shirt didn't give it away, the text surely would as Sonic is never here to shill other people's shoes.
What's that at the bottom?
A strange equasion. It says shirt + shoe + money = Barbie. Or maybe action figure. Who knows...it could be a GI Joe! Do they want you to dress your figures in their clothes? Clearly the shirt was human sized though.... No one ever said these fakers had good marketing tactics.

Here's a lame fake sticker. All the people have to do is print on vinyl with a peel-away back and they can start trying to rip people off. Notice there's no Sega copyright anywhere on it...and also that the terrible guitar (this is supposed to be like Sonic Underground) is also the wrong color. Sonic also has 1 row of spikes, they forgot to color the insides of his ears and he has somehow shut his pupils...but not his eyes. Probably no one will fall for this shabby sticker. Photo discovered by Skorpinok.