How to Avoid Fake Sonic Merchandise Page 24
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How To Avoid Sonic Bootleg Merchandise Hub Page
Fight back by educating yourself on what NEVER to buy with these pages of photos and tips!
Remember, you vote with your money...any buying of fake junk only supports and encourages them to make more. Wouldn't you rather have awesome official items? Wouldn't you rather enjoy cool good quality stuff you know you can depend on? If you want the real deal, bootlegs are never the way to go.
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. Fake items may also be unsafe. Remember, bootleg makers are only after your money. They don't care at all about Sonic the hedgehog and are only out for a quick buck. Don't waste your money! Buy official SEGA Sonic things only, look for copyrights, and demand the real deal.
Iron On Transfers Submission: CLOSED (every single art on the internet can be one of these, know that it exists & if it's a transfer of any type it IS A FAKE.
The second shirt has a mutated (a bit) stolen modern stock art where they've placed a lighter in his 'thumbs up' hand & altered his shoes to make them look floppy, blue & lame. Then, if the pot theme wasn't good enough they sprinkle leaves in the background.
This is a set of 6 bogus 'charms'. They're based on the layered flat rubber substance that official items use, but each one of these are a phony. It's already being re-used as pins, charms, AND keychains...but they always look the same no matter what attachment they have at their tops.
You get Cream (wrong colors under & on top of ears) Silver (Green glove detail instead of blue) Espio, Tails with goggles for no reason, attempting to be Boomstyle Sonic & Amy. None of the characters have the eye-highlight white dot, making them look flat. Several also suffer from somewhat wiggly lines. Espio is the best looking out of all of them...but they're all bogus. These may be lurking on both Amazon & Ebay...though hopefully not for long. Discovered by PrincessPandaLover
This is another of those items where it looks like it could be the real deal because it is nicely enough designed and well constructed. The hoodie is made from fabric with an all-over print of modern Sonic art. He's outlined with thick borders in green, hot pink or orange & has a few differnet poses. Each art is so large it takes up a large portion of the fabric. Even the inside of the hood is designed.
What's so tricky, is there isn't anything actually wrong with the item, unless the photo itself is phony & the design is much poorer in person. If it is as good, the only problem would be it lacking a license, because this even looks like something a licensed company could think to make. It lurks on Amazon in adult sizes, but look at the tag in the back...no indication of authenticity which means you may not get what you buy.
Which is double-bad because there's an actual real Sonic air hockey table that's sure to be more fun than this old thing. Someone has added (and then chopped off poorly!) a Sonic Heroes graphic to some generic air hockey table to try to make it more popular. Sadly, with a chopped off graphic it probably didn't work.
Bootleg hallmark: Any time a logo, character or graphic is cut off in an unappealing place, or something that makes it illegible, it's likely to be a fake. Photo discovered by: victoriavaporeon
Steal one! This "Fox Bar" here much like the "Silverfuchs" that stole another Tails art just right off rips off Sega art for their banner. This looks like it may be a Sonic Boom wrench-holding Tails, which is somewhat unusual as it's pretty new. Trying to capitalize on the popularity / likeability of Sonic characters by just plastering them all over everything is uncool. Photo discovered by: victoriavaporeon
This time is..."jojo chips"? These mysterious rings, are they chips or like onion rings? Whatever they are, they're savory with red & green pepper flavor though they appear yellow. For some reason, they've decided to steal a Tails art, and give him some sort of ill fitting goggles & paste Sonic's arm onto him. Why him? It is a mystery, much like the scary ogorki pickle creature. Photo discovered by: victoriavaporeon
YMGG company is making tons of fake tees & stealing fan art left & right in 2016! When you see a fake on Amazon, REPORT IT! Complain! Unofficial garbage quality items slip past the robot sensors Amazon currently uses. Notice how there's no copyright or Sega tag / logo on anything here. They're raiding Deviant Art.com for fan art & stealing from artists to try to make a buck on tees at Amazon. Don't let bootleggers get away with it and steal from real Sonic fans. Discovered by: Crystal SonicFan
It is a relic of a passed era. (The Nokia 3210 era) When mobile phones were pretty new, they were also pretty simple. Flipping open & having only an LCD type screen was about the only thing you could do with them. However, even at that point people found ways to customize them. This ad is for 'home screen' (not really like a home screen but...) graphics. You would call the number at the bottom, pay them 3 pounds (that a lot!) & they'd change the graphic in your screen to the one you chose from this page's list.
Look at the top row, right in the middle. You can see a Sonic face & the word "Sonic" in a mostly-matching font. You can pretty much guess whatever high price charging company this is does not have official permission to charge people willy-nilly for a Sonic image. Photo by:
Is it real, or a fake? Most signs point to fakery. There's no tag anywhere, no Sega logo, no copyright either. However, it seems pretty well put together. The Sonic graphic is all embroidered, & so is his name below it. Because the embroidery is machine-done off of an uploaded official art piece, naturally it comes out looking good & nice.
You will see this on LOTS of other merchandise. With 1 embroidery machine there are tees, jackets, vests, sweatshirts AND fleeces. Wherever you see this without copyrights, the item is likely a fake.
This is a good bootleg avoiding lesson to keep in mind...as illustrated by these bogus Sonic X dolls. They have the 'real' X tag as far as the photos are concerned but the dolls are all 100% fake. As is also usual with knockoffs (that appear in sets, at least) there's always 1 terrible thing that sticks out like a sore thumb (or should it be FINGERS?)
As Sonic X the show ages, the dolls become more scarce. So of course, bootleggers may pop up with fakes, just like how the Sonic the Fighters dolls used to be. So, inspect every doll, look at the tags & know the signs. Here, poor fake Knuckles is a literal 'red-flag'. (In this case it's by an ebay seller LoveColors but really they love fakes--look over other goods for real or fake items to get an idea of who's doing the selling, too. )Photo discovered by: Spazer40
Steal some art to try to make it more popular! (It still won't work though) Here, some unfortunate photoshopped women (a gloomy one with a gun, and a yelling one in totally different light) star on the CD cover along with a nice shot of CG Vector Crocodile. Trying to use Sega characters to advertise/sell totally unrleated products isn't cool. The culprits here seem to be "Charlie Black, Cash Flow Rinse, DJ War & Wildcat Sound". This is just another instance of someone trying to use the popularity of characters to sell something totally unrelated, it's still a bootleg. Photo by VictoriaVaporeon
You get busted! In this case, Nintendo cracked down on this lame "Smash-like" phone RPG that someone in China made. They stole some fan art (see the Sonic in the top shot) and mixed in loads of other stolen characters to try to create a typical old-school style RPG game. There's a purple Bowser Jr there with probably Zelda? You can see a mini-Solid-Snake in the background, while Sonic, Amy & Mario line up to fight the mis-colored Bowser and a Shyguy. Stealing everything and throwing it at the wall to make a 'game' is no way to profit. Discovered by Speendlex
This bootleg tee combines the "Sonic Drive Thru Restaurant" with Sonic the Hedgehog. So they stole some graphics & the Sonic Drive In logo to bash them together...to create 1 bad looking shirt. CG Sonic & Shadow are behind the logo, but Sonic's got his fingers over Shadow's face and....What happened to Shadow's other eye? He's completely missing "one of" his eyes (technically they both only have 1 eye, it just has 2 colored bits in it) So not only is it a lame mashup, it's also sort of creepy with a deleted eye. Watch out for this tee in several colors on Amazon. Amazon isn't patrolling as well as they should for bootleg merchandise. Discovered by: DarlingPeachy
Yes. Japan's probably got bootlegs, but they're seldom seen because they're also likely fairly good at avoiding them/giving them any attention. This one, however makes it out and it's from "Belton", which oddly enough is a 'made in the usa' company. It's got Sonic on the front, is clearly classic style (likely done then too) but then look below him and...he's labeled "Mario".
Naturally, it has no copyright / Sega markings anywhere and the Mario is just written in a generic font. It's not your typical fake from your usual places, but it's pretty obvious about it's fakeness in a simple way. Photo discovered by @JapanAnimePosters on Instagram
Bootleggers generally don't bother wasting money packaging the item. This thing's been moved around a bit, from Mutant gear (it IS mutant!) but has now been proven totally phony. Just inspect the quality of it. First of all, are those squids or Sonic hands? He's got flailing wacko fingers! Then, his face is rather strange and round, with off-model triangle ears and suspicious square eyes. As you can see, it's supposed to be a keychain,
This was spotted at an outdoor market in Libya, after which research was done which revealed nobody had the license to make "Olympic Games" keychains nor anything else so this awful thing's got to stay here on the Bootlegs area...as well it should!
Discovered by Josh.
What makes it unusual, is that it's a Japanese fake, likely sold only there. Japan didn't tend to have a lot of fakes, since Sega could keep a tighter control watching markets, and the consumers of Sonic items seemed to be more discerning (and likely less parents/ grandparents/non-fans buying FOR fans where it's easy to confuse the non-fan into buying a phony that the fan easily spots) But, this pin made it through.
It's easy to spot as a phony with his all-red shoes, red socks, missing black nose enamel & filled in blue gap between his tail & shoe/sock top. It's otherwise pretty ok, likely because they traced a stock art of the times to make it. This is likely a vintage actual-1990s pin. Photo discovered by @JapanAnimePosters on Instagram