Sonic Clothing of the USA- Modern Page 29
With the 'Boom Ban' gone, the USA can branch out into modern style Sonic stuff again. Watch for great new stock art (From Sega) to appear on these shirts. Both little and big sizes will likely continue. Little sizes are still ok to collect, even if you don't fit into them, because you can still fit the shirt into a frame if you like the design to make it like a poster. However, it should be noted that Kohls, JC Penny, Hot Topic, and FYE are also getting into carrying Sonic shirts. GKWorld may also be getting into shirts as well!
You can also shop at the Sonic Gear Clothing Store. .(Gear store actually has a ton of stuff, about 2 pages of it, but it DOES rotate & sell out.
The front has a simple Sega logo on one side, while the back has the full color
Big the Cat's pet frog most known for accidentally eating a chaos emerald in Sonic Adventure 1 gets a solo shirt, against most of the odds here.
The light green tee has a large red shaded heart, and in the middle of the heart is a large full color art of Froggy. Is the frog cute? Is the red an ideal background for the green color? Are you Big the cat? Some of these are easier to answer than others, but regardless of the answer, this shirt is a real item in the Sega Shop in 2019, and it was made for Team Sonic Racing the game. (Though, it is almost 'secretly-Sonic')
It DOES come with an explanation. If you watch the little shorts Sonic 'cartoons' on Youtube, you'll find the Team Sonic Racing ad / mini-show. In it, Eggman tries to trick Big (of Team Amy) into quitting the race by putting up a "Frog Merchandise Stand" with all frog themed items. This tee, and the cap hat are among them. Wacky hi-jinx of course, ensue...but what's even wackier is that the Sega Shop decided to make the tee a real thing.
This minor non-holiday gets a tee shirt at the Sega Shop in 2019...seemingly just for the chance to say 'made ya look!'
This silly shirt features a smeared-on-purpose distorted art of Sonic. He's meant to look in the middle of 'speeding away', such that the image is blurred/smeared. What it actually looks like is one of those 'in-between' shots in animation where the character is halfway between a toony movement & ends up looking like this.
This is a very strange concept to make it to a shirt...and certainly there's not anything like it. (The only other item being the tilted/distorted mug) Its problem is that it is costly, with adult sizes at 30 dollars.
This shirt appears as the game gets ready to be released in 2019. It's a plain, all black tee with a design on the upper chest area. The background has a 'checked flag' type pattern, but notice how it goes behind the race cars and morphs into the lines/dots at the edge of the curving race track like shape.
The racers featured are Sonic, who is in the lead in his car, and Shadow behind him. They, and their cars are all thin line-work. The only ink used here is gray. The flag/track combo background of its thick shapes contrast with the thin curve lines for the characters and cars. It's actually a pretty classy graphic with some real thought put into the design! The way the cars are 'posed' also gives a bit of a sense of speed. This is an interesting shirt, but where is it sold?
And it's odd. Like, why would this get made? Valentines isn't a holiday that's really a 'dress up for' with themes, is it? It also does the odd/often criticized thing of trivial-altering-stock art which is often a fake or bootleg tactic. Here, it's the real deal though because the Sega Shop for 2019 Valentines has made this tee.
It has the classic logo with neo-classic stock art that has all been altered to have a love theme. Knuckles has a box of chocolate copy/pasted over his fist, the Tails is the genuine one where he's dressed as cupid shooting a heart arrow, Sonic is winking and has a boquet of roses over his hands and Amy has flowers too. But look where Amy's & Tails' hands cross above everyone, it's confusing & difficult to tell what's going on. There are some rings scattering from Sonic as well. Or is it Knuckles who is holding the roses, & sonic with rings? It isn't terrible, it is unique, and it's 26 dollars in the Sega Shop.
It's called the "Gold Rings Crop Tee". However, you can easily notice that the sprite is (of course) the wrong one. When Sonic loses his rings, he doesn't die. That's the entire POINT of having RINGS. Is that you don't die when you have them. But, and it seems that the Sega Shop isn't immune to this, it seems everyone loves to use the "Sonic Death" sprite on everything they possibly can, so here he is, dying and losing the rings at the same time.
It's like....understandable to do that as a non-fan at some schlubby company that just churns stuff out for non-fans/casuals, but you'd think Sega Shop would be better / know better than that, attempting to sell things to fans like this expensive shirt which is 26 dollars in 2019.
The other bit that doesn't make much sense is why is it a belly shirt? If it has long sleeves, it's going for being warmer than a tee, so why make it a crop?
The only good touch to it, is that the rings continue down the sleeves, and the 16 Bit Pixel style is continued throughout the whole tee, plus that the design is big/gives an all-over appearance. It's just too bad they couldn't choose a little bit more wisely.
Modern design...that is! Bio World has long been a good maker of Sonic clothing, and creator of some fan-favorite designs. They put actual effort into things they do (most of the time) but the boom ban had them either gone or only doing the very occaisional & simple classic style tee.
This could be their first tee 'back in action', as it appears in spring 2019 at Amazon (but maybe elsewhere) It's an all black teens/boys size tee with large faded Sonic portrait. Overlayed in the portrait are lots of big square 'pixels', and full body images for Tails, Shadow, Knuckles & a running Sonic. The grahpic is kind of 'Sonic X' reminiscent in style. The 'outer space' look & overlay effect is nice, modern & a colorful character showcase. There are no other tees that look a lot like it, so it's a good find. However, it is 21 dollars which is a tad high for a 'kids/teens' size.
The black shirt has a small full color modern Sonic 'thumbs up' stock art toward one side. The main graphic of the tee is a stencil effect/spray effect "shadow" of him cast onto the blue 'background' of foggy color. There are a few faint ring shapes scattered around back there too (but why?) It's a fun enough concept, to make the cast-shadow the star of the show.
Brush up on the classics? This isn't the first time it's been done. There's actually a classic tee with classic Sonic that was pretty rare that did a similar effect, but not to this scale. That shirt is in the SonicGear collection & you can see it here at the site too. This is an Amazon item for 21 dollars in 2019/spring season.
And this time literally, with a shirt that really glows in the dark! Glowing shirts aren't all that commonly done, but it's an ok idea because that ink is more durable than the metallic stuff that comes off in the wash. This design is similar to one that's been done before, but Bio world uses various hot-colored glowing inks to make it. It's neoclassic walking/striding Sonic, but as line-art only on an all black tee. The lines match his colors, except for the nose/eyes which have to be white to be seen. There are little rectangles/squares for the background & the logo uses thick yellow glow ink. This is a fun tee that has so far been seen on Amazon in the spring for about 19.99
The next shirt is a dark royal blue with the same design next to it, but charcoal instead. These 2 tees use the large "Victory Pose" end-screen art from the games where the character was large on the screen after you beat it. It has Sonic, Tails & Knuckles all in the 'big pixel' for the art, in a ring.
What's up with this stock art? Is it an attempted redraw or re-use of the old 'somewhat aggrivated' Japanese Sonic art? It looks like it could be, but they didn't improve him much. It has hand on hip/finger waving classic Sonic, but he has an odd teardrop shaped mouth with a few teeth, and he looks aggrivated. The arm doesn't have as distinct an elbow (as it probably ought to) and is more 'bendy spaghetti' type. The background here is a big circle with black & white checkers and a yellow edge. The top just has "Sonic" spelled out in blue/yellow in the logo's font. *This isn't an American art (which as you know was often way worse) as it has the buckles for the shoes which never appeared on actual classic era USA anything) His odd expression makes the shirt somewhat strange. This is supposed to be at Amazon in 2019