panicpuppetcollectables

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Fleetway Sonic the Comic Collection Includes all 223 issues and specials, the bulk of the free gifts, and some interesting extras. Long time no blog! After months of no updates, here's something a little different from my other posts. Rather than a single item, I'm going to show you an entire collection - my Fleetway Sonic the Comic collection. There was no way I could have done this in text post format as there's just too many things to cram in, so instead you get a video. Was also just a little thing to mark the comic's 20th anniversary last week as STC has always been my favourite version of Sonic, and I'm not sure if I'd have ended up being as obsessed with the series as I am if not for it. One of these days I'm going to do a more in-depth video, but for now here's a brief rundown of one of my favourite parts of my collection.

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Sonic Christmas Card from Gemma International

So it's December and I thought it was as good a time as any to start taking a look at some of the more festive Sonic merch out there, starting with a more recent addition... Christmas cards!

Gemma International has been selling Sonic Birthday cards and wrapping paper in the UK for a while now, but I wasn't expecting to see these. Whilst there's a few different birthday cards available, this seems to be the only Christmas card design that's on the market right now. If you're in the UK these can currently be found in Toys R Us, and quite possibly other stores that sell licensed cards. I've seen Gemma's other stuff in WHSmith and various card shops in the past.

The card measures about 9" tall, and I absolutely love the design on it. Considering you're getting two for £2 at the moment, it's an awesome little thing to pick up if you get the chance.

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Sonic X VCDs from Mighty Media Co, Ltd.

Cross-posted from my own blog. I'd posted a few bits and pieces from my collection over there before I made this one and figured some of it was worth the repost.

These VCDs were released in China in 2005, and contain all 78 episodes across 39 discs. Many of the discs re-use the same artwork (a good chunk of it being from the Japanese DVD covers), hence why I didn’t bother scanning them all.

What’s interesting about them is that they are official releases, although they were technically never on sale. As far as I’m aware, these were only ever available to rent from Blockbusters stores in China for a short period of time. I could never find out the full details of what happened, but there was rumours of some sort of licensing violation and the discs disappeared from the shelves not long after their initial release. One member on a forum I used to visit rented them at the time and that’s where the JP rips of episodes 53-78 actually came from in the first place.

Each disc contains 2 episodes and has switchable Chinese/Japanese audio, although the one slight downside is that all of them have hardcoded Chinese subtitles. (Makes sense considering their target audience of course, and obviously they couldn’t do anything else since VCDs have their limitations.)

I got these dirt cheap at the time and haven’t spotted another set since, be it for sale or in someone else’s collection. If they were pulled from the shelves, I’d imagine there’s VERY few of these still floating around; especially as they weren’t even on general sale to begin with. So it’s quite an awesome set to own even if just for that reason.

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Kicking off this blog with something I've never seen elsewhere, this is a Sonic 2 clock I picked up for pennies a long time ago. Had no idea what it was at the time, but it was cheap, it worked, and it looked nice, so I bought it to shove on my wall. Years later, I found out it had been available through a Sega Club catalogue in the early 1990s, and I believe there should have been a Robotnik pendulum attached to it. The clock has always had a space on the back that looked like it was missing something, so I guess that would explain that. Unfortunately, I've never even been able to find so much as an image of another one at all, never mind a complete one. Incomplete or not, this is still one of the coolest things I've ever came across.