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Sonic is the New Hello Kitty?
July 17th, 2012 by Nickie Williams
Continuation story from the plushie-fest of the other night. It seems as though the head honcho at the European post at SEGA is pondering the possibilities of mega merchandising. In other words, there’s nothing that SEGA would like more than to become as famous and wide-spread as the cute little British cat dreamed up by that other Japanese company- Sanrio. There are licensing teams for Sonic dotted all over the world, especially in it’s three main markets of US, Europe and Japan.
In the past, Sega used to do most of it’s merchandising and products from the home base in Japan- but are now in agreeance that it’s going to rely more heavily on the ground crews around the world to really push the boat out.
“Sonic is a well-known character, but we’ve got a lot of room to grow in merchandising,”
“We dream of Hello Kitty. We’re still far off from that but we can see that our profits are growing year on year in the US and Europe [in merchandising].
“We’ve got a licensing team on the ground in the UK who are focusing on that and that team will expand. We’ve got a team in the US and which will also expand. We used to run it all out of SEGA of Japan, but having people on the ground is making a big difference.
“We will always do the computer game but the merchandising is a very important aspect to Sonic.”
What can we expect to see from this other than giant-sized Sonic/Hello Kitty hybrid plushies? Who knows? I personally have a Sonic the Hedgehog hoodie that I wear pretty much on a daily basis from Insert Coin Clothing and they also have Sonic tshirts too. I have to admit though, there’s really not a whole lot in the way of wearable merchandise. I think if SEGA could really grab this by the horns and kick start it’s flagging motor- they could really be onto a winner. I see Mario merchandise all the time from Nintendo- so why not Sonic merchandise from SEGA?
I’m just going to leave this here… 
Watch this space fellow fans of the blue-blurred ball of speed!