Gavin talks about Jakks' Sonic Problem 

Sonic

Finding these is a huge pain. The 4 inch Omega and Rouge figures were the ones I was hunting for the most last year but I managed to find them both after being persistent. I've been looking for Vector, Big, and Chaos lately but have yet to find them. I did get lucky and ended up finding the 4 inch Charmy, Rouge, and Dark Chao figures when they came out so I picked them up. I have seen Charmy more than once though and had no idea he was considered rare until recently.

I’d have to agree it’s probably the best line we’ve had for awhile. The resaurus stuff has a special place in my heart, but the egg robo and a bunch of uncommon characters kicks it up a notch.

Since I grew up with the Adventure series, all I really want are those figures, but unfortunately they are impossible to find. You can't easily search for them at Target. I don't know why Jakks has made it so hard to buy them online.

I was really lucky to find Charmy at my local Target this past week. You're definitely right about the Sonic problem, as my Target only had one Charmy, one Burrobot, and 9 2.5" Sonics.

The Walmart near my house has had a MOUNTAIN of 4in Sonics for a FULL YEAR. There’s around 15 of them. They are spread through multiple isles. There is no escape.

I'm glad someone else noticed the issue of their local targets drowning in sonic figures. Since they've been released I've checked pretty much twice a week every week for new figures (specificlly shadow or omega), and with the exception of a single rouge and maybe 3 or 4 tails spottings, literally every single 4 or 2.5 inch figure has been modern sonic or classic Sonic. I still haven't found a Shadow 4 inch figure under $25+ online, and but even then I really don't want to give in to online resellers who are just jacking up the price. Also as a side note I would pay an absurd price for a sonic with soap shoes or a werehog figure oh my god??

I had this but reverse. Every time I went to target to find Jakks Pacific Sonic, they would either only have shrugging Sonic or another character. I couldn't find any Sonic at target until this month.

in the uk, we get all the waves a few months after they hit the us and they aren't that well stocked so once a character has sold out it likely isn't being restocked which is unfortunate because the ebay listings and other preowned sites have very expensive listings, i was lucky enough to grab a 4 inch vector for only £5.70 (shipping included), after he sold out everywhere in December, don't know how i got away with that

Another one of Jakks' problems is that they don't sell their figures online! Most of the time, you'll have to pay 3x the retail price for one figure if you're buying online. For collectors in rural areas, this can make even GETTING the figures difficult.

As someone who's been collecting action figures for decades; I feel pretty confident in saying that the issue is marketability. The company simply does not want to risk the lesser known characters shelf warming; as no one outside of die hard Sonic fans even recognize them. Sonic and Tails are some of the most well known characters, not just by current Sonic fans, but by parents who only played Sonic 2 back in the day. The main audience they're trying to get to is said parents. As well as parents of kids (primarily boys) who watch the Sonic cartoons on Netflix, or maybe played relatively recent titles like Frontiers, Origins, and Mania. The "normies" so to speak. This is an extremely common practice, especially in boys lines. This will also be the reason that female characters even appearing will be like finding a needle in a hay stack. Girl characters supposedly "don't sell" so they show up at one a case. It's annoying, I know, but it's working. I've noticed that even the endless Sonic and Tails don't warm shelves for very long, and this constant selling keeps the stores happy and keeps the line going. However, I totally agree that they can keep it fresh by adding endless variants. Soap Shoes, Caliburn, Riders, etc. Also Shadow. Shadow needs to appear in WAY more waves than he does Tl:dr: super common sales tactic to keep the line going. A necessary evil.

I literally never saw a 4-inch Tails in my local store, which sucks cause my girlfriend is a huge fan of Tails and I've been wanting to buy her a Tails to be a companion piece to my 4 inch Sonic.

My biggest gripe with the line is the lack of arm articulation. It makes the figures look odd idk. I remember having some Jazwares and I loved em

As much as I like Sonic, it's kind of annoying to only see Sonics on the shelf. Most of the time people will just straight up steal the non-Sonic characters from their packaging and leave the packaging for all to see I've seen these with Knuckles and Vector I bought Big recently from Target and I like it

I think they just need to make them more available online so fans can find them easier.

Mike from Sonic official did say to be patient and each wave will eventually restock, but that doesn't always help seeing that unique characters get only one figure per case unless your local target is feeling generous and stocks more than one case..... Actually why doesn't target and Walmart just buy multiple cases to have multiple of certain characters available? It's probably so they don't have an overstock of sonic/classic sonic.

I'd pay for a SA1 Light Speed Dash shoes variant of Sonic

Literally I be at my target all the time trying to find chaos and big and always find nothing. And apparently Jet is out in stores now too?!?

This problem is still quite ongoing. The most recent wave, Wave 12, has Super Silver and Jet the Hawk, and a lot of their prices on eBay are ridiculous! Jet has gone down a little bit but Super Silver not so much (which sucks for me because Silver is my favorite and I really want to get his super form). This is also still a problem for Super Shadow because he came out all the way back in Wave 4 and people are still selling him for around 100 dollars on eBay. I wouldn’t find this as annoying if characters like Omega and Chaos 0 (two characters who never had a figure until now) were being sold for so much less in comparison. I mean, I once saw someone selling a Chaos figure for 10 DOLLARS!!! I’m just saying, I know this problem and I can understand the frustration. Good video.

I have still never found a Charmy :( Honestly its very obvious why there is a Sonic in every wave. Its so parents/new collects can always have to pick up. That way, when a kid asks for a “Sonic Toy”, there will always be a 4inch sonic in the shelves

spitting facts my guy

Seriously man, it’s so frustrating to collect the jakks figures when every shop you go into is just full of different versions of sonic. I’ve only seen rouge, silver and omega once and didn’t buy them, which I regret a lot. Never even seen vector, chaos, big, or even shadow before, not to mention some jakks stuff not even releasing in the uk. If they’re not going to stop releasing a sonic figure with every wave, I think they need to start increasing the size of each wave and start rereleasing figures more often. Until it gets better I’m sticking with jazwares

Spare a thought for Australian collectors. I've literally had to pay about $60 per figure on average to import them. I've got them all so far, but it's been absurdly expensive.

It’s honestly sad because I remember targets with all sorts of different characters stocked the brim

Shipping to the UK give its own weird spin on this issue: we're always months behind but sometimes rare figures in the US aren't really rare over here (seen lots of rouge the bats myself). Just a pain in the ass when you want something like Chaos

It sucks for us Australian fans though. Theres only about two different stores that stock them in for decent prices. And most of the time it's either just remaining figures that no one wants, or nothing at all. I've been eagerly waiting for the Flying Battery Playset to release over here, along with Studiopolis too, but at this rate, it doesn't seem like it'll happen :(

All I see at my targets are 4 inch modern sonic, bendy sonic, and 2.5 inch sonic’s

I really hope they re-release characters like rouge, omega and especially Silver he was like released once

I think the main problem is probably Sega mandate where they want Sonic in every wave like how for Marvel and DC figures there must be a Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man in every wave in there waves

I keep trying to find a Dark Chao, Chaos and Big in the UK. It's so difficult for some reason, even though I keep finding them online. Going to physical shops just gets me the most basic characters. Loads of Sonics and Amy, a few Charmy.

Earlier in Late January I was able to find that Charmy Bee figure Ebay for only $25.

Always have someone check in the back! (Just be nice about it, of course) I got my Charmy because I didn't see any out for sale, only a ton of Sonic's and maybe Tails. So I just asked, and the guy brought out a Charmy

Now we have to suffer from the Jet fever lol

Bro when you were talking about how hard it is to find the figures you want. That reminds me of my classic metal sonic figure that took me 6 months to find and I just found it at Walmart today

Getting my first wave from EE is pretty horrifying considering I have to find a way to get rid or all the Sonics.

I love this video, I can related to these problems jakks has been doing to the line, for the past couple of months I’ve been going to multiple targets to find these figures cause 1 they were a bit late to stock them or 2 I was too late on getting the new characters. It took me way longer to find wave 11 of both lines and even longer to find chaos cause how demanded he is, I do hope in the future Jakks can listen to feedback and stock the newer characters in the wave, but at the say time Jakks seems afraid to do so because they don’t wanna risk poor sales of newer characters. I do also agree Jakks should do more variants of the main characters like Mario & Luigi, but the problem with that is that Mario has more easy to make variants since they don’t require making new molds like for example Fire & Ice Mario, sonic really doesn’t have that besides super sonic but even then that requires a new mold for the head. A recent target system had a 2.5” running Sonic listed so it seems like they are going to more what they were doing with Mario.

As someone whose collecting these in the uk, I absolutely agree with this issue. Although the issue is even worse here considering I have to hope jakks ships enough stock to the uk. Because sometimes they will straight up skip random waves to ship or ship over a low stock and then start shipping over the latest one. I’ve noticed it takes jakks 2 months to release the figures over here after they release in America. Yet the same issue applys with scalpers and stuff. We don’t have a target, the best way to get them is either Smyths, The entertainer or random B&Ms. I don’t know if there are any others but these seem to be the most reliable places. Plus it’s annoying that jakks never gives information about releases over here, so I just have to hope they show up one day.

This is why Checklane line the goat, because there’s always a lot of other characters outside of just sonic

I've had a hell of a time trying to find any figures that aren't sonic or tails, my Walmart had 1 Amy and egg robo left

I joined the Jakks hype train a little late like just recently when they announced Infinite and Cream I just know they will undergo "Charmy fever" syndrome. I hope we can beat the scalpers to them.

I got my Charmy from Target by asking if they had any in the back: they had one, the Bee. But the Sonic situation isn’t really bad. Kids lose and break these toys. There is a reason Walmart keeps them in the Impulse buys checkout lanes. It’s not really an issue.

The issue with the sonic figure is that it's so flimsy and always ends up breaking

They need to balance the character ratios. Half a case should not be Sonic. Just do 3 sonic 1 reissue character and 2 of each new character.

My Target often doesn't even see the new waves until like, a month after they're stated to have been officially released. This was pretty much the case for me with Charmy, once I heard he was dropping in January, I knew it'd be a bit of an extended period till I actually saw him on shelves. Tho I wish they'd stock the waves better at other stores than just Target. Wal-Mart seems to barely get them, save for when the movie came out and the figure for the movie were on full display, and yet the Mario line usually gets a consistent stream of waves, even if they're sometimes one behind the Target releases. (Then again, could just me my stores in the northeast area) Given that Jakks is working on Sonic Prime figures eventually, they'll have a decent excuse to make alt variants of Sonic and others. Tbh, I'd love if they'd dip their toes back into Storybook stuff to finally give us *all* the knights from Black Knight instead of just Sonic, Lancelot, and Galahad, maybe after we finally get a proper Blaze so they can retool it into a Percival? I know Jet's in the next 4 inch wave so we've got the basis for Lamorak.

Yeh at my local target it’s nothing but classic sonics, it’s like he’s mocking me with those innocent eyes and light blue quills, I’m honestly considering getting a job there just to start putting other characters on the shelfs, still surprised that I own even half the supporting cast even more surprised that I own 2 rouges

these figures are so good, but here in brazil they're arround 199,99 Reais, which means 40 dollars.

Very excited to watch

He’s back wooooooo

What hot crater remix did you use at the beginning of the video

Very lucky to have instantly found dark Chao very lucky

Man I'm in Australia and still waiting for Omega, Big, Vector, Chaos and Charmy to hit shelves

Wish they’d do a dream cast style sonic, it’s the best design by far and there’s a noticeable difference between DC sonic and modern sonic

if they're gonna release the same 4 inch modern sonic why can't they change the shoes?

i think super shadow is getting the charmy treatment. or MAYBE im just too slow to find him bc I CANT FIND HIM ANYWHERE!

So much this. I also really dislike how on sites like BBTS and Entertainment Earth, only the Sonic figures are ever NOT in stock. Unless you buy the four pack, because yes Jakks, I really needed reskins of movie Sonic, Tails and Knuckles juuuust so I could get Super Sonic. And then his eyes were mis-colored. I did like that some of the Sonics had different hands, so I could remove the open hands from mine. I just wish they did that with other characters like Knuckles. Why do they even have open hands? Most of them doing even come with an accessory that can be held in said hand. That big emerald a lot of them come with? No chance.

Yes, I agree alot. I want jakks to re-release other characters like knuckles and metal sonic, I cant find them anywhere and I've been resulting to buying them on eBay.

The thing I’ve found highly annoying with their specific line is that they have a rarity scale on figures pretty much. Over where I live there’s a huge amount of these figures at Walmart or five below but in most cases you’ll only find sonic and it’s lucky to even find someone like mighty or Amy. I was so lucky to find a rouge and espio but otherwise almost completely barren.

I could list like 50 varieties for sonic that'd I'd buy lol

And this is why Walmart is not valuable to me because it has a bad case of Sonic fever the only time that Walmart was actually useful to me it was because they actually release Wave 2 of the Sonic movie 2 figures and Target didn't even have them and also the lead-up to Valentine's Day was the worst because they moved some of the Sonic figures into the Valentine section and you have to go all the way over there to see if they have the figures you want

I used to have a really hard time finding anyone that wasn't Sonic. Then I recently moved. Now I have a local Target that does a pretty darn good job with getting these in stock. I completely flipped out when I saw they had a Charmy. This is very far-fetched and I'm 95% sure it would never happen, but they should start including other characters as the main repack of the wave. Knuckles, Amy, Silver, etc. instead of Sonic and/or Tails. I know that would never happen, but it would be nice. Your idea of them doing varaints of Sonic would be nice though. Even if a Soap Shoes Sonic would put the Charmy Fever to shame. Or, they could just have more reliable online sources for preordering the figures. BBTS has been dropping the ball recently with these figures.

Still don't have Charmy and it's eating at me I don't know what to do

Bro don’t even get me started on chaos I been to target so many times and all I see is sonic and knuckles 😢

I think at Big W, they are about $18-20 ...Americans get it so cheap😭 (idk about target right now since I haven’t been for so long)

And yet they haven't re-released 2.5 inch Super Sonic, which hasn't appeared again since wave 4, seriously Jakks Frontiers made me love Super Sonic again c'mon my paint fixed Super Shadow is lonely ;-;

I was just in target and the only thing they had was sonic no rouge no knuckles no egg man only SONIC

merch when???

Immediately gave this video a like at 6:15 😂

Metal sonic is a pain to find

Yes

ALL THEY HAVE AT MY TARGET IS KNUCKLES AND AT WALMART HELP

6:30 ABSOLUTLEY YES, IM in canda so its MUCH MUCH WORSE THAN U GUYS THere HASNT BEEN ANY SONIC MERCH IN STORES for 2 MONTHS, its kinda been getting better but theres barely any restocks like once its released no restocks till like 3 months later

Welcome to toy collecting. This problem is nothing new and can go way back to the70’s with Star Wars. Every toyline that appeals up to adult collectors has this problem.

i need surge the tenrec figure

do you think you could make more dbz figure videos? i love the channel btw!

THE CHARMY VERVERS GONE DOWN I NEED TO GO MOM DRIVE ME TO EVERY TARGET IN THE STATE I NEED CHARMY

Me with 13 sonics

Meanwhile at Jakks Pacific's industries: -How about instead of yet another Sonic 4", how about we release something like Dark Spine Sonic or Excalibur Sonic? +You're fired -Nono wait... let's release slightly darker blue Sonic +Scratch that, you're promoted

Is this your first time collecting? Welcome to the world of scalping and horrible distribution

-a-

sanic

100 varieties of sonic and tails, obscure characters from 90s era sonic.... infinite??? Yet no Blaze......

maaaaaan i really hope they do a werehog figure too🥲 great video it’s been the same for me, can’t find any of them other than a wall of sonics which is dumb. they’re losing a ton of money & resellers are reaping the benefits