(with all due respect to author Muriel Barbery)
It certainly seems that the obsessive gene is hereditary. Last year I wrote about my 5 year old daughters obsession with My Little Pony. Allie still loves her ponies, but she currently has developed a new obsession 
that I never saw coming…
Sonic the Hedgehog.
Now, ultimately, I have to accept the blame for this one. I’ve always been a big Sonic fan myself ever since I bought the SEGA Genesis back in the early ’90s. The original Sonic the Hedgehog game came packed in with the console and, back then, was completely unlike any other game on the market. I was hooked.
By the time Sonic 3 was released I was working at SEGA’s North American headquarters located in (at the time) Redwood City, California. I was only doing phone support, but I loved it. I had a TV and a Genesis in my cubicle and was encouraged to play as many games as possible to familiarize myself with the company’s product line. It was rough work, I’ll tell ya.
Of course, after about six months our department was downsized and my position was eliminated. It stunk. To this day it was one of my favorite work environments.
Of course, in the SEGA HQ Sonic was everywhere!
So, how – more than 15 years later – has this affection for Sonic spread to my daughter?
Some months back I finally got around to picking up the Sonic Mega Collection Plus for the PS2 (which contains 7 of the old Sonic games from the SEGA Genesis and Game Gear). I had found myself getting the itch for some old school video gaming, so of course I turned to my old friend Sonic. My daughter and I found a used copy at a local GameStop. Her only exposure to Sonic prior to this point was seeing my old ReSaurus Sonic figure on my desk.
We brought the game home, popped the disk into the console and I was whisked away to 1991 and Allie’s eyes grew wide with excitement as I raced Sonic through zone after zone. As I played through the different games she was introduced not only to Sonic the Hedgehog, but to the ridiculously evil Dr. Robotnik (or Dr. Eggman, as he’s now called), as well as Tails the two-tailed helicoptering fox and Knuckles the Echidna. She instantly fell in love with Tails, especially. She was Tails for last Halloween thanks to an awesome home-made costume crafted by my wife (see the pic at the end of this entry).
I suppose I am guilty of fueling the fire when I picked up a couple of the Sonic Archives graphic novels from Archie Comics. Now I read Allie as story from those almost every night before bed. She loves them.
Did you know that the Sonic the Hedgehog comic book has been around since 1993 and just released issue 212? At one of the local comic shops in my area they had a sign hanging that reads, "Welcome to Comic Town, where Sonic outsells Superman". With all the doom and gloom in the comic book industry over the past decade, it’s an awesome accomplishment that Sonic is still going strong and soon will overtake Conan the Barbarian as the longest-running licensed property in comics.
Then I discovered that CWKids is still showing the Sonic X animated series, so I secretly DVR’d a couple of episodes and surprised Allie with them one morning when she wanted to watch cartoons. She was thrilled and amazed. Then she discovered you can watch episodes on the CWKids website, and now on Hulu, and she’s been in Sonic heaven ever since.
I’d been eyeing the latest figures from Jazwares each time I was at TRU, and noting how the figures seemed to repeatedly sell through. I came mighty close to picking up some of the 5" figures more than a few times. But, then I heard about the 3" line that was going to launch last summer, and (given my love for smaller scaled figures) decided to hold off and focus on that line. I’m glad I did. Jazwares really knocked it out of the park with the sculpts, articulation and character selection. The 3" line is going deeper into the Sonic character roster than any Sonic line has before, with much more to come.
Much to my wife’s chagrin, Allie is crazy about everything Sonic right now, and it’s really re-awakened a love in me for the little blue blur. Plus, there’s the added benefit of it being something that Allie and I share together. And that’s the best part.
In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… The A-Team.
If you’ve been following DC’s Green Lantern comics, you probably read Blackest Night. Purchasing various comics across the event got you a free ring for a given Lantern Corps. 8 rings. Now there is one more.
The Brave and Bold Plastic Man is another figure that uses the "build up, change up, team up" play pattern very well. Plas comes in two versions, a basic and a deluxe. At the point of this writing, I have only the basic. I was going to wait to write this until I got the deluxe, but I like Plas too much to wait any longer. Growing up, I always felt it odd that Plastic Man was not a member of the Justice League. I am forever grateful to Grant Morrison and Alex Ross for adding him to the team.