Japan fucking LOVES vending
machines, so it’s not much of a surprise to find that UFO Catchers are a big
deal there too and have been for god knows how long. UFO Catchers are what we would
call ‘the crane machines’ of ‘The Klaaaaaw’ and Japan doesn’t just put cuddly
toys and shit watches in them, they put all kinds of stuff, in fact a lot of
the plastic models sold in conventions were made as prizes for arcades and
mostly as prizes in UFO Catchers in arcades.
Sega manufacture UFO
Catchers, in fact making UFO Catchers and prizes for them is a major part of
their business in Japan, for years they had the lucrative Disney licence for
this for instance (do they still have it?). The point of this is that they’ve
made A LOT of Sonic the Hedgehog plush for crane machines over the years.
But this is just to
understand the very first sets, the ‘& Friends’ sets. All plush from these set
have the same tag with this artwork on it:
Innit cool that someone has found, cleaned up and made such a small thing as tag artwork available? And people shit on the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom.
