Sonic the Hedgehog
There's a person out there. The kind of person who spent their childhood on a Mega Drive and never really recovered, in the best way possible. The kind of person that is no doubt hearing the Green Hill Zone theme tune in their head as they read this sentence. The kind of person who has opinions on which era of the games were best and will happily explain these opinions to you for hours if you allow them. This is a gift for that person.
We care about this. Sonic merchandise is everywhere, and not all of it is good. Stickers and calendars and dodgy sunglasses. We knew that once you dig into Sonic merchandise, things become volcanic in terms of quantity. But a lot of it was manufacturing bravado, things produced because Sega were big enough to have a license and some random person in China had a factory. That stuff is gross. Our priority was keeping this curated to things that care about Sonic as much as you do. Things you would want to own, not just accept as a gift because it was Sonic branded. We feel like we landed pretty heavily on the right side of that line.
Some of these will resonate with fans of the classic trilogy who cut their teeth on 16 bit platforming and have understandably mixed feelings about Sonic Adventure. Some of it will go down perfectly with those who came to the brand later, from the games that released as Sonic aged, or the movies, or from exposure to the character via that charming quirk that older cartoons have of becoming furniture. Sonic has managed to transcend generations without losing_anything. An 8 year old and their Grandparents could both get Hyper without feeling old or young. Not many gifts can claim to do that.
We wanted to keep this small, which is why we passed on a lot of really cool stuff. If it didn't feel necessary we didn't add it. Every single thing in here was fought over by us personally against a single criteria; if we would rather gift this to someone we liked. Simple as that. If either of us hesitated it was cut. What you're left with, in all it's sweater wearing glory, is our gift picksicle. This is the list we would email a friend who just asked for it.