Race them all the way! The Broken Sonic track set

Despite the utter disappointment of there still being no sign of the Dr.Robotnik soft toy Impact Innovations promised us on the boxes of their other soft toys, not to mention the constant delays and doubtful release of any of First4Figures range of lovely vinyl figures and that statue, the odd piece of stuff from this classic style Sonic range has crept out into the wild over Christmas. If you've stumbled into a busy GAME store lately you may of seen the console carry bag things with Sonic on them that sell for about £12 and £15 each, but there is also a racing track set, much like the one Impact had early designs of on their website a while back, out there which as far as I know is only available in Debenhams stores at the moment.

Gotta love how they wrote "SONIC BROKEN" on the box. I'm sure you guys will read a lot into that.

More after the jump..


And by 'at the moment' I mean 'good bloody luck finding it' as just about none of the stores have any left as they all sold out just before Christmas day. The website has nothing but a blank "Sega" category left either. It sold for about £12 and if they had any left from boxing day onwards it would have been in the sale. I checked out 3 different stores in the last week hoping I might get one cheap (or at least see what it even looked like, as there is nothing online of it) with no success until today when I found one amongst a box of returns junk in the Lakeside store.

It had a card stuck on it stating that "Sonic doesn't move" and it's price being dropped to £6. I took it to the till where they said it was not sorted out by the staff yet but they let me have it without the option to return it anywhere, with another half slashed off, so i got it for £3. It says it's broken, but sod it; for that money it doesn't matter and I only really want it for the figures anyway.

Here's all the junk you get in the box..

.. and here it is set up. It didn't look Sonic-y enough for me so I stuck some badniks on the track for Sonic and tails to crash into (had they worked, that is).

So what's it like? Well, nothing amazing really, but the characters are pretty neat. The track is about as basic as you can get, with nothing to distinguish it from any other car racing track set, and you get two controllers with a Sonic logo on them and two buttons that both do the same thing for some reason. Really basic stuff, and as with just about any of these kinds of car racing sets, it only works when it feels like it, which is barely ever: most of the time the cars just twitch a little but sometimes they would suddenly spring to life until they get stuck in the crossing path and topple over. Why they still use those fluffy lumps of wire at the bottom of these things to connect to the track is beyond me, as it's clearly a totally unreliable and downright rubbish tech.

Just pretend they're moving. I had to 99% of the time.

Still, the characters themselves aren't too bad. The Sonic and tails are good likeness and look far better than the wonky prototype images. Instead of sitting them in cars Sonic Drift style they have wheels for legs and a big white lump which I guess represents the speed lines to support them. Sonic also appears to have bags under his eyes on my one. If you replaced the wheels and lump of white with normal standing legs they'd actually make rather respectable little figures of the pair, especially compared to some of the wonky eyed figures we got back in the old days. I also remember having a radio controlled Sonic car which was a bit shit: it was just an ugly purple car with some Sonic related stickers slapped on it.

If it wasn't for the lump of white separating their legs from their bodies, these toys would be rather sweet.

Well I've typed far too many words about these now, but either way they seem to be rather elusive at the moment (at least until everyone starts returning them when they can't get the bloody thing to do anything) so this a sort of WORLD EXCLUSIVE first set of photos online of the thing...I guess. Exciting stuff. Have a happy new year and look forward to lots more photos of Sonic crap coming your way soon. This is now officially the only website on the Internet that is not bitching and moaning about the state of the Sonic series!