Wall Context

More Competition: 02

More Competition: 01

Floor Plans

I tried for a long time to find a floor plan for a specific floor in the Hamleys shop but unfortunately I was unsuccessful at every attempt. So instead I found some general floor plans that I think resemble Hamleys in some way and are quite accurately detailed. From these we could create a plan that resembles Hamleys to the best of our ability.

Promotion

There are many ways in which we could promote the Sonic event at Hamleys. Some of the better ideas we have come up with utilise the London methods of advertising, for example: the underground, taxis and buses. However there is also the possibility of using Hamleys resources as well for example, leading up to the event for roughly a month or fortnight we could use reverse sides of carrier bags and reciepts. This could be effective because many people consider the Hamleys carrier bag as precious as a Harrods one, and to be seen walking around London with one in tow is usually a status symbol.

Inside Hamleys

Arcade Games

Kids Gift Bag: Bumblebags

I found a great website called Bumblebags, which has all sorts of different options for stocking gift bags for kids of both genders and all ages. They also have different themes available to order for both genders and a range of prices. I think the section dedicated to boys, aged 6 and over could be particularly useful as this is the target market we are aiming our interactive experience at. If I am to continue with developing ideas for a kids gift bag then I will need this type of supporting work. The bags tend to resemble the image below, only with an illustration specific to the chosen theme, here it is obviously football.

The Competition

Below are more examples of work that I have discovered in relation to this years YCN 'Sonic the Hedgehog' brief. I don't think they are the best examples of great graphic design execution, however I do think that the concepts are pretty clever and given a little more time they could work really well. 

20th Anniversary: Existing Work

A limited edition box set to celebrate Sonic the Hedgehog's 20th birthday. The box includes the first Sonic game on a USB stick to play on modern consoles and a pack with which to host your own tournament. The pack includes invitations, a party game booklet, a wallchart and a t-shirt for the winner. The box is a collectible item and includes a 3D pop-up of a Sonic game level inside of the lid.

Sega World, The Trocadero, London

London's SEGA theme park kicked off at the height of its mascot Sonic the Hedgehog's popularity on September 7, 1996. Housed in the Piccadilly Trocadero, it featured a number of indoor rides, coin-op arcade machines and a SEGA merchandise shop. It was heavily promoted in the UK's Sonic the Comic, where competitions were run to win items from the SegaWorld shop, and out on the streets where tokens could often be found for discounted or free entry, and free t-shirts were distributed. The loss-making venture eventually closed and was taken over by a new management and renamed the establishment "Funland". Funland was originally the arcade in the basement floor next to the Pepsi Max drop, which shared the same building as SegaWorld.

After taking over SegaWorld, Funland shut their basement arcade and the top floors remained open, along with McDonalds on the 3rd floor until autumn 2002 when the main entrance known as the Rocket Escalator, was shut. At that time the dodgems were moved from the 3rd to the 1st floor and a new lower ground floor was re-opened. The arcade is arguably the largest and most popular in England with recent games including DJMax Technika, Pump It Up Fiesta, Pump It Up Pro, Streetfighter IV, Initial D Arcade Stage 4. and As of 2010, the basement section leading from the London Underground is now an area for bboys and streetdancers to practice.

The name SegaWorld later referred to the basement arcade in Hamleys' Regent Street branch, featuring none of the rides and entertainment of its Trocadero predecessor, as a SEGA-dedicated coin-op den, which then became the Game Zone arcade, and finaly stripped and replaced with a franchised 'Game' outlet at the end of 2003.

A promotional video originally released in 1996 can be found below. It's quite weird to look back at this now knowing that it's been shut down because of such poor sales and figures. I do actually remember visiting London as a child and being totally blown away by the inside of Segaworld, with the only clear memory being scared by the mish mash of escalators going in all sorts of decorations. Oh and for some reason... giant gobstoppers. 

6th Anniversary in Hamley's

After a brief discussion with Chris about the finer details of our campaign we came to realise that even though we had created a design direction to follow, we needed to think about further issues. For example the idea that we wish to pursue is to create a large scale, interactive 'Green Hill Zone' for children to play with, however we haven't thought about the environment that this piece of design would be found in. We discussed the possibility of setting up an outdoor event, such as a tent decorated with Sonic memorabilia, but soon realised this wasn't ideal. We then listed off possible chains of shops that would be interested in hosting something like this and came up with HMV and GAME, however it then hit me that the large toy shop 'Hamley's', found in London, could be viable. Before we could go any further I thought it necessary to see if Sonic had ever dealt directly with Hamley's before and was delighted to find out that in 1997 for Sonic's 6th Anniversary there was birthday event held there. All the information below is taken from a post on SEGA Memories, found here.

"Sonic the Comic were good to me. Hell, Sega in general have been good to me as a fan, but Sonic the Comic really did throw some good stuff my way when I was a wee lad. Not only did I win a Sonic 2 patch from them when I sent in some self drawn Sonic comics, get my artwork in an issues Graphic Zone section which won me a watch, but I also manged to win a competition they held in 1997 for a exclusive 6th Birthday party event in London. Only 100 invites could be won and you could take a mate along with you, so there was a total of 200 of us (excluding parents) going to this one-off party.

Hamleys as you may already know is a huge toy shop in London on Regent Street with floors upon floors of the stuff. On the below ground bottom floor was a gaming section called Metropolis, which was Sega branded and had a bunch of arcade cabinets and a snack bar of some sort. My memory of the place is pretty fuzzy and I don't believe it's still there, and if it is I doubt Sega still has their name plastered everywhere (much like how Segaworld became 'Funland'), but it was further evidence that Sega were huge in the UK. You never saw anything like this run by Nintendo, that's for sure!

Game wise, they had a few Saturn cabinets set up with Sonic R running on them, about a month before the game was due out. There was a raffle to win a couple copies of the game early, along with some other Sonic stuff I can't remember exactly. I also remember there being a contest involving getting best scores on the arcade cabinets they had there, of which I only remember the Scud race machines which i gave a whirl and got no where in. There was goodie bags that came with a bunch of badges of Sonic running about on a Hamley's logo which I still have somewhere) as well as Sonic Jam and Sonic R posters. Neat.

The highlight of the event was a guy wandering about in a rather impressive Sonic costume (far better than the one that stumbled around SegaWorld), who was being helped around by some woman presumably due to not being able to see very well. I remember one moment when she disappeared for a bit and he manged to walk into a wall, causing Sonic 3D posters to fall all over him. How embarrassing. but I kind of wished we got that caught on camera, could of sent that to Who's Been Framed. He practically had to shove his face into the cake to even see it."

I think this proves that Sonic and SEGA have a had a lot of association with London in general and Hamley's more specifically in the past. Therefore I think that bringing the celebrations back to there for the twentieth could be a really good idea.

SEGA France

Apparently in celebration of the 20th Anniversary SEGA France have already had a brainstorm and decided to inject humour into their promotional campaign. They decided it would be funny to create a piece of packaging that holds some personalised Sonic anti-aging cream and send it out to loyal customers or something. I'm not sure the actual concept works brilliantly well as 20 years isn't actually that long of period, however it does work well in terms of creating  buzz and it shows just another way of how this project could be dealt with.

Sonic Memories: A Retro Look at Sonic

I found a great blog entitled SEGA Memories that deals primarily with all aspects of the SEGA brand and how it has progressed over the years. There are lots of posts that show vintage sonic items and collectibles, some of my favourite examples of these are below.

A Sonic puzzle, fully assembled and framed from 1991-92.

A Sonic lunchbox and flask.

A very strange inflatable Sonic head that you wear on your wrist; from Japan.

McDonald's toys promoting Sonic 3, roughly 1994.

Sonic portable games, McDonald's. 

A set of Sonic trading cards, info on the complete set can be found here.

A retro t-shirt design; front and back.

McDonald's promotional material.

A Sonic the Hedgehog chess set, complete with all pieces.