Sonic: From speedy hedgehog to… popcorn vendor?
Posted by Graham. Filed under News.
Have no fear, Sonic has not retired, from his top post as Sega’s speedy gaming mascot, and taken up to delving out popcorn to screaming children. No sir, he is in fact doing both!
No, literally doing both. Some guy from UK:Resistance, has posted up details of this strange phenomenon, when he recently visited Japan.
He tells tale, of how he found the ‘SegaSonic Popcorn Shop’ at Tennoji Zoo, (in Osaka). The vending machine (if you can call it that), sells children popcron, but they have to play for it! You select what popcorn you want, and then you have to play a small game before the machine spits out the corn, (now do you see how Sonic is both a game star and popcorn vendor?).
“If I remember correctly (it was a month ago, so surely I can be forgiven for forgetting minor details), you play as Sonic, trying to deliver popcorn to the customer. Robotnik, however, is a dick, and tried to stop Sonic by placing him on a treadmill. You have to make Sonic run faster than the treadmill, so he can jump off the end and deliver the popcorn. You have to make Sonic run by turning the wheel on the front of the machine as fast as you can.
“The machine I was playing was outside, and the wheel had rusted to fu*k, so it made an incredible high-pitched screeching noise as I turned it faster. This only attracted the attention of surrounding Zoo visitors, and made me feel quite uncomfortable in the children’s area of the park.”
Though there are a variety of flavours to choose from, apparently the popcorn itself isn’t all that great:
“The machine lets you choose from Salt, Butter and Curry (!?) flavour popcorn. It was quite a hot day, so I thought butter would likely be the safest option. I don’t know how correct I was, but the butter popcorn tasted like shit, and made my hands really greasy, so I wouldn’t recommend it.”
It seems like quite an unusual way of selling popcorn, and it would be interesting to know what happens if you lose- does the machine still give you the money? If it were me, I would have made it so the children have to earn their food, that’ll be one way to build up an army of Sega Nerds.
And here’s a video of the machine too. Lovely.
Comments on this article
There have been 5 responses to this article.
THIS. IS. SICK.
CaptainUlt
Posted August 11th, 2007 at 8:13 pm.
Popcorn covered in salt sounds wonderful.
Kogen
Posted August 11th, 2007 at 8:20 pm.
This sounds absolutely disgusting.
But the Sonic fan in me wants to try it. It wants me to try it HARD.
Bryan
Posted August 11th, 2007 at 8:22 pm.
Kogen have you never had Salted Popcorn before?
Graham
Posted August 12th, 2007 at 2:06 am.
holy crap I’ve played this, I don’t remember the popcorn, but they had the exact same play system and characters at an airport in the UK, gatwick I think, but I was forced to leave it because of parents at the time, which very much annoyed me. but you had to sping around that wheel thing as fast as you could.
peck_ed
Posted August 12th, 2007 at 7:56 am.