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So the latest issue of Licensing Today Worldwide has a rather nice surprise on the cover, it’s Sonic! Inside the issue there is a two page interview with Jason Rice, Sega’s Director of Brand Licensing for EMEA.

Despite this, most of the information is already known, except for one really odd detail.

That being, the Sonic franchise is divided into two licensing programmes; Sonic Boom and Classic Sonic. Wait…. what about Modern Sonic? Well… that’s the thing, Modern Sonic is not mentioned at all anywhere in the article.

Stranger still is that when you look at the imagery used in the article, it’s just Classic and Boom, whilst Modern Sonic is present, it’s just in a group shot showing how Sonic’s design has changed over the years.

Now the article is for the 25th/2016 celebrations, so it’s likely that Sega are just putting the Modern Sonic license on hiatus for a while.

But this is really interesting, we’ve speculated for a while that the 25th anniversary would be a Classic focused affair, with several companies confirming they’re making Classic themed products, but it’s never been stated that the Modern Sonic license isn’t being issued for the 25th?

Given how Modern Sonic appears on the cover and Sega have been using him in their promotional material, odds are he’s not been axed or is now just classic Sonic, even if that’s how the article initially reads, but it’s beginning to look a lot like there won’t be any Modern Sonic merchandise produced for the 25th anniversary, unless the Classic Sonic License now includes Modern Sonic?

Source: LTW