Subway began it's first ever Sonic meal toy promotion in 2018. They started it at Sonic's birthday in June & let it run all summer.
It may be their first meal toy tie-in but it's actually one of the most interesting out of ALL the fast food places to have come before!
The prizes are quite complex, and they have little games with them as well. You can also combine all 4 prizes to make one really big rotating item. The theme here is gears & movement. This paper card shows you that you can build 3 different things by combining the different prize packs.
In the gallary is an example of what you'll get when you buy the Subway kids' meal. The bag is even Sonic themed! It's quite nicely designed, letting modern jumping-twist Sonic really steal the show with his logo & large art. Nice! The toy is in the usual little clear bag, but it's printed with the same design as the paper bag, this time in black ink. The third panel has what you get when you open the bag. The gimmick item (in this case it's the lenticular screen), a sheet of letter stickers (White) a folded color paper puzzle & instruction sheet, and of course, all the gears you need to snap together to get your parts working.
https://sonicdistrict.com/merchandise/food/3099-sonic-subway-promotion#sigProId0dafb52c53
Here is the 'turning figure' toy & it's sheet. But how does it work?
You have to decode the letters in the speech bubbles by placing the long plastic thing on the decoder area there & turning the large gear upon it. There's a hole in the big gear, and when it's turned to the right space, the hole will reveal the proper letter sticker to place in the speech bubble. Keep doing this, and you can build the phrases you see spelled out here. The edge has the instructions for assembling the figure-turner from the 'built' picture. The phrases are: Tails Time To Fly, Eggman I'll Get You Sonic & Sonic Sonic Speed! The bonus phrase is "Sonic is Really Fast".
https://sonicdistrict.com/merchandise/food/3099-sonic-subway-promotion#sigProIda4ba70e34f
This is the 'swirling Sonic' toy.
It uses a vertical wheel that meshes with the cogs in the gear to spin. It has a jumping pointing stock Sonic over a swirly, spiraling bright colored background. There is a transparent texture over this so that when you spin the wheel, it looks like the lines are swirling & moving making it look like Sonic is jumping out of a portal or something in the toy. Each of these decodes the speeches in the same way. Knuckles says Lets Roll & Sonic says I'll Trick Him Every Time.
https://sonicdistrict.com/merchandise/food/3099-sonic-subway-promotion#sigProId55b4bcd4d2
This is the 'zoetrope Sonic' toy.
This one makes a modern toy out of an old fashion concept. One of the first ways to show an animation was a thing called a zoetrope. It was a hollow drum on a spinning base that you turned with a crank. By looking into a small slot in the side of the drum it forces you to look at only a single small area inside the drum. This lets the different drawings pass through the field of view very quickly, to create an animation effect without a flip-book or film. That's exactly what's going on here with this colored card contraption. You fit the paper card in the bumps on the big gear, then put in the strip of paper with different Sonic 'frames' of animation. Turning this toy while peeking through the slits lets you see him run, jump and roll.
The phrases here are Tails Time To Fly and Sonic Speed Is My Game.
https://sonicdistrict.com/merchandise/food/3099-sonic-subway-promotion#sigProId135a8db2b3
This is the 'lenticular Sonic' spinning screen toy. It uses the gears to turn a red bordered 'screen' that has a special picture of Sonic in it. It's covered in lenticular (raised transparent) lines. These change the angles of the image letting you only see parts of it at once. When you move the screen different parts show though, giving the appearance that he's moving in the scene. You can see (vaguely) 3 Sonics up there on the toy but the effect would be him animating between those poses as the screen turns. This puzzle decodes phrases for Sonic & Shadow. Shadow says Don't Stop & Sonic says I'm Outta Here! Of course, there are letters left over in the peel n' stick cards so those have been been used to spell another phrase up the side.
These are in the USA everywhere you find a Subway, but they are also likely in parts of Europe too.
Want to see this toy in action? You can at Youtube with the Subway Sonic Meal Toys Video. The video demonstrates all the toys and shows that they are actually pretty big.
Additional Info
- Region: America