This is a press kit / advertising kit. It's a combination item with bag, real food, game, notepad & description poster/ trifold.
What a rare and interesting item! Companies didn't make too many kits like this, so a complete one must be quite rare! This kit is used to advertise/explain to retailers the new Sonic Shapes Pasta from Franco American. It's used to convince them that "kids will get their parents to buy it". Interestingly, it contains 'prizes' for the person to help convince them. You can see a note pad here, but that black/gray item is the actual LCD Flip-up "arcade" type game that you can see on Sonic LCDs. Those are 2 real cans of pasta in there too. The case is embroidered with Sega & Franco American logos
The big Spinning Sonic art on the left folds open with 3 panels as you see there that explains to the buyer what the shapes are (bottom left) & how popular Sonic is, so he'll sell lots of cans. It has interesting stats all over, including 1994 Sega spent 200 million on marketing, Sonic had 8 games out at the time, he generated 16 billion in sales & had 90 licenses at the time. The various stock arts say "Everyone wants me" and "can you blame them?" and "so let's get to the point" as the text explains why Sonic/Sega is popular with the public. Notice how it dumps on dads/families by saying "Moms will rush to the store to buy it". (isn't that unusual...)
The first 'page'/panel talks about their climb in pasta popularity as well as how they aquired Disney, Gargoyles, Garfield & Schnookums/Meat (yeah anybody remember that dog and cat slapstic show...) shapes which made them more popular.
Sonic MOVIE?!
Yes what's this buried in the text? "Sonic will get a feature length film by Trilogy/MGM Pictures in 1996". Obviously that never happened, but how close WAS it to happening...that a pasta company would release it in a press piece?
Additional Info
- Region: America