These are chess pieces from a mysterious unfinished set. They were given away as magazine prizes, but the campaign quit before releasing all the pieces. It would have been red base vs blue base & ring symbol vs emerald symbol. The bases feature a picture of the traditional chess piece the character is supposed to represent. But if Sonic isn't king, who is? & What original chess piece has tentacles? (Tails symbol) The Chao is a pawn & Eggman is King.

In the image gallary you can see a magazine page of the Sonic figure. Ordinarily, this magazine would be on 'magazine pages', but it's directly tied to the figures above. This is "Chess Acadamy Magazine" issue #1. In order to try and drum up some interest of chess fans, they decided to produce "An Exclusive Chess Set of Sonic Characters", using all modern designs. They'd enclose a figure with each issue until you had a full set. It's a great gimmick to keep people buying issues, they'd want to complete their chess set. However, was chess (a slow game) really a great choice for looking for "Crossover Fans" from the Sonic/Video game fandom...that's notorious for fast, impatient people?

Apparently not...as it failed after only 4 figures. (a shame because the figures look nice.) The usual price was to be 6.99 pound per issue, but the first, as you see here was only 1.99. Was the price too steep? The fandom too impatient? This is still an interesting thing to see.