[deecee4]

Quote:

Originally Posted by webz

Yes, and the majority of Street Fighter stuff has come out after 2003. Sure, there was a few things (the before mentioned Hasbro Street Fighter toys, Resaurus line), but Street Fighter being seen as retro nostalgia, akin to Rainbow Brite or He-Man, is rather recent. I never said Udon invented the anime style for Street Fighter. As I said, quite clearly, Street Fighter 2 had anime-style artwork from the beginning. Udon's artwork, however, is what I see EVERYWHERE on the majority of Street Fighter swag from keychains to coffee mugs, so obviously Capcom tells licensors to look at Udon as the principle reference for characters, otherwise we'd be seeing a ton of the horrible "realistic" art from the western SNES instruction booklets.

I'm not doubting that you're seeing Udon stuff used on official merch (I have as well) but, I don't think its as one-sided as you're implying. I think there's still a fair amount of post-2003 merch that is based on the artwork from the 90s Capcom team. The Sota line, the stuff Neca did was from the in-game SF4 models, Pop Culture Shock have put out statues that look like they're based on old Capcom art...I remember commenting here recently on a PCS Ken that was almost verbatim to Kinu Nishimura's illustration for SF3.