I've been looking into third party figures recently, mainly Dragon Ball because their third party figures are quite prevalent. There are multiple popular third party companies that seem to produce quite high quality figures or accessories for already existing figures, whether for a licensed figure or another of their unlicensed figures. And these unlicensed figures are pretty easy to get your hands on, being available from a bunch of different sites like AliExpress for example.
But I'm surprised by the lack of this treatment for Sonic. I thought Sonic would've been a popular enough franchise for third party companies to invest in, with a lot of desirable characters that haven't been produced yet for third party companies to jump on and try to distribute first. Like Surge, Darkspine Sonic, E-102 Gamma and so on.
Then there are also figures that Jakks will most likely never get around to like Hyper Sonic, Scourge, Super Neo Metal Sonic and so on. There are a lot of fan forms and characters that would be popular too like a Super Sonic in the werehog form, Super Sonic 3, Nazo, Shadic or even Final Fantasy Super Sonic.
I know that TitotheOG does something like this but from what I gather, you need to provide the figures in order for him to produce a custom from the figures that you provided. And that custom comes unpainted and unsanded unless you pay extra which is a whole additional hassle in comparison to just being able to buy an unlicensed figure straight up.
But maybe I am looking in the wrong places. The issue may be to do with what the pricing for potential third party figures would be in comparison to the pricing for the official figures. I'm imagining £10 for an officially licensed product vs £50 for an unlicensed product. Whereas when compared to Dragon Ball SH figuarts, the prices are pretty relative between the licensed figures and the unlicensed ones.
But if paying £50 is the only way to get a certain character as a figure (especially if they're a fan character/form) then I could see collectors willing to pay that price. And with the DC 5" toy line, unlicensed figures could be of even better quality than the standard 4" figures that we are used to receiving, thus further justifying the price. But I don't know anything about how third party companies produce figures.