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Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog
Opening title card
Also known as	AOSTH
Genre	Animated series, Adventure, Slapstick comedy
Created by	DIC Entertainment BKN Sonic Team/Sega (characters)
Voices of	Jaleel White Long John Baldry Gary Chalk Ian James Corlett Phil Hayes Christopher Welch Storyboard Directors Art Mawhinney Lane Raichert Louis Scarborough Jr. Marc Schirmeister Scott Shaw Paul Terry
Country of origin	United States France Japan (overseas animation for some episodes)
Language(s)	English French
No. of episodes	65 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	22:05
Broadcast
Original channel	USA Network
Picture format	4:3
Original run	September 6, 1993 – December 3, 1993
Chronology
Followed by	Sonic the Hedgehog (1993–1994)

The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (also known as: AoStH) is an American and French animated series that was first broadcast in September 1993, and only for one season. It follows the escapades of the computer game character Sonic the Hedgehog, and his best friend Miles "Tails" Prower, as they attempt to stop the evil Doctor Ivo Robotnik and his array of vicious robots from taking over the planet Mobius. However, in typical Sonic style, Sonic always finds time to indulge in as many Chili Dogs he can get his hands on. This series is very much a slapstick type comedy – especially with the incredibly melodramatic explosions and quirky story lines – but Sonic is always portrayed as being skilled and clever, whereas Scratch and Grounder are clumsy and often serve as Robotnik's foil.

The show was originally offered to be broadcast on ABC's Saturday morning line-up, but ABC reviewed the show and found lack of animation, unpopular story plots, and other things. As a result, ABC declined the deal and the show ended up only being broadcast in syndication.

Production

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog was created by DIC Entertainment, which produced a total of 65 episodes for its first season, and was syndicated by Bohbot Entertainment, now BKN International (in the original run, every episode began and ended with the "Bohbot Entertainment Presents" logo).

The plots often loosely followed the storyline of the Sonic video games series, although when the cartoon began, the Sonic games were still quite new, and lacking much plot or character development, which was filled in by the show's writers.

Later DiC ceased production on this comical version to spend more time on its darker interpretation, dubbed just Sonic the Hedgehog (commonly known as SatAM by fans), a series launched on ABC's Saturday morning line-up.

Post-production

After the original airing, DiC created one more episode in the winter of 1996, "Sonic Christmas Blast", which has features from the other Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon such as Princess Sally Acorn in a non-speaking cameo. It also has Sonic and Tails visiting Robotropolis, which has a human population and a name pronounced with two "T"s. In this episode, Robotnik replaces Santa with a robot duplicate and demands that everybody gives him Christmas presents instead of getting some from Santa. Sonic, Tails and Santa team up to save the holiday. The letters page of issue #41 of the Sonic the Hedgehog comic book promotes the special as "An X-Tremely Sonic Christmas."

Premise

Doctor Robotnik as he appears in the first episode of the series, 'SSSSS Squad'.

Pierre De Celles, an animator who worked on Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, described the show as "fun and humorous."^[1]

The central protagonists are Sonic the Hedgehog and Miles "Tails" Prower, while the main antagonists include Robotnik and his two 'hench-bots' Scratch and Grounder (with a third robot, Coconuts, appearing on occasion).

There are many occasional minor characters and robots too, including Robotnik's dominating mother or Wes Weasley, a salesman and con-man, not dissimilar to Phil Silvers.^[2] The city has more non-human creatures, like anthropomorphic animals and robots than other projects. The planet, Mobius is more of a zany, colorful cartoon world in this version.

Sonic and Tails from the episode "Robotnik Jr."

Each episode featured the infamous "Sonic Sez" segments where Sonic gave viewers advice on different topics, ranging from staying in school, not running away from home and not using guns to smoking, alcohol abuse, false advertising, sexual harassment, and even the dangers of riding in clothes dryers. Today, the segments, along with the entire show are often used in internet memes. Sonic Sez is commonly used in spoofs of the show on the internet.

In the United Kingdom, the series was screened on Channel 4 in 1993 on Sunday mornings at 9:00 which had the "Sonic Sez" segments edited out, possibly because of either time constraints or they were more aimed at American audiences and that many of the subjects were considered too controversial. They were also edited out on the UK VHS releases of the series. However, the segments were intact on the TCC and POP! airings, as well as the DVD boxset. The end credits always mentioned the segments, even on the Channel 4 version and VHS releases.

In Australia, the show was aired on Agro's Cartoon Connection on weekday mornings and on Cheez TV on Saturday mornings. Unlike in the UK, all "Sonic Sez" segments were left intact.

In France, the french dub of the show had a theme song on the intro. Lyrics were done by: Alexis Tomassian.

Sonic the Hedgehog series

De Celles said in an interview that the staff of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog did not possess an awareness of nor a sense of competition against the rival Saturday series, which he describes as "serious and heavy." De Celles said that the approaches to the cartoons differed and he described the staff as too busy to pay attention to the other series.^[1]

Characters

• Jaleel White as Sonic the Hedgehog
• Long John Baldry as Doctor Ivo Robotnik: A bumbling despot who seeks to rule Mobius, but his plans are always foiled by Sonic, in no small part due to Scratch and Grounder's stupidity. His catchphrase, which is muttered at least once per episode (usually when Sonic thwarts him), is "I hate that Hedgehog!"
• Phil Hayes and Garry Chalk as Scratch and Grounder: They are a pair of robots created by Robotnik to capture Sonic. The two are extremely incompetent to the point where they struggle with even simple tasks, and are highly gullible, easily being tricked by Sonic no matter how bizarre, obvious, or pathetic his disguises are. Their constant failures result in the two regularly being abused, both verbally and physically, by Robotnik. Scratch was originally created by Robotnik to be a super-robot that could easily catch Sonic for him, but a malfunction created Scratch, a product almost the exact opposite of what Robotnik wanted. He attempts to clone Scratch sometime later, but Scratch pulls a lever that Robotnik didn't, resulting in the creation of Grounder. Scratch resembles a tall, humanoid chicken, and Grounder is a small teal swiss army knife-like robot with tank tracks and drills instead of his hands and nose.
• Ian James Corlett as Coconuts: He is a small robot monkey, who is demoted to Robotnik's janitor. Unhappy with his position, he attempts to capture Sonic with the hope of obtaining a promotion. Despite appearing in the show's opening sequence, Coconuts appears less often than Scratch and Grounder. Whenever he does appear, he usually attempts to go after Sonic on his own and make sure that Scratch and Grounder don't beat him to the punch, though he will occasionally join forces with them. Despite his low status and general disrespect by his peers, Coconuts has proven that he is much smarter than Scratch and Grounder, often being the only one to see through Sonic's disguises. His plans also come close to succeeding, until Scratch and Grounder come along and ruin them.
• Christopher Evan Welch as Miles "Tails" Prower (Brown Tails) (excluding Sonic Christmas Blast, where he is voiced by Chris Turner)

Appearances in other media

• A video game based on the show, entitled Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, was released for the Sega Genesis and Sega Game Gear. As well as Robotnik, Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts, the character roster of the game also features several one-shot characters that appeared in the first episode of the show.
• Scratch also appears during the 3rd bonus stage of Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball for the Genesis, which features a bunch of them protecting a crate containing animals.
• Grounder can be found in the game Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Unlike in the TV series where he's green, he is red there. The Sonic 2 model of Grounder reappeared in Sonic Pocket Adventure as an enemy in the Aqua Relix Zone. Coconuts also appeared in Sonic 2 but he looked slightly different. The Badnik that he was based on set a standard for future monkey-robots in the series.

DVD releases

On June 11th 2007, All 65 episodes were released on a 8 Disc region 2 DVD in the UK.

On July 17, 2007, Shout! Factory released Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: Volume One (distributed by Universal Studios Home Entertainment and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment) on DVD in Region 1. Volume Two was released on December 9, 2008.

Volume 3 is available as an online Shout! Factory exclusive as of March 16th, 2010. The volume contains the final 21 episodes of the series, plus as announced on the Shout! forums on Jan. 6, 2010, Sonic Christmas Blast.

UK VHS releases

See also

• List of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episodes
• List of programmes broadcast by Channel 4
• Sonic Christmas Blast
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• FX

References

External links

• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog at Cookie Jar Entertainment
• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• A DVD description of Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog: Volume One
• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog at the Internet Movie Database
• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog at TV.com