Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog is an American animated series produced by DiC Animation City and Bohbot Entertainment based on the SEGA video game franchise, Sonic the Hedgehog. It was first broadcast in September 1993 and ran for 65 episodes, with a christmas special airing in 1996. It follows the adventures of the titular character Sonic the Hedgehog, with his sidekick Miles "Tails" Prower and her love interest with Princess Sally Acorn as they attempt to stop Dr. Robotnik and his array of robots from taking over the planet Mobius. Another series featuring Sonic, simply titled Sonic the Hedgehog, was aired concurrently. Unlike the other series, Adventures had a light-hearted tone and quirky storylines that portrayed Sonic as being skilled and clever, whereas Robotnik and his robot allies Scratch and Grounder were clumsy.

Series Overview[]

Animator Pierre De Celles described the show as "fun and humorous". Episodes of the show normally revolved around Sonic, Tails and Sally foiling Robotnik's latest villainous scheme to dominate the zany, colorful world of Planet Mobius. At the end of each episode, Dr. Robotnik's plan would ultimately fail due to Sonic's efforts and his own incompetence.

The plots often used elements loosely borrowed from the storyline of the Sonic video games series. Three of Robotnik's henchbots, Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts, are directly based on badniks that appeared in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The series also incorporated several recurring original characters not seen in the games, such as Robotnik's mother and Wes Weasley, a salesman and con-man, not dissimilar to Phil Silvers. The show's other characters largely consist of non-human creatures, such as anthropomorphic animals and robots.

The end of the show is bookended by an additional segment called "Sonic Says" (or "Sonic Sez", as Tails misspelled it on screen). This segment teaches viewers life lessons about subjects such as alcohol abuse and general safety. The segment was edited out during the original UK broadcasts.

Production[]

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog was created by DiC Animation City and Sega of America, Inc., which produced a total of 65 episodes each for its one 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 show's animation was outsourced to four animation studios: Rainbow Animation, Hong Ying Animation, Sae Rom Production, and Tokyo Movie Shinsha.

Another cartoon series based on Sonic, simply titled Sonic the Hedgehog, was produced and launched on ABC's Saturday morning line-up in 1993. Animator Pierre De Celles said in an interview that neither he nor the rest of the staff working on Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog knew about or competed with the other series, which he describes as "serious and heavy"; he also described the staff as too busy to pay attention to the other series.

In addition to the original 65 episodes, DiC also produced an additional episode that originally aired in winter 1996, "Sonic Christmas Blast", which included aspects of the other Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon such as the city of Robotropolis, SWATbots, and a non-speaking cameo by Princess Sally Acorn.