Were the cartoons and comics as big or bigger than the games among early Sonic fans?

Yeah, UPN aired Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog reruns around 96-97, so I watched most of the series through that, but I didn't ever catch SatAM on television, I had to rely on the VHS tapes they had at Hollywood Video.

I remember before I saw it I was actually a little scared based on how people talked about it on the Internet, always going on about how dark and serious and heavy it was, as well as the Archie storyline with Sally's "death" making me think characters would die left and right. I was only 6 or 7 when I first thought to look at Sonic fan sites and forums and stuff, so it was kind of unsettling, like a milder version of creepypasta (I can only imagine how I would have reacted to something like sonic.exe, good lord the stuff kids get exposed to these days).

Then of course when I actually rented a tape I realized it was a pretty standard all-ages cartoon, completely appropriate for my baby brain. Seems like a trend where anytime kids' media has any kind of bite to it, online people act like it was the darkest, most sophisticated thing ever, though I think this attitude has sort of petered out.

Even before Flynn took over, felt like those fans were constantly complaining about Archie, it was a very fraught relationship at best. Especially when Sonic Adventure came out and Archie started making changes to the canon to bring it closer to what the games were doing, but even some Archie-original elements got hated on. People REALLY hated Mina the Mongoose for ruining the Sonic/Sally ship, which might have just been shipping nonsense, but at the time it felt like there was some resentment over Archie "undercutting" SatAM or whatever since it ended with Sonic and Sally as an item, more or less.

 

Yep, SatAM fans hated Archie daring to stray from it. They even took issue with the comic ending Robotnik's reign with Endgame and trying to move on, even though SatAM was heading in that direction at the end of season 2. And even before that, they complained whenever the comic introduced game characters/elements, as SatAM was the "real story" (actual words) and every other continuity was garbage.

There was a Penders interview during the post-Endgame pre-Adventure era in which he was asked how he felt about all the animosity shown by half the fanbase toward any deviations from SatAM, and Penders' (long-winded) reply basically amounted to "They're a vocal minority, as shown by the fact our sales keep increasing every month. We needed to move away from SatAM, as comic book tie-ins to cartoons don't tend to live long after the show ends."

 

Guess I shoulda better separated SatAM and Archie fans instead of lumping them in together with a slash. Also maybe referred to Archie fans as Penders fans specifically, when referring to the notably ravenous ones?

This is, however, basically off topic.

 

It wasn't just shipping nonsense, it was a serious case of Scrappy-Doo syndrome.

Long story short, editor Justin Gabrie really liked this one background character seen in issue #52, and demanded writer Karl Bollers to make her an important supporting character who's got super speed, a great singing voice, is great with children, could become a Freedom Fighter in the future and is competing with Sally for Sonic's affections. Long story short, this perfect little angel showed up out of nowhere and started hogging all the limelight from game and comic characters alike.

Of course, readers were unaware of the behind-the-scenes arrangements, so they accused Bollers of pushing his creator's pet at the expense of everyone else.

 

She wasn't perfect though? Unlike Sonic she had difficulty controlling her speed. And when she first tried to become a Freedom Fighter, she failed and decided she wasn't cut out for it. She also had a reckless side and could bite off more than she could chew.

Anyway, I find that backlash quite ironic, considering I found her to be more fun and interesting than boring old Sally has ever been. Though I admit the whole romance angle with Sonic felt forced and poorly handled, but so did pretty much all romance in the comic (Sonic x Sally included). The writers couldn't write romance to save their lives.

 

To answer the question in a really annoying way, it was physically impossible for the TV shows and comics to be more popular with the earliest Sonic fans. Because they debuted in the second half of 1993, two years after the first game!


From what I've seen, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, Sonic 1 was treated as "a great video game", but Sonic 2 made the series into a franchise. And not just in the obvious way - Sega's Western arms dived head first into marketing and merchandise during the tail end of 1992. I was going to look up the story once - there are clues out there, but this didn't start making an impact until 1993.


The US is challenging to work out, but from a UK perspective, neither the TV shows nor comics ever outperformed the games.

- The Archie Sonic comic wasn't officially sold here, so that's a write-off.

- Sonic the Comic was a thing, but earlier issues positioned it more as a pan-Sega comic, so the results might be scewed. I suspect it was considered a "neat thing" like the many Sega magazines (official and otherwise) in print at the time. I was a subscriber!

- SatAM was never big. According to us it debuted a year late on Channel 4 and may have aired at stupid 'o-clock in the morning. Someone should look that up.

- AoStH might have been the most popular non-game Sonic thing, but again, we're saying it debuted on Channel 4... and Channel 4 didn't have a proper children's programming block. This one I definitely know was broadcast at like, 4 or 5 in the morning because I remember recording it on VHS (although much later than 1993?). However episodes of AoStH were sold on VHS - that's where I first saw it, and I suspect they did quite well. Remember this pre-dates most UK households having access to 24-hour children's television, so buying TV shows on VHS was actually worthwhile.

- Sonic Underground wasn't big either, but by the time it launched there was a dedicated enough fanbase to actually find and watch it. It wasn't mainstream by any means, but it was more of a known quantity than SatAM from what I recall.


The TV shows would be picked up by cable and satellite and have been regularly syndicated for 20+ years, probably because they were cheap. My gut feeling is that the DiC Sonic cartoons have had a greater reach than the DiC Mario ones, if that means anything.


It is probably worth noting that

a) I actually don't remember comics in general being much of a thing growing up. There was The Beano and The Dandy, and general kids entertainment magazines which sometimes had comics in them, but at least in my part of the world, serious Marvel vs. DC collecting gubbins was very niche. That was something the Americans did - you'd be hard-pressed to find a comic shop outside of the big cities.

b) The UK has a long history of producing its own (much better?) children's content and was likely mandated to keep it that way. American imports would usually only be broadcast on the main channels if they were genuinely good - there'd be a noticeable delay crossing the Atlantic, and before the rise of cable and satellite, it's unlikely they'd be syndicated a bazillion times. The regulators (and press) would get jumpy if one of the big four (later five) TV channels weren't seen to be giving value for money, and I mean... AoStH isn't known as a bastion of quality.


You'd think they'd do joined up thinking with the games being popular but we just really didn't have that mindset. TV and print executives would have known very little about video games.


And I mean ITV franchises would have been incentivised to produce their own content to appease the regulators, so could be looked upon favourably in future franchise reviews and reap all the advertising profits can you tell i know too much about this

 

As a 34 year old fan from back in the day, I do feel I can shed some interesting light on what it was like in the UK.

From my experience, everyone had at least played Sonic 2 but not everyone had read the comics. This was in the glory days of the 1990s. Here in the UK we didn't have any cartoons which were not VHS tapes. At least I don't think so. I don't remember them and I was a pretty loser Sonic fan. Actually there was Sonic Underground but that came out in Classic Sonic's twilight dying years (I'll discuss soon).

I did interpret the Sonic games as part of the same Canon as the Fleetway comics. I was actually introduced to Chaos through the comics first and was expecting Sonic not to be able to fight Chaos because of the fear it caused him like in the comics. I do distinctly remember feeling a huge unexpected tonal whiplash between the Chaos arc in the comics vs the games. But once I was a few hours into Adventure I appreciated that the comic was its own thing. By Adventure 2 I honestly forgot about the comics. So I always interpreted the comics as subordinate to the games even if I did at one time consider the comics as part of the same universe.

I do think it's worth noting though that Sonics intense popularity was very short loved. Burned brilliantly but briefly. Between 1991-1996 he was on top of the world but in 1998 I remember he was already passe. I didn't even discuss the fact I had a Dreamcast widely because a lot of kids thought it was a silly loser console for little kids. I was much more open about having a PS2. I think this is an important point because I think people often overstate how popular Sonic was in his heydey. He was very popular but he didn't have a decade long enduring popularity for kids in the vein of something like Fortnite. I'd say it was more like FNAF. Insanely popular during its heydey with kids but becoming passe and maybe even a bit lame five years later.

I think the renaissance of SA2 on Gamecube was a much different time and atmosphere. That game appealed more to young teenagers rather than small children. It was at a time when gaming was already pretty nerdy for the teenager demographic and the only games I remember people playing that were considered cool were GTA, The Getaway (insanely popular for some reason), Need For Speed, etc. Sonic was a weird anime game based upon a children's character. It had a fervent fandom but much more cult and had less mainstream appeal than the classic games did for their respective audiences. It was like other game franchises I would never have talked about playing unless with other nerdy friends. This pretty much carried on until the franchise rebooted tonally after Colors. By the release of Colors liking these kind of games became way more mainstream but Sonic had already massively changed its tone.

Even the fandom of SA2 and Sonic in the 2000s reflects the more niche and cult following. The newground animations and the like. Especially with them leaning in to the dark aesthetic.

 

So, I'm in my upper 30s and visibly remember Sonic 1 when it first hit commercial airwaves, and when it first came out. I didn't have a home Genesis, but I played it at a babysitter's house in 1991 several times and immediately became mesmerized by it, as it was pretty much an interactive cartoon to me at age 5-6. Super Mario World/Mario Kart was also very popular around that time, but I had less exposure to it than I did Sonic 1, and simply loved the artstyle of the latter more.

So right away, I knew Sonic was a video game franchise first. The Commercials made this obvious, and daytime kids TV commercials continued to keep me "aware" of Sonic's evolution from 1991-1993 or so, I vividly remember commercials for Spinball, Sonic 2, Mean Bean Machine, and the game gear games. I never saw a comic anywhere on the shelves for a few years, however.

But around 1994 or so, I started catching AOSTH on UPN. Woke up every morning to catch it in syndication. This was the product that really hooked me despite not owning any of the games for myself. I watched episodes almost daily for the next year or so, and that led to me wanting to play the games more and more, internally believing that their story was similar to the TV show (since I already knew the games didn't have any real cutscenes). Tails became my favorite character, but I also wanted to find Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts in the games. Blockbuster Video also had SEGA Genesis demoes which showed off Sonic 2's 2 player mode regularly in 92-93, so that kept me aware of how that game played as well, along with Mean Bean Machine sometimes being on display. In the next year or so, I talked to any kid I could who showed interest in Sonic and learned as much as I could through them. A lot of them would make up bizarre stories about lore for attention (one kid told me Mean Bean Machine was an ultra violent Mortal Kombat style game in the last few levels, filled with blood near the end, no joke), but others would let me come to their home play the games on their systems here and there. This also allowed me to try Sonic 2 and 3 for myself a bit more thoroughly.

Despite all this, I never did get a Genesis for myself since my folks hesitated to spend the money on game consoles, instead focusing on PC hardware and edutainment with the 'occaisional' kid friendly game for PC being allowed. This finally changed for me around 1997 when the Sonic and Knuckles PC collection was released. We ordered a copy, giving me the first chance to play Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles properly, music changes aside. Around that same time, I finally started watched SATAM on the USA network, gaining better awareness of all the related lore, and finding out about the comics not long after (my first issue was 53, though I'm pretty sure I read at least one issue on a store shelf before this). For some reason, when I first played Sonic 3, despite playing the games before, I expected Sonic to be able to use rings for a burst of speed, like in the TV show. It didn't help that the PC magazine also described a copy of Sonic CD as the game where Sonic rescued "princess Sally", so there was further confusion on all the lore about that time for me.

In early, 1998, I finally gained internet access regularly, and info on Sonic games was the first thing I sought out. I was hooked on the brand, co-opted this username, and jumped into the online community almost immediately... mostly to find any games that I could and hunt them down as cheaply as possible. Within only a few weeks, I quickly learned about a lot more of the lore and brand. I saw a crappy low res version of the JPN OVA. I realized why Sonic Screen Saver had a different OST for Sonic CD than the Windows 95 version we bought. I convinced my parents to help me collect game gear games and bought a game gear from a friend used for cheap, eventually buying every available Sonic game from all the Funcoland locations that surrounded us. By early 1999, I had a Saturn, Sonic Jam, and Sonic R (again, thank you used game prices), and by early 2000, I got a Dreamcast for Christmas. By late 2000, I hunted down the last non-arcade/Pico game I hadn't played, Knuckles Chaotix, on a real 32X I purchased for only 5$ through a friend that worked at a K-Mart over the internet (they mailed me a brand new 32X out of the box from deep within the store's inventory).

When Sonic Adventure 1 came out for the Dreamcast, I also bought the VHS copy of the dubbed Sonic OVA right around the same time. I expected Jaleel White to still be Sonic's official voice in the OVA, but was shocked when the whole cast was different (dubbed by ADV Films in Houston). At leas Knuckles had a fitting voice, and I quickly realized the voices wouldn't match the Dreamcast ones anyway. That was the last time I think I ever expected the old Americanized Sonic to influence the rest of the brand, outside of the still ongoing Archie Comics storylines.

By that point, I was already working on fan games, and was deep, deep in the community as a teen. The Dreamcast years were a lot of fun for me, and I knew about as much as any fan with internet access could reasonably know at that time.

tl;dr - From 1991-1997, Sonic lore between cartoon and games wasn't thought of any differently. I knew the games were made in Japan, but didn't realize the game worlds were totally different until 1998 when I gained internet access. Info on "SegaSonic" was there, but just wasn't a big focus since fans expected Sonic to be "Americanized" anyway. By 1999, pretty much any fan with internet access knew Americanized Sonic was going to become outdated in the coming years, and SEGASonic was becoming the dominant part of the brand. Sonic Adventure was indeed the big "rebranding" for Sonic in the USA.

 

It can't have been at too ridiculous a time of the morning; I remember watching the first season when it was on, and I wasn't exactly an early riser! I'm not sure if the second season ever aired on Channel 4 though; if it did I somehow missed it entirely, as I only caught some of it on a rerun on some satellite channel many years later. I think Sonic Conversion was the episode I randomly tuned in in the middle of; I was amazed to find they were showing an episode of SatAM I'd never seen before!

To start with it aired in the mornings before (or maybe after?) The Big Breakfast from what I recall - I definitely remember the old multi-coloured Channel 4 logo fading directly into the opening credits sequence and the episodes playing in full. After a while, though, it was subsumed into The Big Breakfast and the episodes were split into ~5 minute chunks, so it took four whole days for a story to play out in full. The first episode I remember this happening for was Grounder the Genius - mainly because due to the new scheduling and chopped-up episodes I actually missed the first part of that one, which I remember being really annoyed about at the time. Never saw the start of that story until I watched the full episode on DVD many moons later...!

 

Roger that, but as noted they debuted in late 1993. This suggests they likely were produced during Sonic 2's development cycle (supported by the findings of the beta Tails sprite with brown fur among other Yamaguchi drawings in the SatAM materials digitized in 2023 https://x.com/PlaceandH/status/1650150959518023685.)

EDIT: There's some very interesting details on the creation of both AoSTH and SatAM here, which I'll include in a spoiler quote for brevity, but worth reading!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_(TV_series)#Production

Spoiler

The details above are interesting and confirm that the primary development on both shows was around the 1991-1992 time period. Specifically, SatAM's first bible was developed in February 1992, nearly a year before Sonic 2's release, but because of network considerations, split SatAM into a separate show, then hastily produced AoSTH to cover the existing contract requirements. SatAM's final show bible was completed in March 1993, while AoSTH and SatAM don't start airing until September and December, respectively.

Side note:
SatAM was originally planned to be a fall 1992 debut. Can you believe that Sonic 2sday could potentially have included a proper tie-in show? The Genesis might have had an even more stellar 1993.

It's difficult to substantiate the Genesis install base in the US during 1992-1993 without relying on second party sources, but it's commonly understood that they commanded a 60% market share during 1993. From numerous sources it appears that there were between 13.5M - 17.5 Sega Genesis sold in North America, but unfortunately does not break down between US and Canada.

Seriously, this wiki is better sourced then I thought and has some pretty interesting breakdowns and citations with articles/interviews over the years. (https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Fourth_generation_of_video_games#cite_note-courier90-43)

Regarding TV's install base, it's safe to say it was massive. The Cheers finale earlier in 1993 drew around 40M live viewers, the 1993 State of the Union, 70M and the Superbowl Halftime Show 133M.

So while I would conclude that SatAM and AOTSH would have a much smaller individual impact based on timeslot of course, the fact that they were syndicated into broadcast systems going to 150M+ homes does lend credence to the idea of it growing larger than the Genesis install base.

For a comparison, Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was airing direct to syndication, was estimated to bring in around 20M viewers per episode once regional broadcast systems aggregated numbers.

Edit:

Just to add in to the pile of personal recollections, I'm 36 and from the US. We were still playing an NES at my house when I was young, because we were poor and lived in a small rural town in the midwest. But that did not stop me from seeing Sonic things everywhere - I probably saw more Sonic toys and school supplies (lunchboxes, coloring books) than anything else. I sort of barely remember the release of Sonic 3 but remember seeing the advertising for Sonic & Knuckles and being so jealous of everyone else. All that changed when Sega Channel began service in my area, and we finally got a Genesis. We ended up moving not long afterwards and lost Sega Channel, but within a few years we'd visited enough flea markets for me to have the entire library.

I remember once checking into SatAM and not really liking anything about it's vibe. I never knew about AOSTH at the time, so it was really jarring that Mean Bean Machine's Robotnik looked completely weird and different. Later on a older kid who babysat told me I should look into "Sonic the Comic" but what I ended up getting was Archie's Super Sonic vs Hyper Knuckles (which was admittedly an awesome book and I still have the old book saved in storage.) I didn't know that he meant an entirely different comic continuity!

Basically, Sonic in the 1990s was something akin to multiple different varying concepts of what Sonic was depending on the individual's exposure to it - from the games: adorable and cool silent protagonist Sonic, or Jaleel White's chili dog Sonic, or Jaleel White's Freedom Fighter Sonic, or Archie's Sonic's strange love triangle with Knuckles and Sally, or even Sonic from STC, the wisecracking guy who probably has a British accent.

 

I wouldn't be all that surprised if the cartoons at least had a more casual exposure. The barrier of entry for a kid randomly watching morning cartoons (Adventures of Sonic played right before school started on my UPN station, Mon-Fri at 6:30am) is way lower than them needing to own a game console and the game itself, or even visiting friends/relatives who had it. Sonic 1 and 2 were common carts, but it's not like every single Genesis owner had them (although it certainly felt like it!).

Diehards like myself (a hyperfixated autistic dweeb) who got up every morning to watch the shows were much more likely already quite Sonic-pilled, so I would say the "fandom" was probably more game-focused. Like, that was the origin point, we liked the video game, found out there was a cartoon/comic based on it, watched the cartoon/read the book for more adventures. But then like I said you had this lull in the mid-90s where Sega wasn't really doing much with the series, so SatAM and Archie conversation sort of took over the online fandom since they were the most lore-heavy, SatAM ended on a huge cliffhanger and Archie was still ongoing.

By sheer numbers, nowadays the thing most people would know Sonic from far and away is Sonic Dash, which just feels preposterous to me but I've always been an enthusiast.

 

You are quoting abnormally large viewership numbers as though they were normal. Cheers was one of the most watched TV finales ever, the superbowl is a singular event most years, as is the state of the union address. Extrapolating those out to viewership number potential of Sonic's cartoon is crazy.

Let's go with something much, much concrete: Seinfeld. 1993 is considered right in the smack dab of its golden era, season 5, when it was pulling in some of its biggest numbers. NBC's goldenboy sitcom only had a 19 share at 7 pm in the prime time spot on the leading national tv channel of the time. According to a UPI report, the total share of US sets in 1993 was 247 million. A 19 share of 247 million is 46,493,000 viewers. The number 1 show in the country, in the leading time slot, in the most popular channel could only bring in 46 million viewers. No, the sonic cartoon's reach was not anywhere near the 150+ million number, those numbers are astronomically high.

Let's go down further on the neilsen ratings for 1993: Family Matters was 30th place at a 12 share. That's 29,364,000, already shedded 17 million viewers. Let's go further down, Townsend Television, a show on Fox, drew a 3.9 share. You're at 9,543,300, less than the estimated install base of the Sega Genesis in the US, and you're still hundreds of spots above the first kids program on the list. The vast, vast majority of Sega Genesis consoles in the USA had a Sonic game because they were packed in.

Let's go further. It's very hard to find daytime television programming nielsen ratings for 1993, as most syndicated things were not tracked. You mentioned Star Trek TNG, that's a special case because it's not really a normally syndicated show like we're talking with Sonic. That was an example of FIRST RUN SYNDICATION, i.e. network-less television. Nielsen DID track those shows, because those were their only reported numbers, because unlike normal syndication, first run syndication has a premiere. Paramount would pay for those to be tracked, because they needed to sell Star Trek as a package to local outlets and needed the numbers behind the show to back it up. So you're quoting the gold standard of first run syndication. In fact, we can look at other shows which came in first run syndication to get the idea of the sort of shares a syndicated show might expect in 1993. I found a list of major network television daytime TV sweeps week numbers. These aren't normal daytime syndication, but they're similar, from around the same time, of shows that were popular, during a time when they're trying extra hard to get viewership numbers because this is when they are primarily counted for accounting reasons. Family Feud at this time had a 1.2 share. That's 2,936,400 well, well below the install base of the Sega Genesis by now. Alvin and the Chipmunks on Fox's "Fox Kids" block had a 0.8 share. That's 1,957,600.

Realistically, you could expect a lower share for Sonic during syndication. Sonic wasn't nationally syndicated on a major network kids block, like Disney Afternoon or Fox Kids. The shows were packaged to local VHF and UFH stations. Realstically, you could probably put those stations on the higher end of the share spectrum, combined, at maybe 1/2 that of the major networks blocks if you're being super generous.

As for saturday morning blocks in the first place, a nielsen report in 1993 said that Fox Kids Block was the single highest performing kids block in the country at any hour, and it had a reach of 3.3 million at it's peak. They don't report shares for these blocks because their reach is so low. 100% viewer share of Fox Kids Block would only be 1.3 share. So Sonic's numbers during premiere would have to be below that.

My estimate given these numbers, for both premiere on ABC's saturday morning block, plus syndication, would say the Sonic Cartoons probably reached about 3-4 million kids, with significant overlap between them by design. In no way would I assume they were more popular or had more reach than the games in the USA alone, the strongest market for both.

 

9:00 on a Sunday morning on Channel 4 for AoStH I think (checked - confirmed). They showed it for about half a year, then season one of SatAM, before going back to AoStH again. C4 didn't show the second season (Although the first one did get a repeat run during the school holidays in 1996). By the time it got around to repeats it was early morning (think 7AM) fodder.

It's hard to get the exact dates of what was shown when though as TV listings of the time don't really give much information "Cartoon Fun" etc. I know there's a video out there advertising an episode of "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" where the announcer is clearly referring to SatAM (I might have posted it before, can't be bothered to look )

The Children's Channel did show both from around 1995 til its closure in early 98. IIRC they tended to do a complete run of AoStH, followed by SatAM. I think they did show the second season too.

 

Keep in mind when you throw out that 3-4 million kids might have watched each episode of Sonic as it aired, it's not like it was the same group of kids every single time, that's statistically impossible. There probably was a strong amount of overlap though which speaks to my thinking that there might have been more "casual" exposure, kids just randomly flipping through channels and catching an episode here and there.

It'd be really interesting if we could find ratings reports from that timeframe. I remember when I was a regular on Toon Zone, the networks themselves would put out press releases talking about certain shows' ratings, or there were often trade reports.

 

That goes for literally any statistic on any consumer product, ever. When you hear about "X million genesis" sold, how many of those consoles went to families with multiple kids? how many neighbors saw their friends playing Sonic and knew about them that way? How many kids saw Sonic at the toys kiosk in Toys r Us? You go with the most verifiable figures, because those are the metrics that were measured. Every statistic on consumer reporting for "reach" or "share" is always lower than what it is in reality, for any medium. By the measurable available metrics, the games should have been much more popular than the cartoon series.

There is no way for the networks themselves to know, because old television was one-way communication, there was no way for them to know what was watching beyond self-reporting. There were multiple reporting agnecies available, but nielsen ratings are the most comprehensive and widely surveyed. They are the gold standard for tv ratings, because they have the biggest push to contact and monitor consumers. Pretty much everyone I know has at least been offered once in their life an opportunity to be a nielsen family, at least back when tv and cable were things people watched regularly. Today, with modern TVs, getting the analytics about what shows people are watching is a lot more comprehensive, but in 1993 it was all consumer self-reporting. Nielsen didn't even start employing computer, internet, and video game usage through telephone surveys until 1996, and they were the leader. Others did not have as advanced metrics in 1993.

 

We still have Nielsen ratings from that time period, even though those are obviously an imprecise metric. I did a little bit of digging last night but couldn't find anything for Saturday morning cartoon ratings. I imagine finding out ratings for Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog would be impossible given that it was syndicated, meaning it didn't air on the same station everywhere.

Your point about not necessarily needing to own a Genesis to play one, or being in a house with multiple kids etc. is well-taken - my daycare lady had a Super Nintendo which is how I played games like Mario World or Donkey Kong Country while being a Sega boy. I'm only musing about the Sonic cartoons potentially having a higher exposure because even still, everyone had a TV, you didn't need to know someone who had one or be among the lucky 10-20 million that did. This is total speculation on my part that tracks with my entirely anecdotal experience growing up around this time.

 

All three Sonic cartoons had a Brazilian dub, and coincidentally SatAm seems to have aired on our own Channel 4 (SBT). AoStH apparently had a short broadcast run too in 93 and the Christmas special aired in 96. It's impossible to track ratings because the cartoons aired in kids shows that had them as side attractions (TV Colosso, Xuxa Park), so I don't think we ever got separate ratings for the cartoons themselves. My personal experience revolves around renting the same AoStH blue VHS with two episodes (High Stakes Sonic and... some other, less funny one involving an alien) from the rental store over and over, and then doing the same for some random SatAm episodes, but I never saw them on TV. And, then again, I only ever cared because I had a Master System.

(The comics never got a PTBr translation, I think, and it's not like Brazil widely reads comics that aren't Monica's Gang anyway.)

What with Brazil being very particular in its taste for SEGA products, I don't think the cartoons were ever bigger than the games by any stretch of the imagination. When all sections of the fandom started to converge from the early to mid 00s, it was only people a bit older than me who seemed to be super invested in the Archie characters. The rest hadn't heard of it or saw "American Sonic" as some sort of separate institution from what really mattered (the games).

 

Literally everything I posted came from nielsen ratings.