Growing up, I loved watching Saturday morning shows. Freakazoid!, Pinky and the Brain, Road Rovers, Bump in the Night, Reboot and a few others. One of them I enjoyed was Sonic the Hedgehog.

Now, there were two versions of the show. One was a syndicated version that was comical and had no plot. It’s easily identified by the lower production quality and the inclusion of two characters, Scratch and Grounder. This was the show to avoid at all costs. Of course, I was stupid and would wake up at 6:30 a.m. weekdays to watch this abomination.

The other was also titled Sonic the Hedgehog, and aired Saturday mornings on ABC. This had many of the characters from the comic book series (from Archive Comics), and had a darker theme to it overall.

Well, fast-foward more than 10 years later, and the entire series (26 episodes) has been released in a four-disc DVD box set. Of course, I bought this for the low price of $20. When it arrived, I was apprehensivess.

See, this was an impulse purchase made without any rationale. I remembered back to the times in recent years when I’ve watched a show from childhood that I was enamored with, only to see it for the crapfest it really was.

I finally had some time, and was masochistic enough, to subject myself to watching the show once again. And it was bad. Sonic talks like… well, an idiot trying to sound cool. “Gotta buzz, cuz.” “Rootin’ and scootin’, little bro.” “Way, way past cool!” Each time he talks, I want to kill something. Unfortunately, he’s not real, so I can’t kill him.

After two hours of watching, I became numb to it, and I started to enjoy the show. Sonic is an idiot, Tails is a wimpy little kid, and Antoine is the stereotypical French pansy one associates the French with. Robotnik’s darkness is the only redeeming factor in the show, and the fact that Sonic and co. are terrorists.

That’s right. Calling themselves the Freedom Fighters, Sonic and his band of rebels go around planting bombs around the city of Robotropolis while also destroying, or killing, Robotnik’s henchmen and property.

Ah, the naïvety of youth.