Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.27. Boogey-Mania

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.27. Boogey-Mania

Original Air Date: September 22nd, 1993

Let’s just dive right into this one. “Boogey-Mania” begins with Sonic and Tails camping in the woods. They are then joined by a phantasmatic clown, who Tails seems delighted by... Until he steals his chili dog. The duo follows the rogue trickster to a cave, where they discover Professor Von Schlemmer. The clown is the result of Von Schlemmer’s latest invention: a machine that can turn dreams into physical reality. Eager to earn the respect of the boss that hates him, Coconuts — who was spying on Sonic and Tails — reports back to Robotnik. Robotnik has Scratch and Grounder successfully steal the machine and capture Von Schlemmer. The villain then uses the machine to create a boogeyman from his own nightmares. Robotnik uses this elaborate bugbear under his control to terrorize the countryside. Sonic and Tails then uses another device of Von Schlemmer’s to enter a fantastical dream realm, in hopes of finding an answer. That answer turns out to be having Tails eat a bunch of junk food and then conjure his own, far more frightening boogeyman to defeat Robotnik’s creature. Got all that? Jesus Christ, this is a 22-minute cartoon.

I think I’ve been going about this retrospective all wrong. I’ve been approaching “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” as if it was a normal cartoon with traditional critical metrics to examine. I’ve been watching this show and asking questions like “Is the narrative compelling?” “Did it make me laugh?” “Are the characters interesting or nuanced?” “Does the plot make sense?” This has made the show incredibly difficult to review, which might explain why I’ve had to take, like, three breaks. 

Instead, I need to look at “AoStH” the same way I look at the films of Al Adamson or YouTube Finger Family videos. This show is an extended act of Dadaism, designed to willingly baffle and irritate. Certain patterns repeat every episode but the stories, fundamentally, do not matter or follow any sort of logical rules. The show isn’t really funny, the laughs that cohere being flukes of the algorithms that birthed this thing. The bright colors and annoying voices that do emerge are meant only as stimulation for young children or the very high. “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” is a work of aggressive, obnoxious surrealism that is a result of a world gone mad, at the chaos and over-stimulation of modern, urban life at the end of the 20th century. 

I don’t think the writers and animators of this cartoon set out to create a work of post-modern surrealism. They were just a bunch of old guys who looked at some wacky Japanese video game and had no idea what to make of it. They were working under tight deadlines and with meager budgets to produce a commercial product. They had no higher artistic aspirations. They assumed the show was a piece of utterly disposable pop culture debris that no one would be seriously looking at twenty years later. They were mostly right but that combination of laziness, cheapness, and desperation accidentally produced a brain-melting drug trip. 

In other words, “Boogey-Mania” is the episode of “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” that finally broke me. The previous metric I’ve been using to discuss this program is flawed. I must change or I’ll never get this fucking project done. 

With that established, what do I have to say about “Boogey-Mania?” Von Schlemmer is terrible. Because of the fucked-up differences between the production order and air order, this is the first time the character has appeared but not his introductory episode. So Sonic and Tails act like they’ve met this eccentric inventor before. If you remember the revulsion I felt towards his comic counterpart, you’ll be happy to know it only increases in response to the animated original. Visually, he has one of the most grotesque and unappealing designs out of an entire show full of grotesque and unappealing characters. His ability to invent logic-breaking devices is a result of the show’s laissez-faire surrealism, so that’s a big whatever. His other gimmick — forgetting what he’s talking about mid-conversation and saying some lulz rand0m bullshit — is just terrible. I hate him so much. Flynn really chose to out this guy in the comic book over Griff or Ari?

This episode is also our more-or-less introduction to Coconuts. He’s appeared in small roles a few times but this is the first time the robot monkey has really had a personality or an effect on the plot. While Von Schlemmer is simply terrible, there’s something endearingly pathetic about Coconuts. He’s desperate to get Robotnik’s approval, to earn a promotion or be told he’s doing a good job. Even though Coconuts is actually smarter and more resourceful than the always-doomed-to-fail Scratch and Grounder, Robotnik has nothing but contempt for Coconuts. 

Is this not a metaphor for the modern American worker, caught in an intrinsically unfair and unbeatable system? Tricked into striving for a totally unattainable dream by a social caste that despises him, that only shovels shit on top of him for reasons completely beyond his control? It’s not but let’s just pretend it is. Robotnik even has Coconuts doing demeaning, hard labor like cleaning out the sewage system. Truly, this robot just needs the right comrade to come along and radicalize him. 

Examining “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” as a work of nightmarish imagery is especially easy in light of this episode. A show that is, on the default level, a day-glo spew of insanity explicitly addressing the anti-logic of dreams is a license to go completely batshit. The sequence set within DreamsVille are absolutely mad. After Coconut arrives, he lands atop what looks like the combination of an enormous skateboard and a piece of belly button lint. An angry sasquatch appears. A multi-armed switchboard operator is among this sequence's more logical touches. Of course, there's a shout-out to Salvador Dali, who is increasingly looking like the biggest influence on this whole show. What makes the baffling quality of this dream trip even more perplexing is that it has no effect on the story at all. Our heroes could've come up with a solution to their problems without stepping a toe into the cuckoo wacky dream land.

If I remember nothing else about "Boogey-Mania," I'll remember the fucking Dream Clown. This episode aired three years after the television mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's “IT” was first broadcast. While I doubt Pennywise the Dancing Clown and a child-devouring eldritch abomination living under New England was on the writer's mind at all, I can't help but think of it. The opening scene has a clown appearing in a place a clown should not be. The child, Tails in this case, is still delighted by his wacky antics, too young to pick up on the inherent wrongness of this scenario. Luckily, the clown just steals his hot dog, instead of eating him, but the scene is still mildly unnerving. Even Sonic seems pretty put-off by the random trickster.

This episode is notable for another reason: It is the half-hour that gifted the world with PINGAS. Yes, this is where that two second sound bite of Robotnik saying “Snooping as usual,” which kind of sounds like he's saying “penis” if you speed it up a bit, originates from. Ah, where would the world be without internet humor? Honestly, it's odd that this moment is the one the internet seized on, considering “Boogey-Mania” is full of baffling, bizarre scenes. The episode is pretty painful and unfunny but I'm too terrified and perplexed not to be a little impressed. [6/10]