Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.28: Musta Been a Beautiful Baby

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.28: Musta Been a Beautiful Baby

Original Air Date: October 12th, 1993

“You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” is a famous pop song originally recorded in 1938 by Dick Powell. The song quickly became a standard and has been famously covered over the decades by performers like Bing Crosby and Bobby Darin. Why am I bringing this up? Because the writers of the twenty-eighth episode of “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” felt the need to reference the by-then fifty year old song in the title of their children’s cartoon. It wasn’t a totally obscure reference. The song was featured in Looney Tunes cartoons and various advertisements when I was a kid, so I had at least heard snippets of it. (I’ve actually never heard the whole song but I’m assuming it’s about Dick Powell saying you were a really sexy baby.) Considering this episode also features shout-outs to “Adventures of Superman” and “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” two other things old people love to reference, I’m crediting boomer nostalgia once again for this creative choice.

The episode just doesn’t take its title from the classic song but seemingly its premise too. After Robotnik’s latest invention — a machine that cause fatal static cling — fails to bring Sonic down, he has a temper-tantrum... Which incidentally leads him to another wacky invention. How about a ray that ages Sonic into an old hedgehog? Surely that would make him easier to kill? Sonic and Tails are cornered in a dehydrated food factory by Scratch and Grounder. Naturally, the robots fuck it up and put the Decrepitizer in reverse, turning Sonic and Tails into babies. Further shenanigans result in Robotnik making a similar transformation. Soon, all three are placed in an orphanage run by Miss Saccharine, getting into all sorts of (even more) childish antics. 

One of the more well-known pop culture fads of the late eighties and early nineties was making rebooting well-worn characters by turning them into tiny children. We owe this trend to the success of “Muppet Babies.” This virus soon spread to the Looney Tunes (twice!), the Flintstones, Tom and Jerry, the cast of “The Jungle Book” and probably some others I’m forgetting. This was such a prolific trend at the time that this isn’t even the first mention of the “Spin-Off Babies” fad I’ve made on this blog. Considering “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” was the hackiest of all the hacky “Sonic” adaptations, I’m not shocked the writers decided to just crib an idea from Jim Henson and co. “What if Sonic, Tails, and Robotnik got turned into babies?” is a relatively easy premise to cook up.

While all those other babified spin-offs were, at the very least, inoffensively bland, “AoStH’s” sole excursion into this premise is ghastly. Turning the show’s central trio into babies gives this already obnoxious, grotesque show even more of an excuse to indulge its worst impulses. When voicing Baby Sonic, Jaleel White just does his Urkel voice... But adds an adowable speech impediment, making an awful sound even more ear-splitting. Long John Baldry follows a similar lead when voicing Baby Robotnik, shackling his considerable talent to an utterly irritating vocal tic. Baby Tails mostly just repeats “googoo poopoo” — also an accurate description of this episode — and sucks his thumb. While the sight of Sonic and friends in diapers may thrill certain citizens of the internet, it appeals to me not at all. I don’t want to think about Sonic shitting himself. 

The episode’s comedic ideas basically begins and ends with the baby gimmick too. Once small Sonic, tiny Tails, and rookie Robotnik end up at the orphanage, the script falls into a lazy pattern: Robotnik sets up a trap, Sonic redirects it, and Robotnik is humiliated. Okay, yes, that’s the formula for every episode of this show. Playing out this cycle with annoying baby versions of the characters just makes it seem all the more pathetic. Kindergarten traps, involving seesaws and jelly beans, do not amuse. Also, this episode ends with a literal toddler being tied to the muffler of a car and dragged through town. Which seems excessively sadistic even by the cartoon logic of this show. 

The sometimes aesthetically displeasing animation style of “AoStH,” you may not be surprised to read, does not lend itself to cutesy baby characters well. Baby Sonic and Tails aren’t all that terrifying. Baby Robotnik, meanwhile, is a damnable abomination that should not be. Pasting Robotnik’s orange mustache, squinty — but demonically red — eyes, and lumpy flesh on a cherubic baby body brings Chucky to mind. He spends nearly the whole episode in a crimson (bloody?) nappy, because this show thinks half-naked Robotnik is inherently hilarious. (And, not that it matters, but this baby Robotnik looks nothing like the blob child we saw in “Momma Robotnik’s Birthday.”)

It’s not just the babies that look weird. Miss Saccharine is a wrinkly, lemon-faced creature. She’s supposed to be an old lady but her cartoony proportions make her look like a badly drawn cartoon pig instead. This episode’s bizarre digression involving “instant food” also results in Tails inflating into a morbidly obese version of himself within seconds. Because predicting one creepy internet fetish simply wasn’t enough for this show. The only bits in here I found amusing were Scratch and Grounder declaring each other stupid, in an attempt to win Robotnik’s favor, and the Decrepitizer turning lab rats into an old Jewish couple. And that joke was only funny because it was so random. 

Aside from how painfully unfunny and unpleasant the episode is, “Musta Been a Beautiful Baby”  is notable to me for one other reason. The concluding “Sonic Sez” segment has Sonic informing kids not to climb inside washing machines, an occurrence apparently frequent enough that this show felt the need to instruct against it. This bizarre moral has stuck in my memories all these years. In fact, I think this “Sonic Sez” segment was the very first bit of “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” I ever saw. I can vividly recall watching this scene in the living room of my childhood best friend's house. Weirdly, I have no memorable of watching the proceeding episode. I suspect I must've flicked over to this channel just as the show was ending, which was the kind of thing you had to deal with in the days before Netflix and DVR.

So, yes, this episode – or rather, it's dumb-ass edutainment segment – is probably the first episode of this iteration of “Sonic” I ever saw. Perhaps it's a good thing I have no memory of the rest of “Musta Been a Beautiful Beauty.” For it might very well be the least enjoyable episode of this series I've watched thus far. It's like twenty minutes of nails on the chalkboard to me. I'm afraid to ask if this show ever goes lower but I won't be shocked if it does. [3/10]