The Mystery of the American Robotnik (and other U.S. oddities)

During the development of Sonic the Hedgehog, the producers wanted a villain who was simple to draw. The result: Dr Eggman. A ball-shaped man with a mustache and cape, always smiling for some odd reason.

Ha Ha!

However, when the series was brought to the US, the designs had to be made edgier. While the sprites were unchanged, Sonic went from a very adorable little fellow (whom Westerners got their first glimpse of in Sonic Generations):

Hi!

To the embodiment of 90's additude, much like the Punisher:

Way Past Cool!

Robotnik on the other hand, went from a charming "egg-man":

To a nightmare creature:

The same thing happened to Tails, from absolutely adorable:

To less adorable:

And also Knuckles:

Metal Sonic, Vector and Nack remained the same, and no American art exists of Amy, Mighty, Espio, Charmy, Ray, or the Kukus. There were also Sonic cartoons. Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog harkened back to the Japanese version:

Well, sorta. He even reminds me of the current one!

While SATAM made him even more frightening:

The nightmare of a thousand 90's kids

The U.S. Comics took the "even more frightening" look:

 

While the U.K Comic used the traditional one at first:

 

Then used the AOSTH one but less whimsical:

 

And in it's twiglight made him even scarier:

 

Also, they made Chaos from Sonic Adventure scarier as well:

 

 

Also, Chaos was pure evil and also died.

When Sonic Adventure was released, designs were changed in all regions. People complained. Furthermore, Generations brought back Classic Sonic, Tails, and Eggmans' Japanese versions. Unfortunately, people were unfamilar with the japanese ones and complained.

Big the Cat is Retired

Most obviously, Quite Obviously, I'm Odd!

Takashi Izuka, the director of Sonic, has chose to Retire Big The Cat.  Kind of a shame, as big was a unique character, one of the few truly neutral folks in the franchise. While Rouge tends to.turn out good (except in recent games like the Olympic games, where she's a worthless scumbag for some reason, I really want her to.be nice again), the Babylons are Sonic haters, and Omega lives to fight, Big is practically a civilian. He just wishes to find his frog. He's not cool, he does not want to be cool, and he was.never meant to.be cool. He just is. However, he's still persistent despite being ordinary.
He is ever loyal to Froggy. Big reminds me of an A.A. Milne character somewhat. However, his gameplay was poorly viewed. His first playstyle was fishing. Yes, fishing in a platformer. His story was odd. He was an.everyman stuck in a battle. He just wanted Froggy.

There ,was even a plush of him!

And an action figure!

Burne Thompson and Vernon Fenwick got action figures, so what's stopping him?

Purr...

He also netted an appearance in the comics.

In SA2, Big was funnier. He made random cameos everywhere. Then came heroes. He was on team rose.

In that game, everyone felt like a beat em up ala Double Dragon. He took a break until 2007. Then came Sonic and The Secret Rings, where he cameoed. He was in every world, one mission each. He was also a cameo in Mario and Sonic Olympics and its sequel. He was playable in Sonic Chronicles, an RPG for the DS. He then made his last playable appearance in Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing. His spot was better left for Blaze and(ala Jacky and Akira)/or Rouge, much like how the Bonanza Bros should have been Nights or something.

Doodie-Doo!

He then had another unplayable appearance in Colors DS, followed by cameos in Generations and M&S 2012. Now he's gone. Will we ever see him again? Or better yet, will Silver go too? He's sort of the new Big. 

G1 Megatron was a teenage Micronaut

Micronauts. Transformers Generation 1. What do they have in common? They are both beloved toys from the 70's-80's. Also, they were both based on Japanese toyline Microman. Microman was based on Henshin Cyborg. It featured life sized 3-inch figures that fought with tanks and robots. A sub-series: called Micro Change, featured household objects that became robots that were driven by the Micronauts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZmyA2j-REw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

The other transformers came from Diaclone, a cousin line that had one-inch figures representing full-sized human pilots who piloted all manner of robots. Amongst them were the Car Robots. These robots turned into cars. These became Optimus Prime amd the autobot cars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn-YSnJrcO4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Ultimately, a reccession in Japan caused Takara to seek.new frontiers: the west. As their previous attempts: like Diakron, failed, they turned to hasbro.  Hasbro's use of TV with Monopoly, G.I. Joe, and Mr. Potato Head proved to.be sucessful. Hasbro took the Diaclone and Micronauts robots and gave them personality, life, and a story. The ones that became cars were Autobots, good guys. The ones that became war vehicles or household objects were bad, named Decepticons. Hasbro knew it was so.good with TV, that they took it a step further: they made an entire TV series. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLS2N9mHWaw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Soon, Hasbro produced new toys for the line, like Galvatron, Blurr, and Fortess Maximus. Some characters, like Arcee and Unicron, didn't get toys. In 1989, however, the US and Japanese lines took completely different directions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cajc3d081Y4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbMKtmPNz5g&feature=youtube_gdata_player

However, America got action masters. Years after that, we got G2, which had some novel concepts, but ultimately failed. After that came Beast Wars.

The Fairly Oddparents Must Die

When I was very young, I loved watching Nickelodeon. I watched shows like Blue's Clues, Gullah Gullah Island, Lazy Town, Franklin, Little Bear, and even Dora the Explorer.

But it was mainly Blue's Clues

However, I also watched shows aimed for a more mature audiences, such as Rugrats, The Angry Beavers, Hey Arnold, Rocko's Modern Life, All That, the first season of SpongeBob (the one where Spongebob was really sympathetic) and The Amanda Show. Then, I suddenly saw ads for a brand new show. It was called The Fairly Odd Parents. It was said to be about a little boy who got Fairy Godparents and went on wacky misadventures.

The first episode used an entirely different logo, as shown at right




The very first episode was in fact a short known as "The Fairly Odd Parents". The episode began with Mom and Dad leaving Timmy Turner with Vicky the Babysitter. She seems like a normal babysitter at first, but then proves to be cruel and abusive, making Timmy clean while she gets pizza, which she claims is a reward for Timmy. However, she also tells of her never-seen brother, who screams.

A face only a mother could love (until she grows up)

Upon ordering the pizza, she eats it all, leaving only one slice, which has but anchovies on it. Timmy is horrified and goes back to his room.  He then rubs a magic 8-ball and it unseals Cosmo and Wanda, his Fairy Godparents, who will help him torment Vicky.  Both of them are quite dumb, however, they are still powerful. They say Timmy must not reveal them, or they go away forever. Timmy then uses them to turn the water in Vicky's shower to gelatin, and cover her with whipped cream. They then put Vicky in all manner of tortures, including being eaten by whales, tied down by Snidely Whiplash and ran over, shot by Darth Vader's TIE Fighter, being mauled by polar bears, and even crushed by a giant baby!  At the end, the parents come home. After that, a full series began. The early episodes were odd, as both Cosmo and Wanda were idiots, and Cosmo had a deeper voice. However, the series had become familiar by the time of the episode "The Big Problem", about Timmy becoming an adult tempoarily. Chester, AJ, Crocker, and Francis debuted in that presise episode. Over the first season, Jorgen Von Strangle, Trixie Tang, Mark Chang, Elmer, Cosma, Cupid, The Crimson Chin, Doidle, The Mayor, Chet Ubetcha, and many others debuted. Season 2 came out and debuted Chip Skylark, Anti-Cosmo, Anti-Wanda, the Happy Pappy pair,  and others debuted there. Season 3 premired Doug Dimmadome.

The one that started it all. "It" being the decay of the series.

And then the unthinkable happened: a movie. The film was named Abra-Catastrophe, and it's trailers impiled a Star Wars parody or a Spiderman parody. I was instantly hooked and wanted to watch the film. However, these parodies turned out to be a nightmare, and the real film was different. Timmy gets a muffin for hiding his fairies for 1 whole year. However, a monkey eats the muffin and builds his own city and regulates humans to the trees.Then, Crocker gets a bite, and takes over the entire planet. However, he loses the planet. Then, the second movie came out, entitled "Channel Chasers". It was actually about parodies, to be exact, Timmy and Vicky were trapped inside a TV, and visited parodies of such shows as Wheel of Fortune and Sesame Street, culminating with a Dragonball Z parody that I think is one of the best things in the series. Vicky planned to take over the world through this, and Timmy met a version of himself from the future.

Trunks and Cell... not quite (However, the actual DBZ is now on Nickelodeon)

 Then after that, there came a crossover with Jimmy Neutron, called the Jimmy Timmy Power Hour. While a novel concept, it was dissapointing compared to the theatrical SpongeBob film. The special spawned a video game series, called Nicktoons Unite, which added SpongeBob and Danny Phantom, and later other shows, as well as two very disappointing sequels. Also, Butch Hartman made another show, called Danny Phantom. It was a suprisingly deep show, especially the later seasons of it.I paid much more interest in Danny Phantom than the Fairly Oddparents. This was because the show was getting stale. However, another film came out, called School's Out. It gave the Happy Pappy Pair development. Then, the third crossover planned to end both, but in the end it was only the end of Jimmy Neutron. Danny Phantom also ended. Meanwhile, the Fairly Odd Parents kept going as-is. Cosmo kept getting dumber, Timmy's parents were more of active villains, and Vicky got even crueler. Then, a promo video called "77 Secrets of the Fairly Odd Parents" played, and claimed there would be a new character. It was going to be a Fairly Odd Baby.





It was Poof, son of Cosmo and Wanda. Oddly, Cosmo bore the baby. After that, an odd sequence of events happened in his debut episode. Poof was kidnapped by everyone from Crocker to Dark Lazer, and eventually it came to one collision which is one of the greatest moments on the show. They were trapped in amoeba-like structures. Then, live-action clips of vehichle crashes played. It was the kiss of death for the show. The next season saw the unexplained disapearances of many characters, like Francis, Veronica, and others. Then, a movie trillogy came out, called Wishology. It was so awesome. It had the most dangerous villains Timmy ever faced: The Lead Elimiator and The Darkness. There was a lot of tension, That was the show's last spark of brilliance. Then came the announcement of another movie.The film would be live action. After Wishology, I was ULTRA-EXCITED for this movie. I thought it would be as epic as Wishology if not even more so, with an even more dangerous villain (or The Darkness coming back), actual death, Timmy picking a love, old characterizations returning, and seeing all my favorite characters as realistic CGI creatures.

Like a boss, Scooby Doo, like a boss.

In the end, how much did we get of that? Nothing. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. The bad guy? A freaking land developer who wasn't cool at all. The only old villain back was Crocker, who was a complete joke and more of a minion. No one died except possibly Trixie and Binky. Timmy got in an anti-climactic relationship with Tootie. The CGI Oddparents didn't look realistic at all. The characters had even worse or almost no personality.

Is this a movie, or a PS2 game?

And that was it. I was done with the show. It was awful now. Meanwhile Butch Hartman created another show, called TUFF Puppy. It was about a dog secret agent who fought criminals with the help of characters like his partner: Kitty Kattswell, who was injured all the time, in every episode. But no one really like it for Dudley Puppy's crazy antics. They watched it for miss Kitty.

By the way, Deviantart, this is the least modest thing she ever wore.

However, the FOP kept running, and kept getting worse. They rpomised it would end, but it did not. It's like a zombie now. The writing has finnaly ran out of good ideas, almost half the cast is gone, and the jokes are horrid. But it keeps going. However, it has been bumped to a death slot. On the other hand, they are making another live action movie: A Fairly Odd Christmas. Oh, dear. That would be Johnny Test-level awful. Oh, I also watch Tuff Puppy, but only for Kitty Kattswel.