Post #10 – Sonic Sez PSAs

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Most public service announcements are created to help educate the public on a variety of topics. Popular topics include health related issues such as smoking and drugs, and on moral topics such as tolerance of others (vi. Non-profit or governmental organizations usually pay for PSAs to assist in a larger public awareness campaign. PSAs come in a variety of forms, but one popular PSA form can be found in a children’s cartoon. Let’s look some PSAs from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog to see how PSAs can be aimed at younger audiences.

Sonic‘s PSAs aired on a segment called “Sonic Sez”. During these short half-minute features, Sonic the Hedgehog would generally encounter Tails and one of the two robots (Scratch and Grounder) doing something wrong, and would step in to tell them what they were doing was wrong. Usually, the robots would be doing something either dangerous or immoral and trying to persuade Tails to join them, Sonic would come in, and the robots would immediately be brought down by what they did (in video 1, the robots get injured when they step out into the road). In many videos, however, Sonic would be alone or with Tails.

Sonic’s PSAs were quite prolific and covered a wide range of topics. Some topics were practical in nature (video 2, about false advertising), health-related (video 3, smoking), and even on heavier topics such as sexual harassment (video 4). Sonic Sez segments demonstrates how PSAs can be targeted to children. These PSAs involve simpler issues specific to children, that involve basic concepts of health and morality.

I commented on John and Emily‘s blog posts this week.

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