Super-rare footage of Sonic the Hedgehog appearing on the Rosie O’Donnell show in 1999 has been found and preserved online (thanks, Retro Dodo).
The segment – which lasts less than a minute – sees Sonic confirming a contribution of 500 plushes to Toys For Tots campaign.
O’Donnell also announces during the clip – which aired during Episode 69 of the fourth season of the show – that all audience members will receive a Dreamcast console, along with Sonic Adventure and NBA 2K.
If Sonic's voice seems familiar, then that's because it belongs to Ryan Drummond, who voiced the character in the aforementioned Dreamcast 3D platformer. He would continue to lend his talents to the role until 2004.
Drummond has previously spoken about this appearance on the Nerd On! Podcast in 2018, explaining that he only provided the voice for the character – the person in the suit was an unknown actor.
Drummond recalls that he was a "nice guy" who possessed "a long ponytail and a porn moustache" and worked as a "tragedy scene clean up guy" in his day job. He referred to the situation as "the epitome of the horror movie where there’s a killer in the costume."
It wasn't all bad, though – Drummond got a Dreamcast and several games as a thank-you for his efforts.
You can hear Drummand talking about it around the 15-minute-mark in the video below, but here's the full segment:
Actually, they didn't give me a Dreamcast system at first, but then in 98 – this is just a funny sidebar – in 98, this is when the Rosie O'Donnell show is on, and every year she did a great Toys for Tots thing where she would bring in all these companies to donate thousands of toys to kids in need over the holidays.
Sega was donating ten thousand Sonic plushy dolls to Rosie O'Donnell's Toys for Tots thing, and they actually flew me to New York to be on the Rosie O'Donnell show, and and as a gift for doing that for them, they gave me a Dreamcast system.
I'm sure you can find it online somewhere, but the funny part was that they had a costume character of Sonic that actually went on stage and sat next to her or whatever, and I was off-camera with a microphone... this dude who is in this costume was like the epitome of like the horror movie where there's a killer in the costume, and nothing against him – totally nice guy – but we went out to dinner afterwards, and I was sitting there with this guy, and he had a long ponytail and a porn mustache, and his real job was he was a tragedy scene cleanup guy.
He would pick up – to quote Pulp Fiction – all the pieces of skull and brains from the backseat, that kind of thing. That's what this guy did. But he was real quiet and real nice.