In 2009, I found a youtube video which at the time had only a handful of views, the video showed an old Italian TV advert which was a promotion for Sega and the release of Sonic 1 in Italy. The promotion was basically ‘Buy a Sega Megadrive and get a free pin badge which gives you the chance to win win Sega prizes.’
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViOn4dmuKn0
The advert quickly became quite notorious, mainly due to the ending which featured an out of tune Sonic theme and an animation of a miscoloured Sonic with glowing red eyes pulling a goofy expression. Even TSS featured it, lovingly calling it ‘The Hog with the Death Ray Eyes.’ To date the pin badge is known as ‘The Sonic Baydge’ by various merch collectors and amazingly, they still work as they did back in 1992, when you consider this is over 20 years old, thats quite impressive.
Since 2009 the details of the promotion have remained a bit of a mystery… Until today…