The little animals had names.

We all remember the old Sonic games and up until Sonic Adventure 2 when you smashed robots, animals popped out because the idea was Eggman would use the animal's life force to power the robots and I guess realized that wouldn't really work that well because they'd need to breathe and eat or maybe they were wired up to a virtual reality like in The Matrix anyway most gamers don't realize that all those little critters actually had names.

http://www.sonicstadium.org/2012/09/oh-na-na-pocky-was-the-name-sonic-characters-given-new-names/

Now when I was a kid when Sonic first came out, there was just Sonic and Robotnick, not the slew of care bear colored cohorts we have now. I remember reading the promotional comic in my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles official magazine (yes that existed) that showed Sonic with Cucky, Pocky and a girl version of Ricky (she wore a red bow) now not knowing they had names and thinking they were just random animals I gave the critters their own names. After all I was 10.

So if you care, here's what my 10 year old self called them.

Pecky= Penny

Rickey= Suzie (since I thought the squirrel was a girl)

Picky= Piggy

Cucky= Clucky

Rocky= Cody

Flicky= Betty

Pocky= Robbie

Now the interesting story behind these critters was when the comic books as well as SatAM was coming out, they didn't have a slew of characters to work with. So they used these critters as a reference. Rocky became Boomer/Rotor. Pocky became Bunnie Rabbot and Rickey became Sally. Now we all know Flicky by now. He had a Master System game as well as became the crux of Sonic 3D Blast.

But interestingly enough has anyone downloaded the Sonic Little Big Planet DLC? Along with the five character costumes are a slew of stickers for fans wanting to make their own Sonic themed levels and in the plethora of stickers are the original sprites of said critters and the names are totally different save for Flicky of course. Most interesting, the squirrel is named "Sally Acorn." Makes me wonder if there used to be different names from the Japanese and American sides of Sega.

Anyway something to ponder. Not like there's much else to talk about right now.

Yeah, in the first issues of Sonic the Comic they had a Ricky named Sally Acorn but never used her later. I had a feeling those little critters were named but always forgot to look them up.

Oh, and Picky was Porker Lewis and Pocky was Johnny Lightfoot in Sonic the Comic series. Hamlet (or Hamlin) the Pig in Archies Comics.