Scratch and Grounder are a pair of fictional Badnik robots created by Dr. Robotnik as adversaries of Sonic the Hedgehog in the animated series Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. They form the greater part of Robotnik's "Super Special Sonic Search and Smash Squad" (often abbreviated to SSSSS Squad and, occasionally, 6-S). Scratch and Grounder were voiced by Phil Hayes and Gary Chalk, respectively.
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Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog
Scratch and Grounder are largely comic relief characters, and though charged with the capture of Sonic and his friend Tails, they almost always fail. Not only this, but the two are also highly gullible, easily being deceived by Sonic no matter how bizarre his disguises. These repeated failures frequently result in the two hapless robots receiving a lot of abuse (both verbal and physical) from Robotnik. They were often seen as the guinea pigs in the Sonic Sez segments which appeared at the end of each episode, where they were shown to be drinking alcohol, smoking, and vandalising amongst other notable things. Scratch was originally created by Robotnik to be a super-robot that could easily catch Sonic for him, since all of his other mechanical bounty hunters fail. But unfortunately, the machine malfunctioned and gave birth to Scratch, a product almost exactly the opposite of what Robotnik wanted. Grounder is a sort of "clone" of Scratch. While being created by Robotnik in the cartoon, Scratch has his feather plucked and put into a cloner, but Scratch pulled another lever while it was cloning proclaiming "You forgot to pull this one!". Robotnik shouts back "I didn't forget to pull that lever! I'm not supposed to pull that lever!" and the result was Grounder who had "slight modifications". The two were occasionally aided by a robotic monkey named Coconuts (also based on an enemy from Sonic the Hedgehog 2), although most of the time, he would be competing with them rather than helping them, in hopes of being promoted out of janitor status.
Physical appearance
Scratch resembles a tall, humanoid chicken, similar to Clucker (named "Kokekko" in Japan [1]), one of the robots in the Wing Fortress Zone of Sonic 2. He is distinctified by his prominent laugh, "Ba-ha-ha-ha!". Grounder is a small green swiss army knife-like machine with tank tracks, gauge for his navel and a plate that reads "K-14" on his back, as well as drills instead of his hands and nose. Grounder's design was purposefully derived from the Grounder from Sonic the Hedgehog 2's Aquatic Ruin Zone, though those Grounders (named "Handrill" in Japan) were massproduced, their color schemes were different and they attacked by bursting out of walls. He is notably less intelligent than Scratch, but once acquired a chip that made him super-intelligent - it was subsequently lost. While Scratch seems to be the brains, Grounder is the artillery - his robot body is filled with accessories, which switch usually in his drill hands.
Other appearances
Grounder first appeared in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 as a regular enemy in the Aquatic Ruins stage. This version, however, was red. Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts all appeared as opponents in the game Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, which was a clone of Puyo Puyo. Scratch also appeared in a special stage of Sonic Spinball. Scratch and Grounder also appeared in the earliest issues of the Sonic comic book published by Archie Comics. However, the characters themselves were prominently featured only in their first appearance there, published in issue #2. Subsequent appearances of the two were minor; their last appearance in the comic was part of a flashback in issue #57. However, Scratch appears in issue 4 (Tails' Little Tale) without Grounder and Grounder appears (without Scratch) in the story "Sonic Spin City!", published in Sonic Super Special #15. As they have never been seen being destroyed, it is possible that Scratch and Grounder are still alive somewhere.
External links
- Scans of the duo's first appearance in the comic
- The Adventures of Scratch and Grounder - A fancomic starring Scratch and Grounder
