Ryan Drummond (born January 10, 1973), an actor/comedian, is best known as the character Smudge in the San Diego, California production of the comedy Forever Plaid. He was also well known as the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog in the popular Sega video game franchise. His youthful, energetic, yet realistic sounding voice was well known and very popular with fans of the series. He did not voice Sonic in the series Sonic X; that part was taken by another comic actor, Jason Anthony Griffith, because the dubbing company, 4Kids, does not like using many different voice actors and also due to Ryan's location (The 4Kids headquarters were located in New York City, and he didn't live there, even though he offered to move there specifically for the part). As of such, when Sega decided to make all the voices uniform across both the games and the TV show by using the 4Kids voice actors, Ryan and all the other voice actors he had worked with prior were dropped without any warning or explanation (much to the chagrin of Ryan's fans and Sonic fans in general). Although he is no longer Sonic's official voice actor, many Sonic fans have said that Ryan Drummond can never be replaced in their minds as the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog and as such many Sonic fans have sent demands for his return to Sega.
