So, I forgot where I heard this, but the rumor goes that SatAM was going to air a year before AoStH, around the same time the Archie Sonic comic launched. The original production bible for the show was going to make it a prequel to AoStH (hence the badniks and weird way of getting rid of them in the pilot), but something delayed production of SatAM that year, bumping its release date to coincide with the airing of AoStH. Unfortunately, production on Archie Sonic (and the Teitelbaum books, if we were to count those) were already well underway - too much so to be stopped for the delay. So, they used the original, now-out-of-date bible to finish up their version of the SatAM cartoon, which is why the Teitelbaum books have the AoStH Robotnik in it instead of the SatAM Robotnik, and why the first couple dozen Archie issues were much cheesier and more in line with AoStH than what we got.
The only evidence I have seen that corroborates this theory is that the early Archie comics and the SatAM pilot both have the same designs (and, for the former, name) of Rotor and Sally (Rotor being purple with green bandoleer, Sally being pink with black hair), and that the changes to make it more in-line with SatAM proper didn't come until after Ken Penders came on as head writer, shortly into the show's second season. So, has anyone heard of this rumor, before, and if so, do you know of any other evidence that could confirm or refute it?
