And then there were three

As Sega conceived Sonic to compete with the icon that is Mario, so too did Sony jump on board with imagining a mascot for their brand. Of the three, it could be argued that he has done the worst. ...Ok, not really argued, it's pretty much a fact.

Eyyy!

Unlike the first two mascots I've covered, there's a significant portion of the otherwise civilized world that has no idea who this creature is. If you guessed a furry version of The Fonz, you're farther off than you should have any business being. He is in fact none other than Crash Bandicoot.

Sony seemed to step along with Sega in both creating an anthropomorphic animal as their mascot, as well as selecting a creature that many people simply have not heard of before. In this case, the Eastern-Barred Bandicoot is a native of Australia and Tasmania. An insectivorous marsupial, the bandicoot is somewhat antisocial and will only interact with females for mating.

This knowledge makes his origins a bit unsettling, since he seems to survive on the fictional Wumpa Fruit and his motivation is chasing after a female bandicoot.

Status after first game: nonexistant

Though to be fair, he was originally supposed to be a wombat. While in theory, wombats seem to be much more badass creatures than bandicoots, (skilled in crushing the skulls of predators with their asses), the actual design was...well.

Probably a good call.

Like Mario and Sonic, Crash's games started out with him being non-communicative. Unfortunately, this is not the same as silent. He tended to speak in gibberish, and make loud, high pitched "WHOA!" noises upon dying in an arbitrary fashion. But, he was fairly well received, being described as "quirky" in comparison to Sonic and Mario, whose defining attributes could be described as "attitude" and ... erm ... "jumping"?

He also boasted much more expression in his games than his predecessors- his animations and expressions were as varied as the methods by which you could die in the games, and of those, there were many. There were those who disliked his character on the whole, of course, calling him a transparent copy cat mascot. He even was able to spin in order to kill enemies, like Sonic.

I was under the impression dervishes originated in Turkey...

In spite of this, his gameplay was normally quite solid, getting reliably high ratings for a time.

Despite the best intentions, Crash never took off as a true mascot for Sony's games. This was not helped when he got...a redesign.

Eyyy!

I've been hard pressed to find any evidence of anyone in favor of the sudden shift, not just of Crash, but of the entire supporting cast.

Poor Tiny got a complete Species Reassignment

But what really makes Crash fail as a Mascot...is that he simply isn't one anymore. His games haven't been Sony exclusives for years, and he's not even developed by Naughty Dog now. He's maintained about as much Mascot integrity as Banjo.

WHYYY?!?!

However, being a bad mascot does not make one a bad character, or a bad game. There's simply a point where a character becomes nothing but a face for their own brand, rather than a company. Besides, Sony seems to be doing pretty well otherwise.