I've posed a question to a few parties, which is the question of whether Sonic or Garfield got it worse in public perception. The majority of people who answered the question gone with Sonic, such as this Tumblr post. From what I have seen, only one person believed Garfield got it worse than Sonic if his reasoning were to be believed ("Garfield has always long been a symbol of selling out Even by big name artists"). The general reasoning is that Sonic's inconsistency, leading to a community that doesn't agree with the things they enjoyed with the character.
Even then, I still can't shake the feeling that Garfield got it worse because from what I have seen on the internet there appeared to have more visible appreciative fan art on Sonic while Garfield's more visible fan art are more of "anti-fan art", not to mention how Garfield's Twitter is plagued with unpleasant posts (it stopped getting regular posts, which I attribute it to that) that don't know how to keep it to themselves, while Sonic's Twitter has an overall more pleasant community.
Even then, I still can't shake the feeling that Garfield got it worse because from what I have seen on the internet there appeared to have more visible appreciative fan art on Sonic while Garfield's more visible fan art are more of "anti-fan art", not to mention how Garfield's Twitter is plagued with unpleasant posts (it stopped getting regular posts, which I attribute it to that) that don't know how to keep it to themselves, while Sonic's Twitter has an overall more pleasant community.
Nintendo doesn't seem to do that, since I don't recall them doing this as widely as SEGA. I can recall the Super Mario Bros. + Duck Hunt compilation but that's about it.