The Little Rascals (animated TV series) - Alchetron, the free social encyclopedia

The Little Rascals is a 30-minute Saturday morning animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and King World Productions. It first aired on ABC on September 25, 1982. Based on the Our Gang comedy shorts, it was broadcast as part of The Pac-Man/Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show in 1982 and then as part of The Monchhichis/Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show in 1983.

The characters were designed by Iwao Takamoto and Bob Singer by using tracing paper on top of actual photographs of the real-life characters, and used a pencil to sketch the characters. The same technique was also used in previous Hanna-Barbera spinoffs such as Fonz and the Happy Days Gang and Laverne and Shirley in the Army.

The Little Rascals (animated TV series) The Little Rascals TV Series 19821984 IMDb

Previous Little Rascals/Our Gang animated television programs

The Little Rascals had been animated for television twice before. In the 1960s, a series of nine clay-animated Little Rascals Color Specials were produced for syndication, presumably by Bura & Hardwick, the British studio responsible for Camberwick Green, using soundtracks from the original Our Gang films. The episodes include "Shiver My Timbers", "Our Gang Follies of 1936", "Second Childhood", "Hearts Are Thumps", "Came the Brawn", "Bear Shooters", "Readin' and Writin'", "The Pinch Singer", and "Teacher's Beau".

In 1979, Fred Wolf produced an animated The Little Rascals Christmas Special for NBC. That company's version was further used in animated public service announcements.

Differences between the animated series and the live-action Our Gang films

The animated series and the original live-action Our Gang films differ in a number of ways. The gang now lives in a contemporary 1980s setting, with computers and television, which could be assumed that these were the descendants of the original Little Rascals. Buckwheat is now a clever inventor, always creating new devices for the gang, and Darla's eyes were changed from hazel to blue (although this detail was trivial given that all of the Our Gang shorts were in black-and-white). Also in the animated series, the Rascals met in a treehouse and drove around the town of Greenpoint in a dog-drawn vehicle. Also, the theme music was completely different.

Porky Lawsuit

In March 1984, Our Gang actor Eugene Lee, who played Porky in the original theatrical short films, sued Hanna-Barbera Productions for nearly $2 million, claiming that the animated character was a complete copy of the version he portrayed from 1935 to 1939. The series continued airing on ABC afterwards, which may imply that the case was settled out of court. Some speculated that the lawsuit settlement may have led to the cancellation of the series, while some others speculated that the lawsuit was settled because it was confirmed by that point that the series was not being renewed for a third season. The lawsuit may be the reason for no U.S. cable reruns nor home video releases to this day.