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. A spin-off based on the live-action 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 spin-offs such as The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang and Laverne and Shirley in the Army.

Overview

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. Buckwheat is now a clever inventor and is interested in science, 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. Furthermore, many characters such as Stymie don't appear.

Lawsuit

In March 1984, Our Gang actor Eugene Lee, who had played Porky in the original theatrical short films as a child from 1935 to 1939, sued Hanna-Barbera Productions for nearly $2 million, claiming that the animated character was a violation of his likeness rights. He was joined in the lawsuit by other former Our Gang kids: George McFarland, who had played Spanky, Tommy Bond, who had played Butch, and Sidney Kibrick, who had played The Woim. Carl Switzer, Darla Hood and Billie Thomas, who had played Alfalfa, Darla and Buckwheat respectively were already deceased. It was found that Hanna-Barbera's license from King World did not include the likeness rights of the former child actors, and the case was settled out of court. Following the lawsuit, ABC stopped airing reruns of the show, and the show would not be picked up for syndication anywhere, including Cartoon Network and Boomerang. This even prevented Warner Bros. Discovery from releasing the show on DVD as confirmed in 2016.

Other languages

The French dub for Antenne 2, Les Petites Canailles, replaced the original theme music with a new theme song, performed by a chorus of children over a montage of clips from both the theatrical Our Gang shorts and the animated shorts.

Episode titles

Season 1 (1982)

Aired as part of The Pac-Man/Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show.

Season 2 (1983)

Aired as part of The Monchhichis/Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show "Tiny Terror", "Class Act", "Porky-O and Julie-Et" and "Cap'n Spanky's Showboat", previously aired during the first season, were rebroadcast on October 8 and 22, and November 5 and 26, 1983 respectively.

Cast

Main voices

Additional voices