The Littles (French: Les Minipouss) is an American animated television series originally produced between 1983 and 1985. It is based on the characters from The Littles, a series of children's novels by American author John Peterson, the first of which was published in 1967. The series was produced for the American broadcast network ABC by the French/American studio DIC Audiovisuel. It was post-produced by a Canadian animation studio, Animation City Editorial Services.

Television history

Along with Inspector Gadget and Heathcliff and the Catillac Cats, The Littles was one of the first cartoons produced by DIC Entertainment for American television, and it was the only one of the three to air on a network rather than in syndication. The first two seasons of shows featured The Littles around the Bigg household, but to improve the show's popularity the final season featured the Littles traveling around the world. During the production run of the show, the Littles were also popular enough to warrant two movie tie-ins: In 2003, the series began to air on the Syndicated DIC Kids Network block in order to fulfill E/I criteria. However, not every episode of the series was syndicated during this run. The series also broadcast in the United Kingdom on TVAM and in Australia on Network 10. Many other countries also picked up the series.

Characters

The Little family

In the television series, the family tree is mostly clear. Frank and Helen are the parents of Tom and Lucy, Grandpa is the father of Helen, and Dinky is a cousin (on Helen's side, as said by Grandpa in the episode "Ben Dinky") of Tom and Lucy. In the books, the family tree is never explicitly identified. The Littles that often appear are Tom, Lucy, Dinky and Grandpa.

Supporting characters

Villains

Other characters

Voices

Rachelle Cano provides the opening and closing theme vocals

Additional voices

Crew

Episodes

A dagger (†) denotes an episode that was not rerun in syndication.

Season 1 (1983)

Season 2 (1984)

Season 3 (1985)

Home media releases

Other merchandise

Some of the merchandise that was released during the series run included: tie-in story books, a Milton Bradley board game, stickers and greeting cards. Foreign merchandise included many more items such as Halloween Masks, a set of figures, card game, VHS videos, records, and more.