I remember watching this show when it was new--I was 8 years old at the time, about the same age as Lucy Little, and I totally identified with her. At the time I thought it was just a fun show about little (REALLY little!) kids that were just like me, in a way. Recently I found it again in syndication and I'm relieved to find out that one of my childhood favourites _has_ aged well.
"The Littles" is a very creative cartoon, and gives great attention to details. For one thing, every time they do a scene from the Littles' point of view (which is often), the animators had to draw ordinary objects blown up to many times their size, which requires a lot of detail work (i.e, every single individual strand on a piece of string, the holes on a piece of printer paper, etc.) Another detail that I like is that the Littles are mostly drawn as having a sort of late 1800's/early 1900's style to their clothes, technology, etc. For example, Tom dresses kind of like a "Newsie", Dinky's outfit is that of a WWI flying ace rather than a _modern_ pilot, and the kids' home-made bicycles (which use _bottle caps_ for wheels) have the front wheel much bigger than the back, like a 19th-century style bike. This lends a colorful little touch of...quaintness to the look of the show and adds to the Littles' "otherworldly" feel.
And then there's the characters, none of whom are one-dimensional clichés. The main one I remembered from back then (besides Lucy) has gotta be the dippy, accident-prone aviator Cousin Dinky--and watching it again, I can see why. He is just plain _hilarious_--constantly bragging about being an expert at things he's never done, insanely daring one second but cowardly the next, seemingly unfazed by crashing his plane (which happens _often_. Well, you know what they say...any crash you can walk away from...) And while he normally seems stupid or at least "out of it", he can sometimes be the only one who picks up on an important clue. Personality-wise, he _strongly_ reminds me of Launchpad McQuack, from "DuckTales"/"Darkwing Duck"...but since "The Littles" was first, I guess we gotta call Dinky the "prototype" of LP, huh? (Heck, the way Grandpa always insults Dinky even sounds like the way Scrooge McDuck always yells at LP...)
The other characters shine no less brightly. Grandpa is not a feeble old coot, but instead a tough, experienced older gentleman with a sharp sense of adventure and an even sharper tongue! Tom is a bit hot-tempered and impulsive but has a heart underneath that, and Lucy is a tomboy who manages to be _sensible_ without coming across as cowardly. She's the kind of role-model more little girls these days could stand to grow up with. Even Henry, who's fairly bland, comes across as sympathetic because the other kids at his school consider him something of a loser.
All things considered, "The Littles" may not be one of the greatest cartoons of all time, no, but it is detailed, creative, and _does_ hold up well over time. If you haven't caught this one on syndication yet, give it a look--because, like the tiny people themselves, you never know when it might disappear.
