Little Einsteins

Little Einsteins "We're going on a trip in our favorite rocket ship. Zooming through the sky! Little Einsteins!" Genre: Educational Adventure Musical Comedy Science fiction Running Time: 24 minutes Country: United States Release Date: October 9, 2005 – December 22, 2009 Network(s): Disney Channel Created by: Douglas Wood Starring: Jesse Schwartz Natalia Wojcik Aiden Pompey Erica Huang Harrison Chad Seasons: 2 Episodes: 67 (including two specials)

Little Einsteins is an American interactive animated children's television series on Disney Junior. The educational children series was developed for television by Douglas Wood who created the concept and characters, and a subsequent team headed by Emmy Award-winning director Olexa Hewryk and JoJo's Circus co-creator Eric Weiner, and produced by Curious Pictures and The Baby Einstein Company. This series is aimed for children ages two to seven years old.

Plot

Four adventurous kids, Leo, Quincy, June, and Annie blast off in their versatile ship, Rocket, for missions all over the world. Fueled by classical music, well-known works of art and their own creativity, the Little Einsteins travel on unforgettable journeys while learning to appreciate the power of great music.

Why It's Got A Mission!

1. The groups (Leo, Quincy, June, and Annie) are all smart child prodigies.
2. The Flash animation is wonderful as combined with some CGI animation to create them using Maya 3D software.
   • There's a surprising number of real world shots in an animated show like this, and they're almost all ridiculously beautiful. The show's renditions of these real locations when it switches to a more animated look tend to be very true to form, and just as pretty.
3. An awesome red rocket ship, especially with the faster-than-light space travel capacity.
4. Decent voice acting of Jesse Schwartz (Leo), Natalia Wojcik (Annie), Aiden Pompey (Quincy), Erica Huang (June) and Harrison Chad (Leo, vocals).
5. Very educational, as it focused and helps the viewers about the classical music and works of art geographical.
6. A clever and mischievous villain by the name of Big Jet.
7. It introduces us to many famous composers (Ex. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc.) and their famous classical music.
8. The team also make up their own creative lyrics for the classical songs.
9. It also introduces us to many famous paintings (Ex. Mona Lisa) and many famous painters.
10. We also get to see the world with them.
11. The team's friends communicate in music, which is very unique.
12. The show seems to be similar to The Backyardigans but with humans and Disney. (This might remind you of Disney in some way).
13. It's very adventurous.
14. Catchy and timeless songs from classical music, especially the theme song that is decent, even though some find it annoying.
15. The episode The Great Sky Race Rematch proved that Rocket doesn't want to give up, nor he is discouraged. Although he couldn't fly, he could still turn into a submarine, pogo bouncer and a train.
16. Season 2 added some features that are major improvements:
    • Annie's outfit changes color
    • The "Super Fast" segment in Season 2, which makes it the most likable and amazing feature.
    • The "That's Silly" Segments in Season 2 is hilarious (Depending on your point of view).

Bad Qualities

1. The pilot episode, Our Huge Adventure, was mediocre.
2. Some people find the repetition of the first few notes of a classical piece cheesy.
3. The classical pieces are shoehorned by the childish lyrics made up by the Little Einsteins.
4. Annoying theme song, despite that it’s catchy.
5. Some geographical inaccuracies here there. For example, in The Great Sky Race Rematch, Rocket had instantly reached the Altai Mountains after swimming across the Pacific Ocean, then he bounced to the Sahara Desert, which had lied at the foothills of the Altai Mountains, which the Altai Mountains are in Central Asia while the Sahara Desert is in North Africa.
6. The fact that other humans besides the Little Einsteins or simply characters who can talk with words rather than music are not ever shown can be seen as rather disturbing.
7. Also, the somewhat lackluster content of characters as the Little Einsteins themselves and Rocket are the only characters that are pertinent, with bare minimum to the supporting characters.
8. This show is one of those shows where the characters consistently break the fourth wall, making the show absolutely bland and repetitive over time. The Little Einsteins treat the audience like Dora the Explorer, Diego from Go, Diego, Go!, the Sensational Six from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Darby from My Friends Tigger & Pooh, JoJo from JoJo's Circus, Barney the Dinosaur, Elmo from the Sesame Street segment Elmo's World and the other Sesame Street characters in the later episodes, Blue from Blue's Room, the Teletubbies, and the narrators and puppets from Baby Einstein (which is part of the franchise) do.

Reception

When the series debuted with a prime time special, Little Einsteins became the highest preschool rating of any premiere in Playhouse Disney history (a 5.6 rating and 737,000 viewers 2-5). It was made for preschool kids to teach them to admire the arts, whether they be musical or physical. Babysitters and parents would be around for them during the show (especially due to its sheer popularity), and admire its innovative ways of exposing kids to the arts. There are also older fans who come across the show, and make fanfictions of it on the Internet. The series earned 6.3/10 score on IMDb.

Trivia

• This series was the first (and only) Baby Einstein production created for Playhouse Disney.
• The series was named similarly to what was Disney's Baby Einstein.
• The series was originally planned to be released in late 2002.
• Disney+ labels the series as Disney's Little Einsteins. The show is also described as "new" in its description for an unknown reason. The series is also listed as 2005-2006 (the airing length of season 1), although the series was cancelled in 2009.
  • In addition, the series was upscaled in higher quality on said streaming service.
• The show had two pilots that were pitch to The Little Einstein Company.
  • The first pilot (then titled Little Einstein) ended up becoming a promo that was included in multiple Playhouse Disney and Baby Einstein DVDs and VHS tapes in 2003, the pilot shows the characters in a much earlier design than in the final show, with Leo and Anne looking close to the same, but Quincy and June have completely different designs and Rocket has a more simplified design.
  • In 2004, a second pilot was made, with the character's updated designs, but still had some differences. The name of the show was still Little Einstein, Rocket's Garage was nowhere close to Leo and Annie's House compared to the final series, being in a more industrially location and the garage itself had a more warehouse look inside (It's also been implied that how the kids found Rocket is completely different with them finding him in an abandoned warehouse), Rocket, while having his final design, seems to have been 2D drawn in some scenes and has a different jingle, Quincy is in the front row with Leo (where in the final he was in the back row with Annie and June was put to the front row with Leo), Leo having a prototype baton, and Rocket's seats were green.
• Although it was created and produced by Baby Einstein, Disney kept the Little Einsteins property when they sold Baby Einstein to Kids II.
• It is the first Playhouse Disney series to feature animated characters in live-action locations.
• When the show's main theme song was reworked into a hip hop beat, it gained loads of memes and popularity on places in 2015 (10 years after the show released) like Vine, likely as a result of the periphery demographic, where users posted Vines of themselves dancing to a remix of the theme song.
• In the UK version, Leo was voiced by Piers Stubbs, who a decade later would voice Eli in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

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