Little Einsteins is an American interactive animated children's television series produced by Curious Pictures for The Baby Einstein Company (which, at the time, was owned by Disney). It was created by Douglas Wood and Eric Weiner. The series started out with a direct-to-video movie, Our Huge Adventure, that was released on August 23, 2005. Sixty-seven episodes were produced.
The first regular episode of Little Einsteins premiered in the UK on October 3, 2005 and in the US on October 9, 2005. The final regular episode was originally broadcast (in the US) on December 22, 2009, and a standalone special entitled “Rocket’s Firebird Rescue” was released on June 19, 2010, marking the series’ official end. The series continued to air in reruns afterward, including after Playhouse Disney was rebranded as Disney Junior on February 14, 2011 through March 25, 2019.
The series also had two VHS Releases one being a VHS version of Our Huge Adventure and the second being "Climb Aboard and Get Ready to Explore" which included the episodes "The Birthday Balloons", "Dragon Kite" and "Ring Around the Planet".
The show looks nice, using a mixture of classic and computer animation. It also teaches young children about classical music and art. It instead concentrates on music and art, touting the values of beautiful music.
The series is clearly aimed at young children. The home viewer is affected if they have a child.
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Little Einsteins doesn't do a bad job of illustrating the challenges to the viewers.
The Little Einsteins team consists of memorable characters:
- Leo: Annie's older brother who is the leader of the Little Einsteins and pilots Rocket. His main talent is conducting, and his most prized possession is his conductor's baton. He has tan skin, red hair and green eyes. He wears green glasses, a black shirt with an orange stripe, orange cargo shorts, white socks, and orange, black and white shoes. He is voiced by Jesse Schwartz (Piers Stubbs in the UK). His singing is provided by Harrison Chad.
- Annie: Leo's younger sister who is the smallest member of the team group, a young singer who loves to sing and the only character who has piloted Rocket alone. She likes singing and animals, including dolphins and horses, but has arachnophobia. In Season 1, Annie's singing posture is with one hand up in the air and the other hand on her chest, then she comes to own a silver microphone white a purple speaker and orange musical notes after winning it in a singing contest in the season 2 episode "Annie, Get Your Microphone!" When she wishes to urgently point something out to the team, her usual phrase is "Look-look-look!" and she has fair skin, blonde hair tied into two pigtails with held by her pink hair bows and blue eyes. She wears a green shirt, a blue overall dress, and magenta and white shoes in Season 1 and a light blue shirt, a pink overall dress, white socks, and blue and white shoes in Season 2. She is voiced by Natalia Wójcik (Kirsty Hickey in the UK).
- June: A young ballerina who loves to dance. She has pale skin, short brown hair and brown eyes. She wears a pink headband, a purple dress with a pink belt, light blue pearl earrings and crimson ballet slippers but within white socks in the Season 2 episode "Show and Tell". She is voiced by Erica Huang (Poppy Friar in the UK).
- Quincy: A musician who plays a variety of musical instruments, including the violin, flute, and trumpet. At some point in most episodes, Quincy exclaims, "I can-NOT believe it!". He has brown skin, brown curly hair and brown eyes and wears a red baseball cap with a blue bill trim, a yellow shirt with green trim sleeves, blue pants, and red and white shoes. He is voiced by Aiden Pompey (Mitchell Zhangazha in the UK).
- Rocket: The Little Einsteins' main mode of transportation, as well as their friend. Rocket has an array of tools and accessories that help the team complete their missions. Rocket also has the ability to transform into any other form of transportation, like a submarine or a train. Rocket communicates by making marimba noises.
Other characters include:
- Big Jet: A blue fighter plane which appears to resemble a Soviet MiG-29. Big Jet has been known to ruin parties and steal things to keep for himself. Big Jet hates springtime, owing to his being allergic to flowers, as seen in the episode "Oh Yes, Oh Yes, it's Springtime". He also hates losing, as seen in "The Great Sky Race Rematch". In the episode, "Show and Tell", Big Jet gets revenge on Rocket and the Little Einsteins for defeating him in all of his appearances by stealing their favorite things.
- Melody the Music Pet: A musical pet that Leo helped find her ticket for the pet train in "Melody the Music Pet". After boarding the train, Melody is brought to live with Leo.
- The Bad Knight: The knight who imprisoned the Good Knight. In the episode "The Good Knight and The Bad Knight" he rides a cello that acts like a horse. At the end of the episode, it is revealed that he was under a magic spell that made him a bad knight. after rescuing the Good Knight, he himself transforms back into a good knight.
- The Little Red Train: A good friend of Annie, and despite his small size, he is very determined and very strong.
- Ring: Appeared in the episode "Ring Around the Planet" when it fell off Saturn and landed near June's garden.
- Grandma Rocket: Appeared in the episode "Little Red Rockethood" and is the grandmother of Rocket. She shares a similar appearance to Rocket but is purple and has glasses and gray hair.
In each episode, the Little Einsteins face a problem and eventually solve it. They encourage viewers to help, such as tapping a beat, wiggling their fingers or singing along. They also use musical terms like allegro or presto.
While deep in thought the other day, I was struck by a brilliant notion: it's time we're aware that it's a small world, after all. It must have occurred to someone at Disney too, because they've decided to wax philosophical in a whole new line of DVDs: It's A Small World of Fun!.
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Okay, you caught me! That idea comes from a song that some of you may have heard called "It's A Small World," the Sherman Brothers-penned theme to the Disneyland attraction of the same name. If you notice that it's the same title used in this new DVD series, then you've caught Disney too! Indeed, the clever use of this uber-popular Disney anthem is both suspicious and initially disappointing when one discovers that this DVD and Disneyland have nothing to do with one another.
Moving past those expectations, however, the release is actually not half bad (more like a quarter bad at most). Taking its cue from the Classic Cartoon Favorites series, an economy class of DVDs that offers a meager plate of vintage animated shorts (always adding up to around an hour) in each release, It's A Small World of Fun! Volume 1 presents seven cartoons united by a single theme with a few marketable Disney characters slapped on the front. In this case, that theme is global diversity (okay, so it does have something in common with the attraction -- its message, sans the harmony). Each cartoon comes from a different country, with the locale figuring heavily in either appearance or narrative, usually both. This is the first of at least two It's a Small World of Fun! DVDs. The second volume is released alongside it on the same day.
Disney has only recently begun issuing these kinds of DVDs with a banner other than Classic Cartoon Favorites, so it's difficult to discern their future plans with any certainty, but if the tremendous success of similar releases in recent history is any indication, these aren't likely to be the last.
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Here's a look at some of the shorts featured on the "It's A Small World of Fun!" DVD:
- "The Flying Gauchito": This short originates from The Three Cabelleros, the 1944 Disney anthology film, and was reissued as a stand-alone short the following year. The opening and closing titles indicate that it is this latter version that is included here. Taking place in South America, it tells the story of a young boy who finds what he first believes to be a bird but is actually a flying donkey.
- "Pluto's Fata Morgana": Similar to "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," this is the story of a love-struck Pluto who accidentally alerts a town in Holland with a false alarm but is soon called on to save the day.
- "Goliath II": Featuring elephants set in the jungles of India, "Goliath II" looks, sounds, and feels quite a bit like The Jungle Book. The elephant animation and the score is nearly identical to that of the animated classic (the "Colonel Hathi's March" sequence in particular) and it's been reported that some of the animation in "Goliath II" was recycled for The Jungle Book seven years later. It also borrows snippets of animation from previous Disney works. Goliath II is an elephant runt, mocked by the others for his diminutive stature... until it comes in handy, of course. You might recall that a very similar tiny elephant appeared in The Jungle Book as well. Both stories feature a Tiger as a villain (here, Goliath has a nasty run-in with an ill-intented, scrawny, and humorous tiger named Raja, not to be confused with Aladdin's tiger of practically the same name or The Jungle Book's Shere Khan).
- "Mickey Down Under": Mickey's a swindling bloke in "Mickey Down Under," which -- in case you couldn't tell -- is set in Australia. The first half of the short focuses on Pluto's frustrations with Mickey's trick boomerang while the second concerns Mickey's run-in with an angry ostrich whose egg he tried to steal.
- "African Diary": Goofy (a whole camp of Goofys, in fact) takes a trip to Africa, where he has a violent encounter with an enraged rhinoceros.
- "A Cowboy Needs a Horse": A young boy fantasizes of life as a heroic cowboy. That's right, it's America's contribution to the disc and it features all the sights, sounds, and gags that one would expect from a cowboy adventure. It's book-ended by one of the catchiest songs from any of the Disney shorts. The animation is highly stylized, lending it a vintage flair, and is in parts very reminiscent of the artwork of Mary Blair.
- "Grievance of a Starmaker": This DVD marks the first appearance of "Grievance of a Starmaker" outside of Japan, the country in which it takes place. In it, a boy is frustrated by the lack of bright stars in the sky. To reconcile the problem, he pays a visit to the Starmaker, a man whose lost faith in the world below him is restored by the boy's ardent devotion to cleaning the dirty stars.
Five of the seven shorts on this DVD have previously appeared on various Walt Disney Treasures sets. In accordance with the high quality generally associated with the transfers of those sets, the video quality for these five is mostly pleasing. That satisfying video quality can also be found in "Grievance of a Starmaker," the disc's most recent short by nearly a half-century. It stands out as the best-looking short on the set, which is largely to be expected, given its age. The other non-Treasures short, "The Flying Gauchito" previously appeared on DVD as part of The Three Cabelleros. That DVD's transfer wasn't exactly reference-quality, but "Gauchito" looks a bit worse for the wear here and appears to have been drawn from a different source.
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All six Walt-era shorts appear in 1.33:1 fullscreen, an ratio that is acceptably similar to the Academy Ratio used for their original production. The package promises a "Dolby Digital Stereo Surround" presentation. With the exception of "Grievance of a Starmaker," which was truly produced in stereo, these shorts were created for a monaural audio mix and this DVD upholds that with a two-channel stereo presentation.
When Disney tells you that this DVD is a "Small World of Fun," they mean it! The 55 minutes' worth of cartoon comes unaccompanied by bonus features of any kind unless you count the obligatory "Sneak Peeks" as supplements. If you do, then you'll be instantly gratified when inserting your disc, as ads for The Little Mermaid: Platinum Edition, Cars, Dumbo: Big Top Edition, and Brother Bear 2 play right away.
It's been a long time since Disney has issued even a low-priced DVD without an insert of some sort inside the case, but that's exactly what they've done here. The main menu is pretty neat, as intentionally kiddy art-like animation surrounds a stack of postcards that show off still frames from the included shorts. Below that sits a little "Small World"-esque village, through which the young boy from "A Cowboy Needs a Horse" takes a leisurely horse ride. All the menus employ catchy instrumental music in the background.
With a lack of bonus features and a few compromises in the video/audio department, It's a Small World of Fun! Volume 1 is clearly less a value than the Walt Disney Treasures line. I could lecture on the merits of that superior series, but at this point, buying Classic Cartoon Favorites and other such releases is sort of like eating at McDonald's: it's good stuff at a low price, but you know it's not the best decision you could be making.
My boys really enjoyed watching the Baby Einstein “World Animal Adventure” on DVD. They loved watching the elephants and LOVE the animal puppets. I had actually purchased some Baby Einstein puppets a year ago and whenever I turn on Baby Einsteins, they pull out their puppets and interact with the show. It is so cute!! I personally loved that the animals were divided into different sections of the world such Africa, South America, Australia, and more! I also loved that they would show the animal
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