The Rascals’ inventions were ingenious, and they were cute as the Dickens.īut the Rascals can’t seem to make the leap into the contemporary era. Two decades later, when the Rascals were a fixture on American television, that connection of identification was gone, but kids from the ‘50s found it interesting to go back in time and see what it took to live through the Depression. It was the transposition of the adult world onto children’s. People whose lives seemed to run the same gamut could identify, and the cute factor made viewers smile. Often they tried to help the adults, and just as often things got messed up. When the original short comedies were made and shown in theaters, the Rascals appealed because these were Depression-era kids trying to make it as best they could, whether improvising with play or attempting to do the same thing with work. The plots were simple cases of misunderstanding, attempts to raise money, attempts to impress or behave, challenges to one of them, visiting relatives, or various family mini-crises. You’ve seen them on countless shows: oven doors that pry open with monstrous, Blob-like balls of dough after the Rascals added too much yeast suds that also grow out of control when too much soap is added to the laundry or bath or the Rascals’ Rube Goldberg contraptions that almost always misfired-like a dog-washing machine that went loco. Like The Three Stooges shorts, The Little Rascals installments from Hal Roach Studios were driven by character interaction and antics, with the kind of exaggerated effects and outcomes that would drive TV comedies for many years to come. The original Little Rascals movies were comedy shorts created during the ‘20s and ‘30s. Entire family: No (only small children will like it)

Names of the original little rascals