Back in the days of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, nothing got a kid’s heart pumping faster than the Space Race. Astronauts and NASA engineers were the golden boys of the moment, as rocket launches became the talk of not only the evening news but also the school playground.
Capitalising on the phenomenon, producer Fred Ladd secured the rights to a series of NASA colour documentaries about space, technology and all things futuristic, packaging them together into half-hour bundles as The Big World of Little Adam.
“We’re casting off, we’re blasting off,
It’s the Big World of Little Adam!”
The show’s title came from its cartoon host, a curious lad named Little Adam. Rather than simply present the documentaries as they were, Ladd created a pair of animated siblings to help explain things to the kids at home.
Adam and his freckled kid brother Wilbur appeared in limited animation wraparounds, setting the scene for the series’ showcase of NASA innovation and hopes for the future.
110 five-minute episodes of The Big World of Little Adam were produced during the show’s syndicated run, but unfortunately, the series couldn’t keep pace with its subject.
Like all things technological, NASA’s documentaries quickly became obsolete as the US spent billions trying to beat the Soviets to the moon.
With so much happening so fast, the world of space exploration simply became too big for Little Adam, and the series faded into memory.
