After The Archie Show in the 60s and The New Archie and Sabrina Hour in the 70s, the Archie gang made a return to TV with The New Archies in 1987. The new show was based on Little Archie, an Archie-universe book that pictured the gang from Riverdale as pre-teens; NBC may have been tired of dealing with cartoon teenagers at that point.

Producers had to change a few details from earlier versions of Archie to keep up with the times. For example, they introduced Amani and Eugene, two African-American characters, and changed Veronica's accent from southern twang to valley girl inflection. Eugene also replaced Dilton Doily as resident brainiac.

The show appeared in a half-hour episodes, each containing two stories. Curiously, the popular band-within-a-show, The Archies, was absent from this series. If the creators of The New Archies thought there was no market for singing and bopping pre-teens, they put their eggs in the wrong basket. After one season of new episodes and a second season consisting of reruns, The New Archies waved goodbye to the 80s.