With the space race of the 60s pressing forth at a frenzied pace, it was a little hard for the public to keep up with all of the technological advances. Producer Fred Ladd decided that help should come in the form of two little freckle-faced cartoon siblings, Little Adam and his even littler brother, Wilber. And so he proceeded to secure the rights of numerous NASA documentaries and repackaged them into a series of half-hour episodes called The Big World of Little Adam.

Adam was a curious young tyke who had a knack for explaining things to other kids. Along with his brother Wilbur, he put all of this highly advanced scientific mumbo-jumbo into language that any kid, and hopefully adult, could understand. Their short cartoon segments would wrap around the NASA clips and keep viewers up to date on all that was happening in the race to the moon.

All in all, there were over a hundred of these segments created for syndicated television. But before they had a chance to do their magic, many of them became obsolete overnight as the technology was simply moving too fast for the show to keep up. Adam and Wilbur’s dreams may have been just a little too ambitious and eventually, they would throw in the towel. Meanwhile, and lucky for us, the space race handled adversity a little better than The Big World of Little Adam.