Trivia / Kids Incorporated

• Acting for Two:
  • Renee Sands as both Renee and British cousin Samantha in two episodes.
  • 1991's "Double Trouble" episode has Scott Wolf playing twins.
  • The episode immediately following "Double Trouble", "Earth Day Festival" has Sean O'Riordian playing both Flip and his forest ranger cousin Dave.
• Creative Differences: According to Jerry Sharell, the reason he left after only the first season was because he was unhappy with the direction that producers Thomas W. Lynch and Gary P. Biller were taking the show in. In particular, he wanted the show to be more realistic while Lynch and Biller wanted it to contain more fantasy.
• The Danza: Only Martika, Jerry Sharell, and Jennifer Love Hewitt did not use their own first names. Rahsaan Patterson's name was later revealed as being Rahsaan in the season 4 episode, "What's in a Name", which turned out to be his and Renee Sands' last episode.
  • According to the show's IMDb trivia page and one retrospective on Jennifer Love Hewitt; Hewitt was a last-minute replacement for an unidentified girl who was let go for unknown reasons.
• Descended Creator: In the season 4 episode, "Modern Music", in which the kids deal with a computer invention of Riley's called Synthesized Audiovisual Music, or S.A.M. for short, with S.A.M. claiming he can make better music than the kids, the actor voicing S.A.M. is theme song composer and music arranger and producer Michael Cruz.
• Directed by Cast Member: Moosie Drier (who played Riley) directed the 1988 episode "Kahuna Kids".
• Dueling Shows: With The Chipmunks, another Slice of Life show containing pre-teen characters performing covers of hit songs from the 80's.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The main reason that the show hasn't returned to TV or had a home video release since the 80's is twofold: one being the difficulty in clearing the rights to the songs (which, while still difficult, would not be as pricey as these are kids singing them, not the actual artists), while the other is the fact that the show's rights are split between Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (actual owner and copyright holder) and Disney (who apparently has possession of the actual videotapes); while the library of what's now Halcyon Studios (successor to Hal Roach Studios/Qintex/RHI and known until 2021 as Sonar Entertainment) was acquired in 2021 by Chicken Soup for the Soul; though whether older works such as Kids Incorporated were included in the deal is unclear.
• Non-Singing Voice: In her first season, Connie Lew's singing voice was dubbed over by Devyn Puett, without her knowledge. She was reportedly very upset about it. When Devyn was added to the cast outright, Connie received her own singing voice again.
• Series Hiatus: Kids Incorporated took what would have been the 1990 season off for the series to be refreshed (the bankruptcy of then-producer Qintex probably also played a role), resulting in the departure of three of the cast members^note most notably the series' lone remaining original cast member at the time, Stacy Ferguson, leaving Kenny Ford, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sean O'Riordan as the sole 1989 holdovers when production resumed for 1991. Additionally, the period after the shortened 1993 season was intended to be a break before an even more extensive retool, only to (as mentioned below) see the cast age out or decline to return, resulting in its cancellation.
• Troubled Production: The show's fifth season. It was in production during the Writers' Guild of America strike of 1988, and as a result, the show's producers were forced to use non-union writers who presumably hadn't seen the first four seasons up to that point.
• Un-Canceled: The first show to jump from syndication to cable.
• What Could Have Been: The show went on what was supposed to be a two-year hiatus, having done so once before, in order to rest the show before a massive Retool, include reducing the songs in each episode (in fact, some proposed scripts had no songs at all), and moving production from LA to Vancouver. However, by the time the show was to resume in 1995, the Season 9 cast declined to return or aged out.
  • Also, a proposal to add reruns of the show to Disney Channel's Saturday night lineup in 2005 fell through because of suggestions by Disney executives attempting to get around the copyright issue by sticking blooper reels into many of the slots where the songs would be.
  • In a 2021 podcast interview on the Kids Inc. Podcast; producer Thomas W. Lynch indicated that he had briefly entered negotiations with the Hub at some point in the early 2010s over reruns of Kids Incorporated airing there, only for the negotiations to fall apart.
  • A May 2022 edition of the same podcast mentioned evidence that at least 3 episodes were originally written to feature different cast members than the final result^note Season 5's "Mr. President" or "Richie for President" depending on the source was originally intended to have Kenny as the main character instead of Richie; the following year's "Magic Toy Shoppe" was intended to feature Devyn instead of Robin, with audio of Devyn Puett singing Brenda K. Starr's "I Still Believe" and finally Season 8's "Laid Off" originally featured Haylie instead of Nicole, with audio of a rough cut of Haylie singing the Michael Jackson song "I'll Be There"
• You Look Familiar - Used on several occasions.
  • Moosie Drier (who played soda jerk/Bungling Inventor Riley for the first five seasons) often appeared in (or voiced) several one-shot characters; including a pirate in a fantasy sequence, which marked the only time we heard him sing.
  • The 2nd episode of the series has a vandal revealed to be a one-shot character played by Andrea Paige Wilson; one of the series dancers.
  • Another dancer, Wendy Brainard, returned in a 1992 episode as a dance teacher.
  • Trevor Weaver played a bully who the Kid managed to tick off in a first-season episode. The following year, he returned as the lead singer of another band that was supposed to serve as a warm-up act for Kids Inc. during a very special anti-smoking episode. In the latter episode, the character (who smokes) comes down with a sore throat and can't perform.
  • John Franklin of Children of the Corn (1984) appeared in two roles in back-to-back 1984 episodes; first appearing in the "Space Case" episode as an alien sent to bring a specimen from Earth (the specimen he attempts to bring being Renee) and next as a leprechaun who wants to be like Michael Jackson in "The Leprechaun". Not really surprising, however, as one of the film's executive producers, Earl A. Glick, was also an executive producer of Kids Incorporated. In addition, one of the film's production companies, Hal Roach Studios, would later sign up as a production company for Kids Incorporated.
  • Audra Lee (a young actress and singer most famous at the time for co-hosting the TBS educational segment Kid's Beat) appeared in two episodes in 1988 and 1989. The 1988 appearance had her play Richie's rival in a class presidential race; while the following year she played a character who created a fan club for Devyn.

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