The Little Mole

The Little Mole (Czech: Krtek, Krteček) is a series of cartoons as well as the name of their title character, created between 1957 and 2002 by Czech animator Zdeněk Miler. The first short film premiered at the 1957 Venice Film Festival, where it won the award for the best directing achievement. It also won the Venice Film Festival award in 1966 and the Zlín Film Festival award in 2002. Since its inception, the cartoon has gained popularity worldwide, mainly in Europe and Asia.

History
Little Mole was first seen in 1956 in Prague, when Miler wanted to create a children's cartoon about how flax is processed. He wanted a strong Disney influence to the cartoon by choosing an animal for the leading role, and decided to pick a mole after stumbling over a molehill during a walk. The first film, called "Jak krtek ke kalhotkám přišel" ("How the mole got his trousers"), had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 1957, where it was awarded two Golden Lions. Production of further episodes started in 1963 and since then, around fifty episodes have been created.

The first episode of the cartoon was narrated, but Miler wanted the cartoon to be understood in every country of the world, so he decided to use his daughters as voice actors, reducing the speech to short non-figurative exclamations in order to express the mole's feelings and world perception. Miler's daughters also became the bottleneck of the creation process as they were the ones who got to see the whole film first, thus Miler was able to decide whether the message of the movie was able to get to children or not.

The only episode where the mole talks is the first one. In the United Kingdom, the cartoons were transmitted by the BBC with English narration by Colin Jeavons. Book adaptations were also published in English.

Inclusion on US Space Shuttle flight
On 16 May 2011, a plush toy of Little Mole was present on board the Space Shuttle Endeavour, where it accompanied the U.S. astronaut Andrew J. Feustel, whose wife is of Czech ancestry, on the STS-134 mission. It is the first animated character sent into space.

US toy market plans
In May 2012, Bloomberg announced that Apple Inc. planned to help Little Mole enter the $21 billion U.S. toy market for the first time.

Mascot
Mole was the mascot for the 2015 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Prague, and was subsequently used to promote the Federation's Athletics for Children programme.

3D adaptation
In 2016, China Central Television Animation and Little Mole a.s. (founded by Zdeněk Miler's granddaughter, Karolína Milerová) created a remake version called The Little Mole and Panda. Two series were filmed in 2016–2017; the project was cancelled in 2019.

Alfa Romeo Racing partnership
On 23 May 2019, Alfa Romeo Racing, a Formula One team, announced Little Mole as the new team partner. Frédéric Vasseur, principal of the team, said that the goal of the partnership is to capture the imagination of hundreds of thousands of children and get them closer to the sport using Little Mole's big follower base all over the world. Mole's iconic figure is appearing on the sidepods of the cars for the rest of the 2019 season.

Music
Music plays an important role in the cartoons, since the characters almost never utter more than emotional sounds, the most common of which is "Ahoj!" ("Hello" in Czech). The original series' music uses acoustic and electric musical instruments, rather than synthesized ones.

Composers
 * Miloš Vacek
 * Vadim Petrov (1974–1994, most episodes)

Filmography

 * In 2000, a DVD collection was published under the English title The Adventures of the Mole.
 * From 2002 to 2004, a set of 60 DVDs entitled "Nejlepších večerníčků" (Best Bedtime Stories) was released, some of which included Little Mole animations. Included in the list below are the DVD numbers for films in this set.
 * A DVD set with all 63 episodes called "приключения Крота" (Mole adventure) was produced for Russian audiences.
 * IMDB episode list

International broadcast

 * 🇩🇪 Germany
 * ARD in Die Sendung mit der Maus