The ravenous herd of Diplodocus are depicted with mouths shaped like beaks. In those days it would have been deemed inaccurate, but recent studies have shown beaks are possible in sauropods after all.
Pat Hingle, the film's narrator, also performed the voice for Rooter. This may have been to underscore the fact that both characters were very wise and insightful.
The very same for the French dub with Henri Virlogeux voicing both.
Children Voicing Children: Gabriel Damon (12) as Littlefoot, Judith Barsi (10) as Ducky, and Candy Hutson (8) as Cera.
Completely Different Title: The Dutch dub was titled Platvoet en zijn vriendjes (Littlefoot and friends).
Creator Backlash: While he by no means dislikes the film, Don Bluth credits it with kickstarting his weaker output, as it was his first major exposure to Executive Meddling.
Executive Meddling: The film was originally Darker and Edgier, with a lot more blood, and darker imagery (for a little perspective, that shadow of Sharptooth mauling Littlefoot's mother was originally going to be plain view), but Spielberg and Lucas together made Bluth cut a lot of those scenes, insisting that this imagery was too scary. Bluth was said to have fought for these scenes, but Spielberg eventually pointed out to him that the current version would leave the theater lobbies filled with crying kids, and angry parents, something no filmmaker would want. This explains the film's very short running time, clocking in at only 69 minutes; in all fairness, Bluth would later admit that these edits helped the film in the end.
Kids' Meal Toy: Pizza Hut gave out puppet toys of the movie. There were also toys at Burger King.
The Merch: Needless to say, this is part of how the movie made as much money as it did, as Bluth & co.'s designs for our heroes were highly marketable. Merch of particular note, though, were the puppet toys that Pizza Hut offered for a dollar alongside a pizza order in their sit-down restaurants. These were tremendously popular and were both a major boost for Pizza Hut and helped boost sales of the film; they were so popular that, when the movie came to home video in '89, the toys came back (for a home video promotion) and two more puppets (Petrie and Sharptooth) were even added to the line.
Missing Episode: The eleven minutes of cut footage that are either languishing in a vault somewhere or have been destroyed.
The original film trailer has a deleted bit from the final scene with Littlefoot saying "now we'll always be together!". This one sticks out to a lot of kids of The '80s, because this clip was also heavily used by Pizza Hut in their cross-promotional commercials for their Land Before Time toys, and these commercials were omnipresent in children's programming in 1988. It's to the point that a lot of people who haven't seen the film in ages may well "remember" that line being in the film.
The trailer has a shot of Ducky making funny faces, then gasping and swimming away as Sharptooth tries to pounce on her. This is a remnant of the original climax, where she distracted Sharptooth to help Petrie.
Another shot showing Littlefoot and Cera crashing into Sharptooth's foot while in a flow of mud. This is from the extended version of Sharptooth's fight with Mother, where Mother used her tail to send mud down a small hill in an attempt to get rid of him.
Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Reportedly the full, uncut version with the Deleted Scenes intact aired in several other markets around the world, but no actual cuts of this have been located. The full uncut version was sent to critics by mistake; Hal Hilson said in his review that the movie was "only 80 minutes long" (which matches up with the film's pre-edits length).
Posthumous Credit: Judith Barsi, who voiced Ducky in the original film, was murdered on July 25, 1988. The film was released nearly four months after her death.
Release Date Change: Originally planned for release in fall, 1987. Production was delayed by a year due to the relocation of Sullivan Bluth Studios to Dublin, Ireland.
Recent evidence suggests that, contrary to what the movie claims, T-rexes were strong swimmers. Of course, it would be hard to swim with a boulder on your chest.
Petrie's inability to fly is ironic as recent evidence suggests pterosaurs could fly from the moment they hatched, unlike most modern birds. Also, given that Pteranodon was a plunge-diver similar to modern pelicans and gannets, he should have been the swimmer instead of Ducky.
Troubled Production: It's a wonder The Land Before Time not only exists but is a wonderful children's film, considering the development was an utter mess. With so many consultants, writers and directors working on-board, Executive Meddling was inevitable. Upon closer analysis and the weird pacing/transitioning of scenes you appreciate the film's story was trying to pull in three directions.
One, the Great Valley being the dinosaur's version of Heaven, which Don Bluth vehemently opposed as it would undermine his next upcoming project, not to mention Steven Spielberg and George Lucas' concerns the original scriptwriters plot would traumatize children. Even so, the finished product after losing over one million dollars in footage still maintains much of the symbolism still debated today.
Two, Don's original vision that Littlefoot's herd would encounter various inequalities and racism from other dinosaurs along their travels. Though this version has Littlefoot (and the viewer) find the Great Valley twice as to his horror realizes the Sharptooth has followed them right there, which Spielberg and Lucas felt diminished the film's climactic score and ending in finding the sanctuary.
And finally three, the theatrical "Old Rooter" cut who serves as narrator from beginning to end since the dinosaurs had no dialog. Ultimately the version we got resulted in several fully animated scenes being cut and sadly not archived, but lost forever before the film's release.
A total of eleven minutes of footage was cut due to Executive Meddling, though Don admitted removing the more horrific scenes contributed to the film's success. Additionally, the film's second half was not as Don originally intended. In the original version, Littlefoot finds the Great Valley after he goes off alone and the others go with Cera. He realizes that he has to go find the others because they won't find it on their own, and goes back after them, finding them in the volcano. The Sharptooth scene then happens and he leads them to the valley. This can be detected in the final film. In the scene where Littlefoot is telling his mother he'll never find the Great Valley because it's too hard, the rock they pushed onto Sharptooth is still there in the foreground; and the scene where he looks over the Great Valley shows him standing alone and is closely followed by a shot of Littlefoot and the others sliding to a stop with Petrie perched on his head.
There is also a deleted scene where the group finds an oasis, but the two groups of dinosaurs who are already there (gray-noses and crown-headsnote the latter species who also appear in the film proper, attacking Cera in the cave) are discriminatory and say that only Ducky can drink. Unlike some of the other removed scenes, this one was never animated, although it does appear in the May 1987 script, as well as in a couple of children's books released alongside the film, "Friends in Need" and "The Land Before Time: The Illustrated Story".
The scene where Sharptooth lands on the back of Littlefoot's mother was originally fully visible, but it was changed to shadow. The scene where Sharptooth is pushed under by the big rock had a scene where Sharptooth was seen looking up to the water, but it was also deemed too scary.
Old Rooter didn't appear in the original script, but was added to soften the blow of the death of Littlefoot's mother. He does appear in the later May 1987 script, however, before most of the other cuts took place.
Littlefoot was originally named "Thunderfoot" until it was discovered that an earlier, unrelated children's book had used that name for a triceratops. Cera was originally named "Bambo" and was male until George Lucas suggested they make her a girl.
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas originally wanted the film to have no dialog, like the Rite of Spring sequence in Fantasia. But to make the film appealing to children, they abandoned this idea, and got actors and actresses to do the voices. note The decision not to have any dialog for Sharptooth and Spike seems to be a testament to that original vision.
Acting for Two: Not only did John Ingle provide the voice of Cera's father in the sequels and the TV series, he was also the narrator for the sequels as well.
"—with Land Before Time, of course it did make money—it made a lot of money. And so all the sequels, they just said, "Let's create a franchise here, let's create something that goes on and on and on." And each one of them have made money, because basically the children who watch it just see the little characters they love and so they're not discerning about whether it looks great or it's a great story or anything."
Franchise Zombie: Starting with The Great Valley Adventure in 1994, there was a new movie released almost every year in December, save for 1999, but returning to normal in 2000 with VII to X until Universal shut down their animation department, and another one much later in 2016, with 14 films total. Bluth only worked on the first film and was ambivalent to the rest of them.
The second, third, and fourth films feature a notable Role Reprise from Candy Hutson, the original voice of Cera, but every other character voiced in the first film was replaced in the second:
Scott McAfee replaces Gabriel Damon as Littlefoot;
John Ingle replaces Burke Byrnes as Cera's dad and Pat Hingle as the narrator.
The fifth film replaced several of the cast members introduced in the second, most of whom would stay for the rest of the series:
Brandon Lacroix replaced Scott McAfee as Littlefoot, while Thomas Dekker provided Lacroix's singing voice. Dekker would take over as the voice of Littlefoot from the sixth film to the ninth, his five-film tenure making him the longest-running Littlefoot in the series.
Anndi McAfee, Scott's older sister, replaces Candy Hutson as Cera;
Miriam Flynn replaces Linda Gary as Littlefoot's grandma;
Chomper had creature vocal effects courtesy of Rob Paulsen in the second film; in the fifth, he could speak, courtesy of child actor Cannon Young.
After Dekker's departure, Littlefoot got a new actor in every film; Alec Medlock in the tenth, Aaron Spann in the eleventh, Nick Price in the twelfth, and brothers Logan and Cody Arens with the singing voice of Anthony Skillman in the thirteenth. Cody might rival Dekker for material, as he and Skillman held onto the role over the course of the TV series.
Camryn Manheim played Tria in the eleventh and twelfth films, but was replaced by Jessica Gee-George for the thirteenth and the TV series.
In the TV series, a number of returning characters from the films had to be replaced:
Chomper became a main cast member, now played by Max Burkholder;
And all one-shot film characters originally voiced by chidren were now played by adult voice actors: Nika Futterman as Ali, Cree Summer as Tippy, and Elizabeth Daily as Shorty.
In the video games, everyone was voiced by Lani Minella.
The Latin Spanish dub of the first movie was done in Los Angeles, while the sequels were all dubbed in Mexico.
Sequel Gap: The second film, The Great Valley Adventure (1994), came out six years after the first.
TV series:
Screwed by the Network: Cartoon Network didn't treat this show very well when it first premiered. First, it aired during a timeslot when most children would be at school. After the premiere of "The Spooky Nighttime Adventure", the show was yanked from the schedule and replaced by an additional re-run of Baby Looney Tunes, which on some days would be pre-empted by a movie (which would often be from The Land Before Time franchise itself). They tried again in January 2008, and the same thing happened, except it was done to make room for The Mr. Men Show.
Short Run in Peru: The series technically originated in America, but Canada showed it first starting in January of 2007, showing each new episode at a steady pace. The United States, on the other hand, aired all of their initial batch of episodes in March of that year (starting the week after the twelfth movie came out, presumably to avoid confusion regarding where characters originating in that movie came from), even airing some of the episodes before they aired in Canada. However, even as Canada continued showing new episodes, the United States didn't air any of the episodes produced after "The Bright Circle Celebration" until nearly six months later, when they aired "The Lonely Journey" and "The Missing Fast-Water Adventure" (both of which, in Canada, had premiered in April); it took until January of 2008 for all of the remaining episodes to finally see the light of day in the United States.
Unfinished Episode: When the show was still airing new episodes, there were two rumored episode titles, "The Sky-Fire Promise" and "The Longneck and the Cobbler", circulating around the internet. Assuming that either or both of these episodes actually existed at some point, no record of them has been found. note The latter title is particularly bizarre, as neither definition of the word "cobbler" (a shoe-maker or a fruity baked dessert) fits particularly well with a cartoon that takes place in prehistoric times. However, it has been theorized that "The Sky-Fire Promise" was the Working Title for "Return to Hanging Rock"; it hasn't been officially confirmed, though.
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