Our Huge Adventure is the double-length pilot episode of Little Einsteins, being released straight to DVD on August 23, 2005, two months before the show proper would have its TV premiere.
While going out for a fly in Rocket, the Little Einsteins find and befriend a caterpillar, calling him Little Caterpillar. A truck soon arrives to collect the caterpillar, taking him and a group of other caterpillars to the Musical Tree of Many Colors, where they all intend to get brand new outfits. Suddenly, the truck hits a stone in the middle of the road, and Little Caterpillar falls off, and the Little Einsteins have to take it upon themselves to help him get to the tree. They manage to do so after getting through various obstacles, and he is able to undergo metamorphosis and turn into a butterfly along with the other caterpillars.
Soon after that, a mail carrier arrives with invitations to a butterfly family gathering in Angangueo, Mexico. Most of the butterflies receive invitations, and even the team (as well as the viewer) receive them. Butterfly, however, does not get one, and feels sad and left out as a result. Leo asks the mail carrier why this is the case, and it is revealed that he left Butterfly's invitation in one of the other stops he made on his way to the Musical Tree of Many Colors (Niagara Falls, a garden next to the United Nations, a cave in Oklahoma, or a field of cows in Houston, Texas). Now, it is up to the team to find the missing invitation and ensure Butterfly is able to make it to the party.
Was later split into two separate episodes, "A Brand New Outfit" and "The Missing Invitation".
Art featured: ''Wheat Field with Cyprusses" by Vincent van Gogh, "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" by Katsushika Hokusai, "Woman in the Garden" by Claude Monet, and Navajo woven art
Music featured: "Symphony No. 9 (Choral)" by Ludwig van Beethoven
Our Huge Adventure provides examples of:
- Adapted Out: Several scenes big and small were left out of the abridged 42-minute version and the two separate episodes the film got split into:
- The scene at the beginning where the Little Einsteins and Rocket introduce themselves was removed (justifiable in this case, as by the time the two individual episodes had their airdates, viewers would already well and truly know who everyone is), and replaced by the team simply greeting the viewer.
- After saving Little Caterpillar from disappearing under the sea, the team go straight to the Musical Trees of Many Colors, instead of taking a second ride on the Musical Roller Coaster to see where the Green Mountains of Vermont (where the trees are located) are like they do in the original version.
- Instead of going below the edge of Niagara Falls to listen to how loud the waterfall is, the team go straight to the bottom of it to look for the first butterfly mailbox.
- In the original version, after the team arrives in New York City to look for the United Nations, Rocket perches on top of the Statue of Liberty's torch and spins around to give everyone a good view (even going more than a little overboard with the spinning at one point, going fast enough to make the kids dizzy). The 42-minute version and individual episodes remove this scene and have them go straight to the garden where the second mailbox is located.
- The scene where the team follow Butterfly into the Oklahoma cave — the original version has them run into two sets of paths, the first containing a red one and a black one, and the second containing a black one, a white one and a red one, while the abridged version and separate episodes only have them encounter the first set.
- When the kids reach the field of cows in Texas, June asks a cow if she knows where the fourth butterfly mailbox is, and gets no response. The edited version and the episodes do not feature this moment.
- Artistic License – Biology: Little Caterpillar takes a little over half a minute to undergo his metamorphosis and transform into Butterfly (and the same applies to the other caterpillars who make it to the musical trees). In real life, caterpillars spend at least two weeks in their cocoons before they come out as butterflies.
- Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Leo has eleven spikes in his hair instead of five, like he does in the show proper. According to one of the show's animators, Frank Summers, the reason they decreased the number of spikes was because they were too hard to see on the screen, due to the show being shot in SD.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- At the beginning, when Quincy and Leo introduce the featured piece of music (in this case, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony), they are seen on the left- and right-hand sides of the stage respectively, instead of vice versa like in the show proper, and Leo goes straight to crediting Beethoven as the composer instead of waiting until after the snippet of music is over.
- Annie's giggle during the first blast off sequence sounds different from what it sounds like in the main series, and she does not say "Hold on tight, 'cause here we go!" as Rocket blasts off.
- A few examples regarding the Curtain Call sequence:
- The background music occurs twice, one in a small excerpt, when Leo announces the curtain call, and the other in its entirety, when June reintroduces the featured art. The show's first season would have the music occur once in its entirety, when Leo would announce the curtain call and he and the others would take their bows.
- Normally, whenever a guest character would acknowledge the applause in the show proper, they would sing a little passage of music. Here, when Annie reintroduces Butterfly, he just flutters silently without saying anything (though a passage of music would get added in for him in the abridged version and separate episodes).
- After the kids encourage the viewer to clap for themselves, June, Quincy and Annie say, "You were incredible!", "Awesome!" and "Yay!" respectively. When the show's first season began, they would say "Bravo! Bravo!", "You rock!" and "Yay for you!" instead.
- The end credits are longer here than they are at any other point in the series, and present an instrumental version of the entire theme song, rather than doing it just from the modulation onwards like the series proper would do, and Rocket is seen flying past the credits at a few points, something he doesn't do in the main series.
- Establishing Character Moment: The Little Einsteins and Rocket each get one through introducing themselves and demonstrating the things they're good at doing.
- June does a series of ballet moves, Quincy plays a perky little tune on his trumpet, Annie sings "la, la, la" to a tune she made up, and Leo does a few conducting gestures.
- Rocket greets the viewer through a marimba sound, establishing him as a speechless Intelligible Unintelligible, is described by Leo as the team's mode of transport, and is shown to be a very fun flyer through the loop-the-loop he does right before stopping to listen to Little Caterpillar's song from afar.
