Rolie Polie Olie for me has always been a combination of several things. It’s like “Leave It to Beaver” with robots and a little bit of Mickey Mouse. Early Mickey Mouse is very, very simple and he’s kind of mischievous too — but with a really good heart. So I wanted to do that same sort of thing. I wanted to do this blue skies and perfect days and robots and to do a show where you got to like do stuff you can’t do in real life. You know, create this world that’s very much like our world — sort of a 1950’s suburban world which probably isn’t really like our world — but this idealized 1950’s picket fence world. But it’s completely metallic and friendly.
So if you’re a robot and you’re living on this planet, you can do things that you can’t do in real life — things that you wished you could do: like fly; like have a car that flies; like have furniture that is alive. When I was a little kid, I kind of perceived everything as having a life of its own. You know, chairs and furniture and stuff. I take that in Rolie Polie Olie and exaggerate it. Even their forks and spoons are alive and can help out. Their toys are alive and can sometimes come to their aid, or get lost and Olie has to find them. They go to other planets. They go to the ice cream planet. I mean, it’s made entirely of ice cream! You go sledding on ice cream slopes and you can just reach down and eat whatever’s there. That’s not every kid’s dream, but certainly a dream that you can sometimes have — or, wouldn’t it be cool if. I guess Rolie Polie Olie is a show entirely made up of “wouldn’t it be cool if.”
