Brad Bird didn't participate in making the show because he believed the premise would not work as a weekly television series.
The series was scheduled to debut on March 20, 1991 (and it was heavily promoted during the February 1991 broadcast of the Grammy Awards), but animation wasn't completed in time for this premiere. Various other production problems plagued the show, ultimately pushing back its debut until 1993.
The network ordered 13 episodes of the show, plus an additional 5 scripts were written. 10 episodes were finished and sent back from the animation house in Taiwan but producers were dissatisfied with the results, so they halted production on the final three episodes and outsourced the ten episodes to Canada's Nelvana animation studio for "fixes and completions."
Frederick Coffin was originally cast as the voice of Skip Binsford. After animation was completed on the first three episodes, Steven Spielberg decided to replace him with Martin Mull.