Actors on occasion keep props (allowed to or not) from their movies. Chris Hemsworth admittedly smuggled several of Thor’s hammers, while Liam Neeson was gifted a lightsaber from STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE.
1994’s THE LITTLE RASCALS’ Jordan Warkol, who played Froggy, and Blake Collins, who played Woim, also managed to keep some memorabilia from their time on the movie.
Collins, 41, says he has a cabinet of keepsakes from the movie including LITTLE RASCALS-themed popcorn bucket.
“I have Pogs,” Warkol told PEOPLE Magazine. “I do have my cardboard cut out. So we had a whole thing.”
Two things that Warkol kept grew to be a handful — iguanas.
“…I don’t think [my mom] realized it grows to the cage you put it in,” he said. “So they ended up being these 5-foot, 6-foot long-tailed monsters that she eventually just stopped holding because they’d whip her. So I had those for a bunch of years.”
“I remember them in Jordan’s room until we were, I don’t know, probably 10,” added Collins who was 7 at the time of the movie.
Both Collins and Warkol have some both stepped out of the acting world.
Warkol went on to become VP of Business Marketing of OTTera,Inc.
Collins is still in the entertainment business but now behind the scenes, doing camera and electrical work. His credits include ALL AMERICAN and WONDER WOMAN 1984.
By high school, he decided to retire from acting for a normal life, partly to keep his relationship with his mother from strain.
“It was a manager/employee relationship to some degree,” he said. “She was a wonderful mother, but I just kind of wanted even more normalcy going to high school. I wanted to play sports. I wanted to hang out with my friends.”
Taking on normal jobs while still recognized as Woim comes with embarrassing moments, Collins admitted.
“[I]t’s very awkward to be working a cash register at McDonald’s, you’re 15 years old, someone going like, ‘Can I get a number one please? Wait, I know you from somewhere. Were you in THE LITTLE RASCALS?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes.’ And they’re like, ‘Now you work at McDonald’s?’ I’m like, ‘Yes,’’’ Collins recalled.
He uses that anecdote to dispute the myth that child actors are living in luxury — quite the opposite for some, which he says is often due to mismanagement of money by family.
“[We hear], ‘My parents handled it very bad, or stole it, just straight up stole it,’ in some cases,” Collins said. “And then there’s the great stories where like, ‘Oh yeah, I got every dime. And my parents were so proud when they got to give me access to my bank account.’”
This is one of the topics that Collins and Warkol dive into on their “The Not So Little Rascals” podcast where they catch up with fellow former child actors.
“We think people want to hear from the child actors they grew up loving,” Collins said on a video promoting their podcast.
“I also think it’s really important to shed light on what it was like growing up in Hollywood and how it shaped you as an adult,” he continued.
He assured the viewers that they are not “riding the coattails of that one movie they did in the 90’s” as he and Warkol coyly reveal shirts that say “former child superstar” with pictures of their respective RASCALS’ characters on them.
It will be enlightening to hear from former childhood actors of their experiences the good, bad and funny.
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