Bikini Bonini
A tall, heavy, robust preteen with a huge head of curly red hair, Bikini gets her name from her wardrobe, which consists entirely of bikini bathing suits. Imagine Bette Midler as a preteen, or Bart Simpson crossed with Rosie O'Donnell...

Buckley Bonini
Bikini's twin brother, Buckley is also twelve years old. Puberty has hit his body, but not his brain. He's a huge, strapping child, destined for greatness on the football field, if not the field of intellect. Hyper-coordinated and naturally graceful, he can do anything physical well, from bowling to ballet...

Rat Bonini
Bikini's younger brother, Rat is ten years old. Shy around humans, he is nevertheless gregarious around animals, and prefers their company (like Dr. Doolittle via Rick Moranis). He also prefers their conversation, since he has the ability to speak to them in a squeaky sort of über-language he learned from Fido, his rat. The last naive Bonini, Rat has a natural conflict between extreme shyness and a scientist's curiosity...

Pee Wee Bonini
The eldest Bonini, Pee Wee is sixteen. However, most of the time, he looks like a two-year-old, down to the (cloth) diapers and kew-pee curls. His looks notwithstanding, Pee Wee has a totally normal teenager's personality: grouchy, touchy and hyper-sensitive. Tricked out in Wayfarers and a leather jacket much of the time, he's like James Dean in diapers...

Meanie Bonini
Like Shirley MacLaine's character in STEEL MAGNOLIAS, Meanie's a cantankerous old bat whom everyone fears. Everyone except her neice, Bikini, that is...

Kate Bigman
A reed-thin, straight-haired, knock-kneed preteen, Kate spends all of her time trying to live up to an ideal of someone else's devising. She also has an ardently romantic streak which lets her give herself over to idealistic missions and fits of purple prose in her dear diary...

Millicent Thornsby
As next-door neighbor to both the Bigmans and the Boninis, busybody Mrs. Thornsby is a source of irritation to both families. Her white "clapboard-style" aluminum siding counterfeit Cape Cod is her pride and joy: she's always redecorating it or adding a prize rose to the garden. She's also a phenomenal, if not very heart-healthy, cook. Like Martha Stewart crossed with the Wicked Witch from SNOW WHITE, she often has trouble keeping her naked ambition covered with a sociable facade...

Queenie
Thornsby has an equally nasty cat named Queenie, a snotty, snobby white Persian not unlike the animal in the old "Fancy Feast" commercials...