It takes a while for Tiny to grow on you and little wonder: he's usually out of the action, doesn't call attention to himself, isn't handsome (though he isn't bad looking either), speaks in a manner that suggests 'country bumpkin' and overeats.

Watch on. He may be laid back, but he takes his work seriously. As he points out, the members of G-Force are like five fingers on a hand -- you need all of them working for the whole to function (ep 90). In an early episode, when Anderson was hesitant to send them on a potentially dangerous mission, he's the one who points out that they're the ones who've offered to do this (ep 7). One of the things I loved best about the way ep. 26 was handled is the way he accepted that what he'd done was wrong and insisted on getting what discipline was due him instead of throwing a temper tantrum and stomping off. That's responsibility.

He shows himself to be a surprisingly well-read person and one who can come up with pretty good insights into how to solve problems, like how to defeat a mecha without using bird missiles in ep 35. When Anderson is at a loss for why a loyal scientist would suddenly defect to Spectra, he was the person who pointed out that the key to the scientist's strange behaviour would most likely be found in his private life (ep 79).

He's a very decent fighter when he gets the chance -- he knows his strength and uses it. His most noted skill is piloting the Phoenix (having to stay with the craft when he could be bashing goons is one of his perennial disappointments) and can do very decent field repairs when he has to. [1] This is the only person who can shoot and fly the Phoenix comfortably. He usually doesn't do that, but when Tiny wants the Bird Missiles, Tiny *gets* the Bird Missiles, no contest.

Socially, Tiny gets along with most people. He's a little on the bashful side when it comes to actually talking to girls (admiring them from a distance, well, it's a guy thing [2]), but he's thoroughly pleasant.
Tiny too is an orphan, having guardians who knew his parents well (see ep.75), which may go some way to explaining how Anderson came to get his hands on him since some guardians would be only too happy to place a kid and feel their duty to be done so long as they got to see him now and then. They've a fair idea of what he does, though it's unlikely that they know the half of it. Nevertheless, he keeps up a close and unacrimonious relationship with them, which is niceness points in his favour as far as I'm concerned. While we don't see him go fishing, he does appear to have quite a knowledge of fishing (ep 26) and does live on a jetty (all the better to fall in the water!). Off-duty, his personal vehicle appears to be a van of unreliable temperament (ep 42).

His humour may be at his own expense at times, especially when he jokes about his eating (he jokes about other things too), but he never puts himself down and has very little use for self-pity, barring the time when his guardian was lost at sea and feared drowned and he is overcome with self-recrimination for not having been available through having inadvertently switched off his bracelet [3]. Not a pushover -- he doesn't sweat the small stuff (like the way the others tease him about his weight), but he is utterly unimpressed by any tantrums that Mark or Jason may throw -- and he can be blunt when speaking his mind about their behaviour: "...that's the first intelligent thing you've said all day, Jason." (ep 62)

Tiny may not be a stupid person, but he is a simple one. In particular, Tiny is a person in touch with his feelings, being the most spontaneous character on the G-Force team with the possible exception of Keyop (who as a kid can be excused). He has neither Jason's distrust of emotions nor has he turned self-deprivation into a virtue as Mark has. He doesn't need to run round the world to try and find meaning in it, as Princess has on occasion. If he is moved to pity, he helps. If he's angered, watch out. If something is beautiful, he admires it. He eats when he's hungry, sleeps when he's bored or tired. If he's missed his folks, he asks for time off and goes visit. His direct approach to life does get him into embarrassing situations at times, but along with a very sound moral compass, it means he gets through life without unnecessary emotional baggage. It's not that he's unaware of the complexities of life, it's just that he keeps his feet on the ground and doesn't make life out to be more complicated than it has to be.

Idle speculation...

Writing this up made me wonder about the perception of fatness in the West. We know about the sumo tradition in Japan, but this is the other side of the Pacific. And truly here, the perception of fat people can be very negative and people can be inexcusably rude about it [4]. It's interesting too to note that there *are* fit people whose ideal weights are well above what's socially acceptable [5].
Since Galaxy Security is unlikely to put up with a person who is unfit, let alone provide them with the means of worsening it, I'll surmise that first, this is the weight he's healthiest at and note that second, he's rather thin given the amount he eats. Then I note that even for a growing (ha!) kid, Keyop also packs away a lot of food -- and wonder if being in G-Force also means that you need a lot more food than the average person (pretty easy to see; mountain-climbers for example need up to 8000 calories a day to keep going). But this is speculation, don't mind me. :)

Anyway to round off, I'll just say that for a character worked with so little, he's an absolute peach: a very well-balanced person all said and done. It's a million pities that BotP never got to the Gatch II material, which would have really brought his character to the fore.

But that's another can of worms...

Notes:

[1] I suspect that the demands of keeping the Phoenix in full trim (and testing it out after any repairs or modifications) must mean that he spends more time on Center Neptune than anyone else on the Team.

[2] Then again, who can forget the episode [ep. 86, Super Space Spies] in which the woman he was ogling turned out to be Zoltar? That was classic -- he looked sick when he found out.

[3] Note the contrast that makes with Mark's admission that he switches off his communicator whenever he feels like it, never mind the consequences.

[4] And G-Force is no exception to this sad trend. Then again, they're all mean or discourteous (how many times do you hear one of them say please or thank you?) to each other at least some of the time. Fortunately, what they have together runs deeper than mere social politeness.

[5] I received my personal lesson on that point when one of my college friends (who is fat by any definition of the term) chose to run to the mall rather than try to squeeze onto the very full bus. It's a three mile journey and he was waiting for us when we got there. Granted, the bus takes a circuitous route, but still...