Veggie Tales - History

History

VeggieTales was created by Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki through their company Big Idea Productions. Their aim was to produce children's videos which conveyed Christian moral themes and taught Biblical values and lessons. The animated feature involved stories told by a group of recurring vegetable characters who lived on a kitchen countertop. The program was offered in the direct-to-video market, with the first 30-minute program, Where's God When I'm S-Scared?, released in July 1993. In all, Big Idea has released 45 VeggieTales episodes including three Silly Song collections, 5 holiday specials, 4 LarryBoy episodes and a drawing tutorial. In addition to these episodes, there are 13 compilations that combine previously released material, and two feature length movies, Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie and The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie.

From 2006-2010, the VeggieTales videos were adapted as a regular television program airing on Qubo, Ion Television, and NBC. On September 30, 2008, Big Idea said that Mike Nawrocki would create an "original new VeggieTales TV series," though no further news has been revealed. In 2012, the series resurfaced on Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) and it's children's channel Smile of a Child on Saturday afternoons.

The idea for VeggieTales came in the early 90's when Phil Vischer was testing out animation software as a medium for children's videos. Due to the limitations of the software available to him, he chose to avoid the technical production hurdle of creating characters with arms, legs, or hair. His first animation model on the software was an anthropomorphic candy bar, but after his wife suggested that parents might not want to show their children videos with a candy hero, he instead chose to use fruits and vegetables, their polar opposite.