The Veggies Are Coming!

Since its inception in 1993, VeggieTales has sold 40 million videotapes and DVDs to nearly 10 million American households.

For generations, kids and vegetables have been on adversarial terms. Broccoli—forget it. Cauliflower—no can do. Squash—oh my gosh.

But the way kids think about things from the garden is changing, thanks to a talking, singing odd couple of computer-generated characters named Bob and Larry.

Bob is a tomato and Larry is a cucumber. And they’re superstars in the tossed-salad world of VeggieTales, a wildly successful series of videos, games, books, toys and even a feature-length theatrical movie that has captured the affection of kids across the nation.

Since its inception in 1993, VeggieTales has sold 40 million videotapes and DVDs to nearly 10 million American households. Kids go crazy for Veggie T-shirts, sweatshirts, card games, board games, jigsaw puzzles, play sets, plush toys, karaoke cassette players, hand puppets, modeling clay, valentines and huggable pillows designed like the characters.

The newest VeggieTales production, a 50-minute VHS/DVD called Lord of the Beans, will hit stores Oct. 29. A parody parable of the movie Lord of the Rings, Beans will be VeggieTale’s 27th episode. Country superstar Wynonna Judd loved the story so much that she recorded a song, It’s About Love, for the soundtrack.

All that makes Bob one hot tomato and Larry one very cool cuke.

One of the keys to the runaway success of VeggieTales is that the series is built on general, mainstream Christian values that cut across denominations, cultural backgrounds and geographic roots to appeal to a wide spectrum of kids—and their parents, who have embraced it as a "safe" entertainment choice for their children. It’s found a niche not only in homes, but also in churches and as part of Christian preschool and early-elementary curriculums.

Bob, Larry and a central cast of other regularly recurring characters from the produce bin present plotlines and musical numbers that teach youngsters not to lie, to be compassionate, that greed isn’t good and that everyone is special—because God loves them. Often VeggieTales episodes rework well-known Bible stories (such as Jonah and the whale, Joseph and his coat of many colors, or David and Goliath) into a vegetarian variety-show Sunday school lesson.

"God made you special and He loves you very much," says Terry Pefanis, chief operating officer of Big Idea, the company based in Franklin, Tenn. (pop. 41,842), that produces VeggieTales. "That’s what we want kids to know."

This simple spiritual message—and programming recipe—have taken VeggieTales over the past decade from a bare-bones, one-computer operation to a full-blown production empire with a team of writers, directors and more than 50 animators.

VeggieTales’ roots

The series and its characters have their roots in the longtime friendship of its two main writers and co-creators, Mike Nawrocki and Phil Vischer, who met as students at Crown College in St. Bonifacius, Minn. (pop. 2,221), back in the 1980s. Every time the VeggieTales characters speak or sing, you’re hearing their voices: Vischer is Bob the Tomato, and Nawrocki is the Larry the Cucumber.

After college, the two pals ended up working for the same video production company in Chicago. The field of computer animation still was in its infancy—it would be several years before the movie Toy Story introduced the format to the mainstream—but the potential of this exciting new digital animation technique led Nawrocki and Vischer to an idea.

What was missing in the popular culture at the time, they agreed, was quality children’s programming that demonstrated high moral values, inventive storylines and memorable, role-model characters. They wanted to bring the Bible lessons they’d both learned as children in Sunday school to life in a new, creative way.

"We really felt like there was a need to tell stories that had a biblical world view," Nawrocki says. "The stuff that was out there for kids was either too sarcastic or too dark. We wanted to create something that was truly entertaining, but also had the ability to be a resource for parents."

Enter the vegetables.

"The reason for vegetables was really pragmatic," Nawrocki recalls. "The state of the art at the time was very limited for what you could do on a computer. We just needed simple characters: no arms, no legs, no clothes."

They based the central characters of Bob and Larry somewhat on their own personalities, drawing comic inspiration from classic duos like Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, even Archie and Edith Bunker. Bob, the tomato, is more serious—the straight man, in comedy terms. Cucumber Larry, on the other hand, is sillier and much less sensible.

"We wanted to make Bob and Larry normal, everyday guys," Nawrocki says. "’Bob’ and ‘Larry’ are kind of your everyday guy names. And tomatoes and cucumbers are probably two of the most common vegetables. And they’re complementary to each other, too. Bob is short and round and red; Larry is tall and lean and green. They just looked good standing together."

Working out of an extra bedroom in Vischer’s house and tag-teaming on a single computer, the two collaborators embarked on what would become the first VeggieTales video. It was called Where’s God When I’m Scared, and it was marketed through ads they purchased in several parenting magazines.

The first VeggieTales offering wasn’t exactly a huge success. Released just before Christmas 1993, it sold about 500 copies, making much less than the $70,000 it had cost to produce.

But the seeds had been planted. As the pair cranked out other episodes, scraping together financing as they went, word-of-mouth drove sales and started building a buzz. Christian bookstores began carrying VeggieTales and eventually the products were distributed through retail giants such as Target, WalMart and Blockbuster. What started as two guys huddled over a single computer grew into a major enterprise with more than 200 employees.

In 2004, the company founded by the two original partners was purchased by a huge conglomerate, Classic Media, which moved the VeggieTales offices from Chicago to Franklin, Tenn., just south of Nashville. Nawrocki relocated to the Nashville area as a director and staff writer; Vischer stayed behind in Chicago to continue his VeggieTales input as a freelancer, but both men remain integral to the creative core of the franchise.

Humor for all ages

Through the massive growth and evolution over the past 10 years, one thing about Veggie-Tales hasn’t changed. "We always want to make sure each VeggieTales lesson is clear to a 4 year old," Nawrocki says.

The series always has targeted basic, broad Christian concepts and steered clear of controversy or other divisive topics. "A 4 year old isn’t interested in whether baptism should be by immersion or sprinkling," Vischer says. "It’s just not in their world view. They want to know: Is God loving? And there’s no strain of Christianity that doesn’t believe that God is loving."

VeggieTales delivers that message with a keen edge of wit that often surprises and delights parents, who frequently find themselves laughing along with their kids. Nawrocki and Vischer, both 37, admit that their shared childhood love of Saturday morning cartoons and Sesame Street, and later the British comedy troupe Monty Python and the offbeat radio show Dr. Demento, always have been big influences on VeggieTales. Skits and musical numbers parody Gilligan’s Island, Forrest Gump, Batman, Star Trek and even the French opera Madame Bovary.

Gunsmoke and Bonanza puns abound in The Ballad of Little Jo, a VeggieTales video from 2003, which retells the Old Testament story of Joseph as a cowboy Western—with talking, singing vegetables, of course, in all the roles.

"I’ve always loved parody," Nawrocki says. "Sometimes more than the real thing."

"I’ve had some people ask, ‘Why did you make them fun for grownups, too?’" Vischer says. "It’s because we write to make ourselves laugh."

"Really, God is the creator of everything, so He’s the creator of humor," Nawrocki adds. "It’s something that God can definitely use to reach people."

And in VeggieTales, the reaching is done by characters who don’t, in fact, have any arms—a short, stubby tomato, a lanky, loony cucumber, and a cast of other vegetables that kids have come to love, if still not exactly love to chew.

"My daughter is crazy about VeggieTales," says Meredith Siler, a Nashville mom. "But she still won’t eat asparagus."

Neil Pond is American Profile's Entertainment Editor.

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