Veggie Tales

[ElijahsMama807]

My son has never watched the Veggie Tales stuff, but I'd image he'd get a kick out of it :)

We do have a couple of Life At The Pond CDs that he listens to while he's playing..he likes those quite a bit. I don't think he understands the mentions of Jesus and the scriptures yet..I think he just likes hearing stories about a frog, an alligator, a duck, and a turtle.

[Trynn]

I love Veggie Tales! They're Christian but not in-your-face about it and they definitely aren't fundie. As someone else noted above, some of the fundies actually don't like them. The explanation I've heard is that it's because they don't take faith seriously enough.

Sheesh...if you gave me a choice between this and Elsie Dinsmore, "Where is my hairbrush?" would totally win every time. :D

Elsie Dimwit isn't even in the same CATEGORY as Veggie Tales.

I grew up Christian, watching veggie tales in (christian) school mostly. It's mostly good values, and even when they do tell bible stories, it's just bible stories, without inserting anything too icky. And it might not be bad for your kids to at least have a basic knowledge of some of those bible stories. (If nothing else, they'll come in handy in trivia games.)

When watching it as a child I was never ever ever EVER given the impression that males were superior, that girls should be modest, or that parents should spank.

That said, I do not like the newer episodes much: I think they're too dumb.

I also think it's ironic that VEGGIE tales' main characters, Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber, are both fruits, not vegetables.

I also do not think they have an eggplant?

[clibbyjo]

I found them too Christian,preachy and very "God loves you and wants you to do this..." . I didn;t know what they were at first and my oldest saw a few but never got into them.This was at least 10 years ago, so maybe we only saw the really Christian ones? I don't like children's shows which have a specific religious message and they are definately Christian.

[kaetrin]

But how can you not love something that rhymes "throw him out of Babylon" with "a table to play Scrabble on"?

[Rachel333]

My parents thought they were dumb and had too many jokes aimed at adults who had to watch with the kids (for some reason this was a big thing with my parents--they thought children's entertainment should be for children only), but I still ended up watching a lot of them anyway.

At least in the beginning they were pretty specifically Christian. It's not like it was just some show that sneaked in Christian messages, they were upfront about it being a Christian series. I think that's okay, and they were cute and not heavy-handed, considering. I guess now it's more of a generic cartoon. I haven't seen any recent ones.

[jenny_islander]

We check them out at our public library. My kids love the one about the Rumor Weed. The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything is witty and does a lot with its very simple animation style, but every song is an ear worm!

[let-them-eat-cake]

I pretty much grew up on Veggie Tales. They started out as religious but when they were bought out, the Christian stuff was completely taken out of the episodes so they could air them on national television without backlash. I'm sure you can find the "secular" versions somewhere.

I still like Veggie Tales.

[Letgo]

I love Veggie Tales! Now I am going to have to go around singing in a high pitched voice all day.

[HowRude]

Veggies Tales is a great show not trying to convert anyone.

[emmiedahl]

I ditto the really liking them. I avoid the ones that are overtly Christian. A lot are Jew-friendly, with OT stories and general morality lessons. If I were an atheist I would not want to let my kids watch them because there is *some* religion.

I love the Silly Songs. The Cebu Song is amazing.

[Petunia117]

Pretty harmless.

There's a "real" movie (as in, was released in the theaters as a mainstream movie) w/ the pirates who don't do anything. My kids like it. The sing along DVDs are also less Jesus-y.

[Rosa]

We went to The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything in the theater when my son was...3? He found the pirate-eating cheese curls terrifying. I think the Veggietales are cute, but I don't choose them myself (I like the Dragontales songs better, same "values" stuff, no God, anyway.)

My problem is that he's still young enough he can't really tell reality from fairy tales, so the way they treat the Christian God as real and universal causes some conversations about why people believe in things nobody else can see, how the "God" they're talking about isn't the only one, etc, and then he goes and shares that with his grandma who is very, very proselytizing ("Well Christians think that but not everyone believes that, Grandma" = sobbing grandma on the phone, what a pain in the ass.)

And the whole "it's not fair" thing - it's not like it's actually possible to keep your kid away from all Christian crap in the world. They advertise everywhere and proselytize on street corners and at least where I live there's a big church luring the kids with a bouncy castle party every weekend all summer. That doesn't mean you have to volunteer the kid up for brainwashing.

[margiebargie]

We have a couple of Veggietales dvds, but my kid is exposed to so much Christian stuff already I try to de-emphasize them. (Dad takes her to church. Inlaws are religious.) I try to steer her toward sciencey stuff. I want to prepare her to think critically and make her own decisions. Inundating her with more Christian goop definitely won't help with that. I suppose the Veggietales are mostly harmless though. For me, it's more of a balance thing.

Plus that hairbrush song...ugh...

[MrsKay]

I'm Pagan... and have to admit that I find VT to be pretty cute! The videos I've seen haven't had any Jesus preaching, and I have no issues with the mention of God; they mostly seem to be about morals, being nice, etc. And I LOVE Lord of the Bean lol!