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Vegetables with values
By John Benson
Faith meets fun in popular children’s television series VeggieTales, which has been airing for nearly 20 years.
Now, characters Bob, Larry and friends are touring the country in the all-new VeggieTales Live! God Made You Special Tour, which comes to Greenford Christian Church in Greenford on Saturday.
“The core of this one is God made you special, and he loves you very much,” said VeggieTales co- creator Mike Nawrocki, calling from outside of Nashville. “The story itself takes place at the Silly Song Warehouse, where Larry stores all of his silly songs, and one of his songs has gone missing. And that’s a big mystery.
“Veggies are looking for it, and there are a number of human characters, too. It’s just a lot of fun. The show is a different experience from watching it on TV. It’s just so neat to see the kids’ reactions when Larry comes out. He’s 8 feet, tall and Bob is 6 feet tall.”
For those unfamiliar with VeggieTales, Larry is a cucumber, and Bob a tomato. Along with their friends, they live on a countertop and have adventures, which are often biblical in nature.
As for picking out those veggies to be the lead characters, Nawrocki said fresh produce wasn’t always the goal.
“Early on, [co-creator] Phil [Vischer] was modeling a candy bar on his computer, and Phil’s wife walked by and said, ‘If you’re going to tell stories with good values for kids, moms would probably not appreciate that coming out of a candy bar,’” Nawrocki said. “So vegetable was the next thing that Phil thought of and modeled Larry. What we wanted to do with Bob and Larry is make them common. Cucumbers and tomatoes are the most common vegetables and are also very complementary in terms of color. We also wanted to give them very ordinary names. Bob and Larry sound like something you’d see on a name tag of a plumber.”
The show began in 1993 as the first computer animated series. It actually came out a year earlier than “Toy Story,” which is the first animated feature film.
For the preschool set, VeggieTales are as ubiquitous as Elmo and Dora. At the end of the last decade the series was NBC’s No. 1 rated Saturday morning show.
Today VeggieTales continue on with three DVD releases a year, as well as the current live show, which includes silly songs such as “His Cheeseburger,” “Love My Lips,” “The Hairbrush Song” and more.
“I just hope families come away having had a really good time singing and dancing,” Nawrocki said.
“We encourage kids to dance in their seats and dance in the aisles and just have had a good time with Bob and Larry. They’ll also be reminded of the core lesson of VeggieTales, which is God made you special. That’s what we’re really hoping for.”