2. Veggies for Sale (What Was VeggieTales?)
To make a show, Phil would also need to build a business. Building that business would mean making some compromises.
Understanding the business of VeggieTales is not incidental to understanding its relationship to evangelicalism. Choosing consumer media as your means to evangelize means submitting to the rules and metrics by which consumer media is successful. Because the success of consumer media is quantifiable and financial, those who use consumer media as a means to evangelize often conflate the health and integrity of the ministry with the health and integrity of the business. This portion of the analysis is interested in the business of VeggieTales but not as an indicator of its vitality. By following the money, you can follow the decisions and compromises made to get it.
It is worth acknowledging that VeggieTales itself is a product of the VCR. Nearly every other children’s media franchise gained its popularity by first being on TV networks. VCR ownership exploded from less than 5% of American homes to more than 70% during the 1980s. Especially in a pre-Internet world, VCRs represented a quantum leap in consumer choice over what to watch which was followed closely by a market response in what was available. Being able to sell units of content to consumers more individually and directly allowed producers, distributors, and advertisers new access to niche audiences — like those who may have wanted an evangelical Christian children’s cartoon.
The first VeggieTales video was completed by Big Idea Productions in 1993 with no contract with a distributor and roughly 500 copies were sold directly to consumers. After securing a distribution deal with Christian entertainment distributor Word Entertainment in the summer of 1994, 50,000 copies of the first two episodes were shipped to 750 exclusively Christian bookstores. Christian bookstores were once as robust as they were exclusive. For example, LifeWay Christian Stores were operated by the Southern Baptist Convention. Family Christian Stores — the former largest Christian retailer in the country — was part of Zondervan, a founding member of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. These stores could give you direct access to targeted demographics, but making content that offends their theological or cultural sensibilities would be detrimental to your bottom line. Just ask Jen Hatmaker, Rob Bell, or Sho Bakara.
The doctrinal non-specificity of VeggieTales was a product of many influences. Not only did they need to sell videos, but they would need to be produced and sold with the help of both denominationally-diverse Christians and non-Christians as the company grew. Even before both of those considerations, Vischer thought vegetables getting too specific about salvation or Christology would be irreverent and inappropriate. As identified by researcher Hillary Warren, the show features unmistakable hallmarks of evangelical Christianity including “the inerrancy of Scripture, the importance of personal conversion, and the necessity of evangelism” (Warren 109). However, VeggieTales ultimately presents a version of evangelical Christianity devoid of Jesus. Any explicit theological inclusions were minimal and subtextual; these were primarily videos for the purpose of moral education. “Love your neighbor.” “Don’t tell lies.” “ Who would be offended by things like that?
Interestingly, the possibility of offense would haunt Big Idea for years to come. Less than six months after the Christian bookstore launch, children’s media distributor GoodTimes offered to place VeggieTales in 6,000 stores across the country — eight times as many stores as they were in already. However, their condition was that they remove any Bible verses or references to God. Vischer refused.
While reviewers from national publications raved and sales continued to improve, 1998 saw VeggieTales break into mainstream retailers including Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco without sacrificing their references to Christianity. Business boomed as the series topped children’s video sales charts for 21 consecutive weeks in 1998
Especially once it was in the mass market, Big Idea’s most effective and consistent marketing appeal became — not that VeggieTales was a Christian series — but how it compared to other children’s shows that were amoral at best and immoral at worst. Read below a 1999 message from Phil Vischer.
Engendering and capitalizing upon fear of your competitors is always an effective way to market yourself. However, it can be easy to become morally complacent when your brand (or ministry, for that matter) is constructed around notions of inherent superiority.
Like every children’s franchise with which VeggieTales was competing, licensing characters for merchandise was essential. It didn’t just further fulfill Vischer’s vision of becoming a Walt Disney-figure who created characters that could be found and enjoyed in many forms, but it brought in much-needed money during financially vulnerable years.
“Did I want to release all of these products? Did every last bit of it have a compelling ministry objective? Did it all fit into my ‘master plan’ to benefit America’s kids? Frankly no… the sheer volume was not driven by mission, but by a desperate need to keep Big Idea from collapsing” (Vischer 184).
It’s not hard to see how Vischer’s time at Big Idea is characteristic of so many prominent evangelical ministries. Vischer was thrilled by the possibilities of capitalism, enabled by new technology, and accelerated by effective marketing. However, his vision for what VeggieTales could be was limited by pluralism in the workplace and the need to make Christianity palatable to huge markets where Big Idea needed to prove itself time after time under threat of collapse.
But none of that affected the kids, right?
