"Bonfire of the Talking Vegetables"

"Me, Myself and Bob" By Phil Vischer

"Veggie Tales" was a syrupy, direct-to-video CGI cartoon that was all the rage a few years back. Produced on a shoestring budget by a tiny production company in Chicago, "Veggie Tales" promised to deliver Christian cartoon values to the Pikachu-loving heathen masses.

Creator Phil Vischer was a self-taught CGI geek inspired by MTV and that great spaghetti monster in the sky. "Veggie Tales" immaculate conception seems almost an accident according to Vischer. To his credit, Vischer makes no claim of basso-profundo voices in the sky commanding him to go forth and create a world of talking vegetables. He's sincere without being overbearing about the God stuff. He had a good idea, a pipeline to push it through and the skills to get the job done.

Soon after gaining a foothold in nascent Christian book store market, the veggies became a marketing and licensing phenomenon. Behind the scenes, things were less than kosher. Vischer's production company "Big Idea," became a bloated cash-hungry mess. Packaged-goods financial types filled the executive ranks while the videos were flying off the shelves but the cash coming in was not enough to keep the company afloat - and launch an ambitious feature film. In its heyday, the hype behind "Veggie Tales" seemed a bit too good to be true. Turns out that was probably the case. It's an old story: a modest success combined with much too optimistic expectations turns to disaster when the money-changers get their grubby handprints on something. Too bad for Vischer, he seems like a genuine sort of fellow. (Although he downplays his own role in the demise of "Big Idea" - Vischer was the boss after all - he leaves several nameless key executives bearing the lion's share of the blame.)

Still, the book is a surprisingly good read for anyone interested in making a go with a self-produced media property. Vischer keeps techno-babble to a minimum but still manages to throw in enough specifics about obsolete computer graphics systems to keep things interesting for geeks who weathered the early days - trying to make cartoons on machines designed for medical applications. The religious aspect is pretty obvious and easy to skim for non-believers and to his credit Vischer displays more bewilderment than bitterness at the way things went down. Interestingly, Vischer is forthcoming about the problems of running a Christian-oriented company that might need to hire quite a few non-believers to get things done - and navigating the slippery legal/ethical path that arises when attempting to hire (or not hire) folks based on religious convictions.

After a painful fire-sale auction, the "Veggie Tales" characters ended up in the hands of "Classic Media." "Classic Media" is sort of an intellectual property graveyard that owns or controls an eclectic mix of orphaned cartoon characters like the Lone Ranger, Gerald McBoing-Boing and - in a wry bit of irony - that cute lil' doppelganger of Satan -"Hot Stuff."

www.philvischer.com