Veggie Tales

Speaking of clever children's shows, the early classic episodes of Veggie Tales are groovy. I especially like the "Larry Boy Theme Song" where Larry the cucumber shows up in a turtleneck & says "Dy-no-mite" a la Jimmy Walker. Too funny. Love the hairbrush song: "I gave it to the peach - 'cause he's got hair!"

The newer episodes, the ones where vegetables have invisible hands, are NOT groovy. They're ok, if you can suspend your memory of the earlier episodes, or you can tolerate a case of cognitive dissonance. Remember in "The Toy That Saved Christmas" where Buzz Saw Louie says "Everybody with hands, start tying... uh, that'd be me." Yet, a few episodes down the road, beginning with Dave & the Giant Pickle, invisible hands started showing up. (Showing up - get it?) What's up with that? Did the writers get lazy? The whiners said it was "too hard" to write stories without hands. The stories used to be clever. Now they've lost the magic - the clever cut aways & angles that replaced the need for invisible hands. The company had growing pains and other problems, which Phil Vischer explains in detail here. Unfortunate circumstances and unwise decisions notwithstanding, classic Veggies rule; newer ones drool. Dave & the Giant Pickle was the episode where they jumped the shark.