History Headscratchers / VeggieTales

* Why didn`t those whiny kids in the Toy That Saved Christmas ever think that ''Buzzszaw'' Louie could be dangerous? Nezzer himself says the saw is full functional,and the living Louie opts to have it removed. I thought the whole point of a toy factory was to entertain kids, not turn them into a salad!

** Also from The Toy That Saved Christmas, during the climax, [[spoiler: once our protagonists were freed from being tied up, why didn't they just jump sled instead of racing to tie the ropes back together to lasso a tree? And why didn't Mr. Nezzer jump sled when he saw they were OK?]]

* Is Archibald related to Junior and his family at all? Aside from the obvious fact that they're both asparaguses (asparagi?), whenever Archie and Junior share screentime together, Archie seems to have an almost avuncular relationship with the young sprout (except for Wizard of Ha's, but I refuse to accept that episode as canon). Heck, in Lord of the Beans, Archie plays Junior's uncle. So could they be related?
** I always assumed he was Junior's uncle.

** Great ya buckwheat, thanks for putting THAT into my head.

* Doesn't the ExecutiveMeddling by NBC to make them take the explicit Christian references out of the present-day segments of the TV show sort of defeat the purpose?
** You can still teach lessons about morality without religion.
*** Well, yes, but the show was pretty much about Biblical lessons simplified for kids, right?
*** Not necessarily. This Jewish troper's mother showed troper and her siblings plenty of Veggietales videos, but turned them off before QWERTY could put up a Bible quote. We still got the moral lessons, though.
*** Isn't it kind of hypocritical to say "I don't want the religious bits, but I do want the lessons derived from the biblical teachings" ?
*** No.
*** This Troper is a pagan, but she still likes watching Veggie Tales because she believes in some Christian values ("love thy neighbor" for example.)
*** Really, it depends on what "the purpose" is, and whether that's determined by WordOfGod or the viewer. Phil Vischer would probably say yes, since he made the show to teach explicitly Christian values, Bible verses and all. But if you watch the show for religion-free moral messages (easier with some episodes than others) or simply for entertainment, you probably wouldn't mind NBC's editing.
** Regardless, taking the Christianity out IS still missing the point; the series was created as a CHRISTIAN series, and it feels very lacking without that aspect.
*** [=YMMV=] on that. This troper vastly prefers their recent episodes over the previous ones, mainly due to the series having GrowingTheBeard and becoming an vastly entertaining series.
** It's not right to remove the Christian aspect from [=VeggieTales=]. It would be like someone buying Dora the Explora and removing everytime she speaks Spanish. It's a crutial aspect of the franchize and one of the most important reasons WesternAnimation/VeggieTales was created in the first place. If you don't want Christian morals than don't get involved with [=VeggieTales=]. NBC has enough money to start new projects and hire animators who want to teach religiously moot morals. [=VeggieTales=] is clearly animated in cheaper, maybe even over the counter programs so starting a new program would not be too hard for NBC. Keep [=VeggieTales=] religious because religion was the reason it was made in the first place.

* This troper is rather sad that they've, for the most part, stopped doing videos of Bible stories and have been just doing parodies, because she distinctly remembers WesternAnimation/VeggieTales for it's Bible stories and not so much the parodies, maybe they ran out of stories because they've all be retold in some form or another. Then again the Bible does have R-rated material in it, but never mind
** Agreed, this troper misses the Bible stories. They haven't run out of material (as far as I know, I have not seen a story about Samuel, Adam and Eve, Elijah and Elisha, the days of Moses' leadership in the desert, to name a few), there are a lot of stories in the Bible, but they have to make it appeal to the kids without losing the message. But they have to get the idea green-lighted with the person in charge of the company so they can put money into the project. If the person says "no" to the projected idea, then they have to go back to the drawing board. That could be why they're doing parodies, they may not be allowed to use Bible stories anymore because they (Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki) have no control over the material and what to put in it.
* Why'd they cut the theme song so short? It was AWESOME, and now it's only like one verse of its former self.
** Because little kids don't care about the themesong, and it means the show itself can be that much longer.
*** Every ''person'' I know who likes this show can't help but sing along. The elementary school kids where I go loved the song.
* Why is WesternAnimation/VeggieTales a Christian series anyway? It seems like any other cartoon series, with random Christian references put in.
** You just answered your own question.
** Though to give it a better answer, the creators of the show were church ministers, pastors, or just very involved with their church in general, and their goal was to create a show that DIRECTLY dealt with Bible topics and Christian teachings in the show, as almost all cartoons don't allow this because of free religion. So, it is a Christian cartoon because that's what it was created as. Or used to be, anyway.
** More to the point, they wanted something that would actually be fun to watch. Up until Veggie Tales came around, most children's programming for Christians was abysmally boring and saccharine, not to mention somewhat insulting even to a child's intelligence.
*** Most children's christian entertainment is horrifyingly bad. Go to your local christian bookstore and see how long you can watch most of those things, because they usually treat viewers like morons. Veggietales and the few other good ones are a breath of fresh air to someone like me.
*** As I recall, Big Idea's motto used to be (and may still be) "Sunday morning values, Saturday morning fun."
*** They interestingly enough used a somewhat different version in 2015 after not using one since 2009 saying, "Rooted In Values, Sprouting With Fun!"

* What's with [[TheMovie the movies]]? I didn't know anything of the series for years, and I loved the movies. I was surprised to find out the show as Christian. The movies seem like any other fun kids movie, it's mainstream and so not religious.
** [[SarcasmMode Yeah, the movie about the story of Jonah wasn't at all religious. ]]
** I don't know, I kinda like that they're distancing themselves from Christian stuff, because it shows how far the humor in the series can go if they experiment.
** I was talking mainly about the Pirates movie, and it ''is'' pretty hard to make a Christian cartoon that isn't basically an adaptation of Bible stories or ''extremely'' thick on the Christian theme. They're doing as well as they can, but most episodes don't really have Christian themes referenced to anymore; it's more of a typical problem cartoon rather then a cartoon where you tie these problems to Christian stuff, then air the cartoon.

* So Mr. Nezzer was removed from the series when Dreamworks bought it and was replaced by Ichabeezer. The reason for this is that Dreamworks had a policy that characters could only be voiced by actors of their own ethnicity and Mr. Nezzer was voiced by Phil Vischer doing an imitation of [[WesternAnimation/TheNightmareBeforeChristmas Oogie Boogie]] who was voiced by a black actor. But then why was Mr. Lunt who is a Hispanic character, still voiced by Phil Vischer who is white, kept in the series? Also, if Mr. Nezzer had to be voiced by a black actor, why didn’t they just give him a new voice actor instead of writing him out of the series? After all, he wouldn’t be the only character who got a new voice actor when Dreamworks bought the series.
** Hispanic =/= Latino. Hispanic just means the culture speaks Spanish (including Spain, which is in Europe and is full of white people), whereas Latino means from Latin America (which is most likely what you are thinking of). Mr. Lunt could just be from Spain or from a family from Spain (given that he himself stated he grew up in New Jersey in "His Cheeseburger, the latter is most likely).
** Mr. Nezzer did return when the series (as well as the original designs of the characters) was revived. Only this time, he actually ''was'' played by a black actor: David Mann.
* The creators were forbidden from portraying Jesus as a vegetable in the series, which is why most of the Bible stories are from the Old Testament. In fact, “The Little Drummer Boy” (a remake of the [[WesternAnimation/TheLittleDrummerBoy Rankin/Bass film]]) was almost nixed due to the fact that it involves the nativity; yet ironically, I’ve seen the nativity in merchandise which includes the Baby Jesus (usually portrayed as a carrot). It therefore appears that whoever designed that set was defying the “no veggie Jesus” rule.
** Sadly, Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki seem to have little say in what happens anymore outside of voicing about 80% of the recurring cast. Heck, Phil himself has stepped down from Big Idea studios and has his own studio now. My guess is that set was green lit by one of the newer guys in charge who wasn't privy to the "no veggie Jesus" rule.
** This happened again in a recent Christmas special where a pea plays Baby Jesus in the Christmas show.

* Great buckwheat, thanks for putting THAT into my head.

* If vegetables can't reproduce and don't have sex organs, then how do they have kids in the first place?*Great buckwheat, thanks for putting THAT into my head.

* If vegetables can't reproduce and don't have sex organs, then how do they have kids in the first place?
----*Great buckwheat, thanks for putting THAT into my head.

** The kids are probably too naive to know any better, and the goal of Nezzer's toy factory at least is quite clearly to make money. Up until his HeelFaceTurn, he wouldn't have given a shit if some dumb kid got hurt by his toys, especially since he was willing to outright kill Junior and his friends to prevent his marketing ploy from falling through.

----

* Why do the characters need to eat if they're food themselves? Many episodes show them as having the biological need to satisfy hunger, which may not sound too bad [[RuleOfFunny considering that it's a cartoon]], but it verges on cannibalism once you hear the lyric "'''Tomato''' sauce and cheese so gooey" in the "Pizza Angel" song you'll realize how disturbing it becomes in context, because it verges on cannibalism, especially if Larry were to share some of that pizza with Bob... Could it possibly be that the non-produce food items have no sentience and are thus immune to harm by the talking fruits and veggies?

* Why do the characters need to eat if they're food themselves? Many episodes show them as having the biological need to satisfy hunger, which may not sound too bad [[RuleOfFunny considering that it's a cartoon]], but it verges on cannibalism once you hear the lyric "'''Tomato''' sauce and cheese so gooey" in the "Pizza Angel" you'll realize how disturbing it becomes in context, because it verges on cannibalism, especially if Larry were to share some of that pizza with Bob... Could it possibly be that the non-produce food items have no sentience and are thus immune to harm by the talking fruits and veggies?

*** [=YMMV=] on that. This troper vastly prefers their recent episodes over the previous ones, mainly due to the series having GrownTheBeard and becoming an vastly entertaining series.

*** [=YMMV=] on that. This troper vastly prefers their recent episodes over the previous ones, mainly due to the series having GrownTheBeard and becoming an vastly entertaining, EarWorm fueled, series.

*** Every ''person'' I know who likes this show thinks of it as an EarWorm and can't help but sing along. The elementary school kids where I go loved the song.

* The creators were forbidden from portraying Jesus as a vegetable in the series, which is why most of the Bible stories are from the Old Testament. In fact, “The Little Drummer Boy” (a remake of the Rankin/Bass film) was almost nixed due to the fact that it involves the nativity; yet ironically, I’ve seen the nativity in merchandise which includes the Baby Jesus (usually portrayed as a carrot). It therefore appears that whoever designed that set was defying the “no veggie Jesus” rule.

* In the ''Lyle the Kindly Viking'' episode, the French Peas bring Archibald "Omelet" because they couldn't find ''{{Hamlet}}''... which, being a literary classic as it is, is available in pretty much every bookstore everywhere. They might be peas, but ''still''...

** On that note, what does ''{{Hamlet}}'' have to do with sharing, the topic of this particular episode?

* Why didn`t those whiny kids in the Toy That Saved Christmas ever think that ''Buzzszaw'' Louie could be dangerous? Nezzer himself says the saw is full functional,and the living Louie opts to have it removed. I thought the whole point of a tpy factory was to entertain kids, not turn them into a salad!

* So Mr. Nezzer was removed from the series when Dreamworks bought it and was replaced by Ichabeezer. The reason for this is that Dreamworks had a policy that characters could only be voiced by actors of their own ethnicity and Mr. Nezzer was voiced by Phil Vischer doing an imitation of [[WesternAnimation/TheNightmareBeforeChristmas Oogie Boogie]] who was voiced by a black actor. But then why was Mr. Lunt who is a Hispanic character, still voiced by Phil Vischer who is white, kept in the series? Also, why didn’t they just give Mr. Nezzer a new voice actor instead of writing him out of the series? After all, he wouldn’t be the only character who got a new voice actor when Dreamworks bought the series.