When I was a little baby, one of my favorite activities was watching the many videos of the Baby Einstein series. Those videos really captivated me, and gave me a greater appreciation of classical music. However, little did I know when I was little that there have been many, many, many variations of them over the years. So, I thought I'd do something a little different here to commemorate my 25th birthday (which was like a month ago, but still). Gentlemen, I give you...
The Many Versions of Baby Einstein/Language Nursery (1997)
Back in 1996, a suburban Atlanta mother named Julie Clark was dissatisfied with the poor quality of videos aimed at very young children. Her husband was a videographer, and, with the help of six other ladies, each speaking a different language, she released the original Baby Einstein video in early 1997.
First Version
This is the initial version of the video as seen on the first few releases in 1997/98. The video starts with an informative tutorial at the beginning with Julie Clark. She tells parents how to use the video as clips from it are shown, interspersed with footage of her children. Then, the actual video starts as you'd expect, although one big difference right off the bat is that the company is credited as "I Think I Can Productions". This was apparently the name of an English school in Japan that her husband was teaching at
Other things to note about this initial version of the video include a completely different Hebrew narrator than the one I remember, and the scene transitions are kind of awkward and cheesy. But there's a certain charm to this version, especially knowing how popular it went on to become despite these production shortcomings.
This version of the video is seen on the initial 1997 releases by I Think I Can Productions and Gymboree. The original Japanese release of the video is also based on this initial version, albeit with the Hebrew parts redubbed into Chinese.
Second Version
In late 1998, a few changes were made to the video, as, by this point, the sequel, Baby Mozart, had already been released, with a third video on the way.
The biggest difference in this version is that the Hebrew dialogue has been entirely rerecorded by Iris Zinger, replacing Lynne Albertson from the original version. This may just be nostalgia speaking, but I prefer the Zinger version. She sounds more warm and inviting to me. During the scene of the video where the Hebrew alphabet is recited, Albertson sings in her version, with percussion in the background. Zinger's version is a simple recitation with no music, although the falling noise when the blocks are pushed over remains intact.
Some other minor changes were also made. For example, the tutorial is moved to the end of the video, and a "Stay Tuned" screen is now in its place. The scene transitions are redone, and a scene near the end of the video where pictures of vegetables are shown has most of the pictures changed to fruit, with the exception of the peas. Lastly, the color and font of the credits are changed from red and blue to orange and green, which they remain in all future versions.
The video is also now credited to The Baby Einstein Company instead of I Think I Can, as Clark's rights to use that name had run out.
This version of the video is seen on late 1998-early 2000 releases. Starting in early 2000, Family Home Entertainment gained distribution rights to the Baby Einstein series, with parent company Artisan acquiring a stake in the company. As such, early 2000 releases of the video feature the FHE Kids logo.
Third Version
This version of the video is the one that I grew up watching, so it will always be my particular favorite.
Changes in this version include the removal of the tutorial at the end, although the Stay Tuned screen still mentions it. Instead, we get a new tutorial that begins with Clark reading a passage from the Baby Shakespeare book, before she goes over the various products that have been released by this point. Watching this version of the tutorial really takes me back to my childhood.
The new tutorial is also preceded by a screen telling us where we can find info about the various toys seen in the video, as well as listing off the other videos in the series.
This version of the video only appears on the mid-2000 FHE release.
Fourth Version
In late 2000, another big round of changes were made to the video. While no changes were made to the visual content, the audio received a major update.
To coincide with the recently released Language Nursery CD, the German, Spanish, French, and Japanese narrators were all replaced. While the German narrator (Gabriele Rewis) rerecorded all of her dialogue (except for two songs), the other three languages have entirely different narrators. It should be noted that the credits were not changed to mention the new narrators, for some reason.
Another addition to this video was the Toy Chest. Around this time, most of the Baby Einstein videos had an additional segment at the end which featured a slideshow of all the featured toys. These segments were really fascinating to me as a child, as it gave me information on who was responsible for making and selling them.
One final change is that the warning screen at the beginning of the video now has Julie Clark's usual narration that was seen on all the other videos around this time.
It should also be noted that, around this time, the title of the video was changed to "Baby Einstein: Language Nursery", although no change was made to the actual video.
This version of the video is seen on all releases from late 2000-late 2001. It also appears on the first DVD releases.
Fifth Version
In late 2001, Clark sold her company to Disney, which marked the beginning of a new era for the videos.
Starting with this release, all references to Family Home Entertainment are removed and replaced with the Walt Disney Home Entertainment logo. Otherwise, the content of the video is mostly the same as the previous version. This is the last version of the video to have the tutorial and Toy Chest at the end, as those had become special features on the DVDs at this point.
This version of the video appears on all releases from 2002.
Sixth Version
Exactly the same as the previous version, except the Toy Chest and tutorial are no longer featured.
This version of the video appears on all 2003-early 2004 releases.
Seventh Version
In 2004, Disney went back to the videos made before they bought the company and began to change them. All videos from Baby Einstein to Baby Beethoven had some kind of alterations made, but the first few featured the most changes.
There's a lot of differences here, so let's get to it. Firstly, the title of the video was finally changed to Language Nursery, complete with a new intro sequence that no longer matches the music. All of the scene transitions are redone again to look "shinier". The credits are also redone in a thinner font, and the replacement narrators are finally credited.
The biggest change involves the toys. For whatever reason, starting with this release, a lot of the toys have been replaced. For example, the iconic Fisher-Price Rock-a-Stack has been replaced with a similar wooden stacking toy, and the train that reappears throughout the video has been replaced with a smaller one that pulls along freight cars. If I had to guess, I would say that these changes were made for rights issues, and the reason I think that is because both of the featured toys that were made by Fisher-Price (the aforementioned Rock-a-Stack and a musical clock) were replaced. Was there some kind of issue with Fisher-Price that prevented them from using their toys again?
In addition, there was a minor change made with the Spanish counting segment. In all previous versions, it only went up to 10. From here on out, it goes up to 20 like all of the other languages. This results in a rather sloppy extension of the footage.
Probably the worst change in my opinion has to do with the credits. In between the names, we see footage of Julie Clark's young daughter playing peek-a-boo with her parents. In all previous versions of the video, we could hear their voices encouraging her to play. It's a really sweet way to end the video. Starting with the 2004 version, however, there is complete silence. We still see the girl playing peek-a-boo, but no words come out. Just empty, soul-crushing silence. It's actually kind of creepy.
When my little sister was just a baby, and we were experiencing these videos all over again with her, we made the mistake of borrowing the DVD of this version from our local library. We were all shocked, not only by the replacement voices, but by all of the new toys. And the sad thing is that this seems to be the finalized version of the video. No more changes were made after this, and the video was rereleased one last time in 2008 before Disney sold the company in 2013.
This version of the video can be seen on all releases after 2004.
In conclusion, the first video in the Baby Einstein franchise has had a long history of releases and alterations. If I were to pick one version that I would call the definitive version, I would pick the Mid-2000 FHE release. Not just because it's the one I grew up with, but because it perfectly captures what watching these videos was like back in the day.
Next up, I'm going to go over all of the different versions of Baby Mozart, because there's some interesting differences there as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment