Baby Einstein - Baby Van Gogh

The Baby Einstein company, founded by Julie Aigner-Clark, focuses its attention on creating attention-grabbing video and educational products for young toddlers and infants. My first two reviews of their products, Baby Mozart (See: http://www.epinions.com/content_38732598916) and Baby Bach (See: http://www.epinions.com/content_41185611396) brought the world of classical music, specially orchestrated for smaller ears, to its younger audience. This music, in combination with colorful objects such as puppets, simplistic toys, lava lamps, wave machines, spinning tops, etc. really captured the attention of my daughter who has been watching these videos for several months now (She's 15 months as of this writing).

Where are the two aforementioned videos dealt primarily with classical music, Baby Van Gogh, as the title suggests, deals with art and colors. The format, however, is basically the same - art and colors with a backdrop of classical music. But there are some differences with Baby Van Gogh that make it delightfully different and entertaining.

First, unlike the previous two videos, Baby Van Gogh actually has a main character - or star if you will. He's a blue goat-shaped hand puppet called Vincent Van Goat. A pretty good likeness too if you discount the fact that this version has both of his ears :)

The premise of the video and Van Goat's interaction with it is simple and elegant and very entertaining. Six colors are highlighted here - red, yellow, blue, orange, green and purple. Each color is introduced on the screen and spoken by Ms. Clark. She then proceeds to recite a short, Seuss-like poem related to the color. Then it's Van Goat's turn. He comes on screen and begins to 'paint' one of Van Gogh's classic paintings. For instance, he paints Fishing Boats on the Beach for the color red, Wheat Fields with Reaper for yellow, Starry Night for blue, Sun Flowers for orange, Lane in the Public Garden at Arles for green and Orchard in Blossom with View of Arles for purple.

In between the paintings are breaks with children playing with various objects related to the specific colors, and of course there are other highlighted objects, toys and puppets also linked to the color. Behind all of this colorful imagery is classical music - such as William Tell's Overture, Blue Danube, Bolero and Brahm's Lullaby.

The entire video really works well when its summed up together. My 'complaint' about the over-use of Ms. Clark's children in the Baby Bach video, which made it seem more like a home movie at times, isn't mirrored here. Yes, there are shots of children here, including Ms. Clark's blonde children, but they're more relevant to the 'story' line and overall theme of the video.

Some issues I do have with the video, which were highlighted in other reviews, is that there are some rather abrupt and loud sounds in between color changes. Balloons popping and tires screeching and the like can sometimes distract or, worse yet, frighten younger ears. Where as the classical music behind most of the video is perfectly orchestrated to suit a child's ears, these 'sound effects' seem out of place.

But this small issue far outweighs the benefits and pleasures that this video offers. With Baby Mozart and Baby Bach, the viewer is simply treated to colorful objects with a classical music backdrop. While entertaining and engaging, it offers little educational value. With Baby Van Gogh however, these is some education content as primary and secondary colors are highlighted, spoken and referred to throughout the show. My daughter may be too young to pick up on the subtleties of it, but older tots will likely be pointing to other objects and identifying them by color.

The DVD version of this, and other Baby Einstein videos also contain digital flash cards and music-only sections. These marry nicely with the contents of the video and allow for some added interaction between your child and the subject matter.

While my wife and I are not proponents of using a TV as a virtual baby sitter, we do realize the immense education value of some videos. And while we sometimes pop in one of these videos to grab the attention of our daughter as she rampages through our once-organized living room, we typically all sit down as a family together to view them. Even after repeated viewings, I find it hard to tire of these visually impressive videos. I'm sure your family will feel the same.

Thanks, as always, for reading.