In 1997 Julie Aigner-Clark became frustrated with the lack of baby and children's products out there with which she could share her love and knowledge of art and classical music. She desperately wanted to share with her little daughter the wonderful worlds of Beethoven, Shakespeare, Monet, and the like. But everything out there was for older kids or adults. Julie finally decided to do something about that and shot the first Baby Einstein video in her home. It was called the Baby Einstein Language Nursery. She chose the name because Albert Einstein was a man with passion about music, the arts, and made important discoveries. With classical music as the soundtrack, Julie depicted real world images, mostly colorful and engaging children's toys being played with. It was elegant in its simplicity, the perfect thing to fetch the interest and attention of babies. There were no complicated characters or plotlines to contend with, things babies wouldn't understand anyway. The videos and DVDs are, in a sense, created from a baby's perspective. The wondrous colors and images served as a vehicle to drive classical music and other important humanities into their heads. There was an interactive element to it if the child viewed it with an adult. It was especially effective is the child had some of the toys depicted. She worked closely with a man named Bill Weinstein, who was in charge of reorchestrating the music of the classical composers to appeal to the young ears that would be listening to them.
Word of mouth was very helpful to Ms. Clark in Baby Einstein's early years. Word quickly spread of this wonderful video from parent-to-parent and suddenly Baby Einstein was a success! Julie's venture became the Baby Einstein Company, LLC and she expanded and developed an entire suite of developmental products including DVDs, music CDs, toys and games. Parents loved the Baby Einstein products because it not only exposed their little ones to the beautiful world around them but they also exposed them to foreign languages, as many of the DVDs either have French and Spanish words intermixed with English or they can be played in either French or Spanish. It would also be remiss not to mention the Baby Einstein puppets, the only actual characters in the videos. The two most popular are the lion and the giraffe. They are simple in their construction and make the babies laugh with their silly little antics and expressions. Not long after Baby Einstein became well known, none other than the Walt Disney Company began to take notice.
In November, 2001 Disney acquired Baby Einstein. With the backing of such a huge corporation, the budgets for the DVDs and videos expanded and more Baby Einstein products were created. Toys and other juvenile products were created and distributed around the world, making Baby Einstein an international success. In 2005 Little Einstein was introduced. Basically it is Baby Einstein grown up a little, products meant for toddlers and preschoolers. They include images more mature tykes can understand and songs they can sing while still introducing them to the world around them in a form they can digest easily, as Baby Einstein has done for babies.
Below is a complete list of all the DVDs and/or videos that have been produced by Baby Einstein as of mid-2005.
As for my personal experience with Baby Einstein, Baby Beethoven was the first one we purchased and it is my son's favorite. We have been playing it for him since the time he was a month old until now (he's nine months as of the writing of this article). None of the others seem to hold his interest as long and Beethoven garners the biggest smiles from him. I think this is because it was made in the period where Disney came in and gave Baby Einstien a bigger budget but it was maintaining much of Julie Clark's original vision: a perfect combo of classical music and images they enjoy. It is more refined than the early videos and I think that the later ones, like Baby Galileo and Baby da Vinci, while interesting in their own right, just don't adhere as much to Ms. Clark's intentions. It is clear to see as the videos are more and more "Disneyfied" that they become visually more spectacular but no longer, or hardly, incorporate the elements that made Baby Einstein a success in its early years. If you watch them in chronological order, you see less and less of Julie's influence as the DVDs/videos become more of a production.
Perhaps most telling of this gradual process of pushing Julie Clark out of the picture is that the intro that Ms. Clark narrates for Baby Beethoven starts out "Hi, I'm Julie Clark, founder of the Baby Einstein Company. For more information about our developmental programs..." On the later videos, even though it's still Ms. Clark's voice, this has changed to "For more information about our developmental products for toddlers and preschoolers..."
All in all, Julie Clark had a wonderful idea for a business and a product. Not only has Baby Einstein obviously been very good for her, it is also a great thing for babies and toddlers everywhere. As we are finding out more and more, the younger you are, the more like a sponge your brain is and the earlier you start introducing it to information, the better -- but it has to be entertaining and pleasing to their young eyes. And Baby Einstein recognizes this concept perfectly. As a father who has been reading to him since he was still in the womb, I am very happy to have them for my son. And so is he.
Baby Einstein products are available on their site (there is a full shopping cart system set up). You can also find them at any local Toys "R" Us. As with anything, you can find them on Ebay and get good deals on them, but as with buying any DVDs on Ebay, buyer beware. Do your best to make sure they have the proper region code and that they are authentic and not knock-offs because a lot of Baby Einstein products you'll find there are being sold from outside of the US.
UPDATE: I like Ereneta's writeup and agree with a good portion of it. I know mine wasn't very critical and maybe I should have been more critical (I DO realize that this is not the greatest thing since sliced bread). But now it's a nice, balanced node at least, one highly critical and one more informative with some praise. And we do like to flip on the classical station in the car for him so he can hear the real stuff.:)
The brilliance of the Baby Einstein product line is in its branding strategy, beginning with its name. What parent would not want their child to grow up to become another genius like Albert Einstein?
(Historical note: Albert Einstein did not watch colorful videos with playful puppets and soothing classical music. He may have learned to play the violin by the age of five, but he did so without the use of instructional video.)
Baby Einstein is shrewd: they never, not in any of their promotional literature, claim that their products are designed to make babies smarter. But names have a powerful association. So they license the name of Einstein, because they know that "Baby Dumbass" doesn't move as many units.
Their web site states:
Baby Einstein products are specifically designed to engage babies and provide parents with tools to help expose their little ones to the world around them in playful and enriching ways -- stimulating a baby's natural curiosity.
Baby Einstein positions itself as the leader/creator of the "infant developmental media category" and this is no doubt true. But this category is a marketing concept, not a child development one. An infant has many cognitive needs. His brain is rapidly preparing for the onset of language, as well as coping with the challenges of depth perception, vocalization and auditory feedback, recognizing parents, developing a proprioceptive map, turning towards sounds. None of these neurological steps and developmental milestones require the assistance of a video product, whether from Baby Einstein, Baby Genius, Calm Baby, or the other companies that have sprang up to fill the category. (Although perhaps showing my child the video will serve as prima facie evidence of my love for him, and letting him watch it will build the trust and intimacy so important to a secure, emotionally healthy child?)
"Baby Einstein videos are designed for parents to use with their babies so they can explore and discover the world together."
The puppets: I understand that babies are fascinated with puppets. I understand that therefore you might choose to include puppets in a video for babies. However, the Baby Einstein puppet corps are a sad introduction to the ancient art of puppetry: Their eyes are small, and too far apart. While I'll admit that Jim Henson's Muppets are far too verbal and kinetic for infants, at least the size of their eyes and the distance to the nose re-create the neotenic proportions that young minds will respond too. Secondly, although the Baby Einstein puppets feature bright colors, the synthetic material they are made from has minimal texture. A cursory examination of puppets commercially available for infants and toddlers shows a preponderance of fur. The puppets in these videos then bear little resemblance to any puppets they might encounter in real life (...except for the Baby Einstein™ puppets available for sale on the Web site!). Finally, the puppetry in the videos is terrible, although whether this is due to failure of talent on the part of the puppeteers or a failure of design is unclear (but I suspect both). Given that these are simple hand puppets, there is of course a limited range to what can be performed. But the puppets appear to lack intention of movement, character, or even a simple objective. They move towards an object, or another puppet seemingly with no volition of their own-- the flatness of the eyes makes it difficult to ascribe any motivation to the puppets.
* The music: Baby Einstein arranges Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven to be "pleasing to baby's ears," which also means "severely annoying to grown up ears." The nuance and complexity provided by orchestral or chamber recordings are replaced by spritely, tinny arrangements for studio synthesizers. There is no evidence that the Mozart Effect has any applicability to infant brain development, and even in the research that has been done, no one ever suggests that "simplifying" the music is better for babies. If you want to expose your child to classical music, why not play the real thing instead of a dumbed down version?
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