Mike Nawrocki thought he'd be a pediatrician by now. Nawrocki, thirty three, wanted to be a doctor, and he felt his mission in life was to help kids. So, after a year at a Bible college in St. Paul, he moved to Chicago to finish his bachelor's in biology and prepare for medical school. In order to pay his way through school, he took a job at a video production house in Chicago.

     Then he and Phil Vischer, a friend from Bible college, came up with a big idea to start a new video company. They would produce a new show for kids, featuring a computer generated tomato named Bob and his cucumber sidekick, Larry. Vischer suggested that Nawrocki skip medical school and go to work on the vegetables.

     "I knew the decision that I made would affect my whole life," Nawrocki says, "so it was a very weighty thing. I prayed about it and sought counsel. I talked to a few doctors and said, 'What would you do?' And they said, 'Do that.'"

     After six months of 100 hour work weeks, and $60,000 in cost, they finished the first episode, called "Where Is God When I'm Scared?" in December 1993. The response from stores was less than encouraging.

     "We made the first show and got 500 orders," Nawrocki says, laughing. "Which wasn't quite enough to cover expenses."

     Since that time, Big Idea Productions has sold over 10 million copies of their VeggieTales videos. The initial order for their last release, Larry Boy and the Rumor Weed topped 450,000 copies. Originally available only in Christian bookstores, VeggieTales are now sold at Target, WalMart, and Best Buys across the country. They have even been featured on the pages of The Wall Street Journal.

     Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber have worked their way into the hearts of kids and adults throughout North America, with a show that is a part Sesame Street, part Monty Python, and part Doctor Demento.

     Each thirty minute VeggieTales video has two goals to make kids laugh, and to help them learn a lesson. Some feature Old Testament stories: in Dave and the Giant Pickle young Junior Asparagus stars as David, facing off with giant dill pickle named Goliath; Josh and the Big Wall finds Larry, as Joshua, confronting a pair of wisecracking French peas who drop frozen slushies on his head from the walls of Jericho. Others, like Madame Blueberry or The Toy That Saved Christmas, teach kids that buying everything in sight won't make them happy.

     Besides providing the voice of Larry the Cucumber, Nawrocki serves as a writer and director at Big Idea. He also directs the "Silly Songs with Larry" segment found in many of the videos, with titles like "The Water Buffalo Song," "I Love My Lips," "The Yodeling Veterinarian of the Alps," and this author's personal favorite, "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything." This past February, the Companion took a behind the scenes look at VeggieTales, and talked with Nawrocki about what it is like to be the voice of everybody's favorite cucumber.

COMPANION: Did you have any idea what you were getting into when you started?

MIKE NAWROCKI: No. You know, it's gotten pretty big over the past few years. At the beginning, we definitely set out to make a difference we wanted to help kids by telling them stories, and assumed that that would mean a lot of kids would see our stories. But now that it's happened and it's really caught on just to sit back and watch it is still pretty amazing. I feel so blessed and feel great that God has been able to use us like he has.

What kind of shows did you watch as a kid?

I was into cartoons I remember watching Speed Racer and then going out and tearing around on my tricycle. Gilligan's Island and The Andy Griffith Show, Sesame Street, and The Muppet Show. As I got older, I was really into Monty Python and continued to like things that Jim Henson put out. And then I was just a fan of radio Doctor Demento was one of my favorite shows. I always enjoyed the parody song more than the original so that had a big impact [on Silly Songs].

The Silly Song segment is big part of VeggieTales. Have there ever been songs that were too silly to use?

On this next show, King George and the Ducky, the Silly Song is called "Endangered Love." It's basically Larry watching a soap opera about Barbara Manatee, who he's in love with. (Breaking into Larry's voice) "Barbara Manatee, you are the one for me, sent from up above, you are the one I love."  
     That's a revised version of the song. When I wrote the song, Larry was tuned into a cooking show. Originally, it was called "Albino Manatee" and it was about a Cajun cooking show where they were cooking up manatees. But that got axed. It was a little too much. So we just revised that into Barbara Manatee.

Where did the voice for Larry come from?

I did a character when I was doing puppets in college called Soupy. That's actually where Phil and I met. Soupy had Larry's voice but a little dopier and a little lower. In fact on the very first episode, Larry's voice is a lot like Soupy's. Later, I revised that to a higher range, which is where Larry is now.
     Phil and I used to go around [campus] with our puppets on our arms and sort of terrorize people with them. We'd go to basketball games and sit under the bleachers, with our puppets above the bleachers, and make comments at the game and stuff. So I had a lot of opportunity to ad-lib with that voice, and got really comfortable with it.

Do you ever think that Larry and Bob will be as big an influence as say, Bert and Ernie?

I hope so. What that would mean is that there's a lot of kids exposed to Bob and Larry that they're coming into kids' homes and kids really trust Bob and Larry. I think Bert and Ernie, and Sesame Street have been able to do that with education. I would hope Bob and Larry could be the same thing in terms of values education for kids; that a lot of kids know who Bob and Larry are, and invite them into their homes and see them as friends.

It seems like a big responsibility to have this many kids looking up to Bob and Larry. Does that ever get to you?

It does, it does. The time when it hits me the most is when I see how it affects kids individually. We talk to a lot of kids who are terminally ill they'll call in and request to talk to Bob and Larry. That just drives it home for me how much this is really affecting their lives. These kids look up these characters and we have a big responsibility to use this position to do a lot of good for kids.

How did you start talking with kids who are terminally ill?

The Make a Wish foundation had called in about a little boy named Thomas Martin, who died last year. He had requested that he sing a song with Larry, or that he could come in and do a voice for a character. I took one of our songs, called "I Can Be Your Friend" and revised it into "Thomas is my friend." We had it all ready to record, but then his health started to decline and he wasn't able to come in. But we've been in touch with his parents since and we were able to go to the memorial service for him. He was just a really cool kid.
     Things like that has come along every once in a while where a fan calls in and asks, "Can I talk to Larry?" That's always something that I'm more than happy to do. I just feel so much for those kids it's with a heavy heart and just realizing, I have a daughter of my own and I can't imagine going through that experience.

What is the next thing you are going to work on?

We're getting ready to release King George and the Ducky  it's a story on putting others first and not being selfish. In the story, King George loves his duck and he's got to have every duck in the kingdom. Bob is his assistant that helps him collect ducks, and Junior Asparagus is the character who has his duck swiped. [In the video] King George learns that he shouldn't take other people's things and instead should be considerate for other people.
     We are also working on the story of Esther which is a lesson on courage. Then on top of that, we are working on another series called 3, 2, 1 Penguins, which we hope to have out in the fall. It's a completely new video series. It will be full 3D animation with a whole new cast of characters.

Where do you think you'll be in five years?

We have a twenty-year goal as a company to be one of the top media brands in the country and what that means for us is just exposure. That means being able to take biblical values and teach them to kids and to have Big Idea and Veggie Tales be as much a part of a kid's life as say Sesame Street was to me.

Are there other shows for kids that you think are doing good work?

My daughter is a big Arthur fan she loves Arthur she watches some PBS shows in general. And she loves Animal Planet. In fact, she woke up this morning and she said one of her first sentences to me: "Daddy I want to watch Animal Planet."
     There are a lot of good educational shows out there. People aren't afraid to teach about addition and multiplication and spelling, but I don't think there's a whole lot of values education out there especially biblical values.

     Lets take a show like Arthur, which tries to teach a lesson. What do you think that VeggieTales offers that is the same and what is different?

     I think that lessons in themselves are good, but I think that it's important for kids to know why they need to do things. From our perspective, it's because there's a God who made them, who loves them, and wants them to do these things. I feel there's a deeper meaning there, a more concrete foundation than just saying they should do this because it will help make society a better place I think that's what we can offer.

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