Kidvid Cassettes for Christmas

By Richard Zoglin

The scene on Christmas morning is familiar. The gifts have been opened, wrapping paper is still scattered around the living room--and the children have planted themselves in front of the TV set. On holidays past, such behavior was a sure dampener for the Christmas spirit. This year, however, it will more likely be a sign that the presents are a hit where it counts: on the TV screen.

Videocassettes for children are shaping up to be some of this season's hottest stocking stuffers. Among the stars are such old friends as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Pinocchio (the classic Walt Disney movie is currently the top- selling children's cassette). But more recent favorites--from movies, TV and toy stores--include Rainbow Brite, the Care Bears, My Little Pony and the Transformers. Kidvid now accounts for 15% of the total home-video business, according to some industry estimates. Moreover, with their relatively low prices (typically between $10 and $40), children's tapes are usually bought rather than rented. Unlike adults, who generally view a movie only once and return it to the store, children tend to watch their favorites over and over again.

More than 2,200 children's tapes are now on the market, and the inventory is expanding at a breakneck pace. While the vast majority are rereleases of popular movies or TV shows, a small but growing array of original fare is being produced. Much of it is aimed at preschool-age children, who are largely ignored by mass-audience TV. The publishers of Golden Books have begun releasing video versions of their children's stories on 30-minute cassettes. Toys-R-Us, the nationwide toy chain, is now selling the Geoffrey Alphabet Video, which features National Geographic animal footage and original songs by Elizabeth Swados. Preschoolers can exercise and play along with Gymboree, an interactive cassette from Scholastic-Lorimar Home Video. Harried mothers can enliven a youngster's birthday celebration with Rainbow Brite's It's Your Birthday Party, a 45-minute tape that enlists partygoers in various games and activities.

More is on the way. The Children's Television Workshop is producing six educational cassettes featuring Big Bird and other popular Sesame Street characters. Such children's TV personalities as the Messrs. Wizard and Rogers will soon be appearing on cassettes. The networks are also getting into the act. ABC is putting 50 of its critically praised Weekend Specials on cassette and is contemplating the production of original shows for home video as well. Says ABC Vice President Squire Rushnell: "There's a greater consciousness now that in producing programming for children, we have to stop and think: How will this look in a package on the shelf?"

Much of the original kidvid fare currently on the shelf looks distinctly cut-rate. The Golden Book videos, for instance, utilize an inexpensive process known as Picturemation, in which a camera simply scans the book's illustrations, adding only bits of animation (an eye blinking, a dog's tail wagging). The few live-action productions for children often look and sound like a school play recorded in someone's basement rec room. Several distributors, meanwhile, have merely rounded up cheap off-network TV programming and labeled it children's video. The widely distributed Kids Klassics offer such less than scintillating fare as an episode of the old Lone Ranger TV series for a rock-bottom $9.95. Each cassette is no more than 30 $ minutes long and is frequently padded out with a commercial.

A few nuggets can be found in the kidvid heap. In the first of a planned series of notable children's stories narrated by well-known stars, Random House this fall released Margery Williams' The Velveteen Rabbit, read by Meryl Streep. Despite minimal animation, the show is made irresistible by Streep's touching narration and George Winston's graceful music. (Still to come: Jack Nicholson reading Kipling's Just So Stories and Cher doing The Ugly Duckling.) A video version of The Macmillan Illustrated Almanac for Kids is an intriguing hodgepodge of informational segments on such diverse topics as why volcanoes happen and how to blow huge soap bubbles.

So far, however, most kidvid fare seems less an alternative to dreary network programming than a reinforcement of it. "The good news," says Peggy Charren, president of Action for Children's Television, "is that children's video is the most likely place to find alternatives to toy-commercial video, which is what network children's TV has turned into. The bad news is that all this stuff on network TV is also in home-video stores, and the promotion budgets are enormous."

Home-video producers reply that there is nothing wrong with children wanting their own cassettes of Strawberry Shortcake or Rainbow Brite. "Kids' having their favorite licensed characters is like adults' having their favorite stars on the screen," says C.J. Kettler, vice president of children's programming for Vestron Video. "Rainbow Brite is a pretty positive role model." Indeed, with home video, parents at least have a measure of control over what their children are watching. The question is, once youngsters have all their favorites on cassette, will they ever be lured away from the TV set again?

With reporting by Cathy Booth/New York