Baby Van Gogh

We own several of the videos in the series, and Baby Van Gogh is probably the reigning champ (followed closely by Baby Mozart and the original, Baby Einstein). The use of color and art are really wonderful ways to delight and entertain a child, and my husband and I find ourselves a bit mesmerized as well. My daughter also loves seeing the other kids in the video and giggles pretty regularly at the same faces and smiles.

The creation of these videos, DVDs, CDs and books was a stroke of genius...Baby Einstein is truly an appropriate name.


Entertaining approach to art appreciation, color recognition   September 20, 2001
14 out of 14 found this review helpful

My 19 month old daughter has this video as well as several others in the Baby Einstein series (Mozart, Bach, Shakespeare, and the 2 Dolittles). She has been watching it for 5 months now (since she was 14 months old) and it is currently her favorite in the Einstein series. She calls it "painter goat" and it has gotten her interested in painting with a brush instead of just her fingers. This video is organized around 6 colors- yellow, green, orange, purple, red and blue. After the introduction of each color, a short poem (written and read by Julie Aigner-Clark) scores a short skit highlighting that color. Using toys, video segments from nature, live action sequences of children, and the ubitiquous puppets, the selected color is featured while the puppet "Vincent Van Goat" is painting one of six Van Gogh masterpieces that features that color. My daughter enjoys this video, laughing, clapping and pointing at the screen while we watch. She can now also indentify all her colors and will yell them out at the screen. For this reason, given the educational content and the spark of interest in painting, I have to say this is a very good effort by the Baby Einstein Company. I didn't give it a full 5 stars for two reasons. First, as an adult, I find the poems rather poorly written. This is something I don't think my daughter notices however. Second, some of the colors used tend to run into others, given that they use real world objects like flowers, I know this can't be helped. However, what can be helped is the color of paint they use to exemplify the color. For example, for the color "purple" the can of paint that the puppet uses shows up as blue--it is almost the same color as the blue puppet itself. Further, some of the items used to demonstate purple (such as a hanging mobile) show up as blue as well. It is not the fault of my TV or VCR, my husband suspects that the lighting in the studio when they were filming was incorrect, as certain colors absorb and reflect light in differing degrees. For a child learning her colors, this can be very confusing. In this instance, my daughter names the color blue, which is what it LOOKS like, instead of purple which is what it is SUPPOSED to be. I feel they should have taken more care with the production quality in this regard. However, even with these two reservations, I have to say it is a very good video for a child interested in colors and who enjoys painting.


Not a 30 minute video, I'm afraid   April 6, 2001
11 out of 13 found this review helpful

While all the Baby Einstein videos clock in under 30 minutes, this one is the worst, essentially lasting only 23 minutes. The rest of the video identifies the children and the puppeteer featured, and briefly shows the Van Gogh paintings once more. What content there is is nice, and my toddler does watch it, but it would be better if it actually lasted the 30 minutes stated on the cover.

As many have noted, the Baby Mozart tape is the best one this company makes. However, one plus is that there are fewer toys on this tape and more real world images. Thus, you don't get the sense that your child is seeing an extended toy commercial.


If you choose one from this series, it should be this one   May 19, 2002
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

It seems every mother I know has a video from this collection.
I have 2, but have seen all the others time and again. Our favorites, hands down, are Van Gogh and Dolittle Neighborhood.
The others are good, too (with the exception of Baby Einstein, which is miserably boring and uneffective). The problem is that
they are all very, very similar. So you don't need but a couple.
Van Gogh does have its disadvantages, and that is that the images aren't representative of the color they are teaching.
Dolittle is great. Our triplets have been mesmorized by these
videos time and again, although I must say that they also are smitten with the Baby Know-It-All Series, and tend to interact much better with them. I would suggest the Einstein videos for baby's under one year, whereas The Wiggles and Baby Know-It-All are most suitable for 1 year and up.
As for the other videos in the series, we did not like Baby Newton--too slick, and although Shakespeare has great imagery, it only has one poem from Shakespeare and we find that disappointing on the verge of misleading.
Bach and Mozart are almost identical-better to buy a well made music cd from another company.