Save Baby Einstein
Save Baby Einstein
The Issue
After her first daughter Aspen was born in 1994, teacher-turned-stay-at-home mom Julie Aigner-Clark tried to search for videos to keep her entertained to no avail, until she decided to shoot a video in her basement featuring the things Aspen liked - stock footage, toys, and soft music, and thus, Baby Einstein (later Language Nursery) was released on January 31st, 1997 by the children's edutainment company Gymboree. 27 more videos followed suit.
In 2000, Artisan acquired the Baby Einstein company and started distributing Clark's videos under their Family Home Entertainment title. Two years later in 2002, Disney acquired the company and started releasing videos, both with and without Clark, now a mother of two, and other products (including the animated preschool series Little Einsteins, which they still own), thus making the company more popular. In 2009, studies showed that the videos were bad for babies' brains (which, being a big fan and all, I don't think is true), so Disney offered a refund and released the final two pure videos (not counting the discovery kits released in both 2010 and 2011). In 2013, Kids II acquired Baby Einstein, and this is where the trouble begins.
After Kids II's acquisition, there have been Baby Einstein products, re-releases of older videos on YouTube and streaming, animated YouTube series, and re-releases of older albums. They even released newer albums with mislabeled, cheesy reorchestrated songs. And the worst part is, they've blocked some fanmade Baby Einstein videos on YouTube. Recently, they've been trying to delete the channels that uploaded said videos, causing us fans to upload the videos on websites like Archive.org, Vimeo, or Dailymotion. That just goes to show you that Kids II is pure evil!
All of us would like a bright, new future for Baby Einstein where a different company owns it (preferably Disney again) and more quality videos and albums are released (and we also get re-releases of the previous videos). If anyone at Kids II is reading this, please reconsider owning my favorite company. Thank you.
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The Issue
After her first daughter Aspen was born in 1994, teacher-turned-stay-at-home mom Julie Aigner-Clark tried to search for videos to keep her entertained to no avail, until she decided to shoot a video in her basement featuring the things Aspen liked - stock footage, toys, and soft music, and thus, Baby Einstein (later Language Nursery) was released on January 31st, 1997 by the children's edutainment company Gymboree. 27 more videos followed suit.
In 2000, Artisan acquired the Baby Einstein company and started distributing Clark's videos under their Family Home Entertainment title. Two years later in 2002, Disney acquired the company and started releasing videos, both with and without Clark, now a mother of two, and other products (including the animated preschool series Little Einsteins, which they still own), thus making the company more popular. In 2009, studies showed that the videos were bad for babies' brains (which, being a big fan and all, I don't think is true), so Disney offered a refund and released the final two pure videos (not counting the discovery kits released in both 2010 and 2011). In 2013, Kids II acquired Baby Einstein, and this is where the trouble begins.
After Kids II's acquisition, there have been Baby Einstein products, re-releases of older videos on YouTube and streaming, animated YouTube series, and re-releases of older albums. They even released newer albums with mislabeled, cheesy reorchestrated songs. And the worst part is, they've blocked some fanmade Baby Einstein videos on YouTube. Recently, they've been trying to delete the channels that uploaded said videos, causing us fans to upload the videos on websites like Archive.org, Vimeo, or Dailymotion. That just goes to show you that Kids II is pure evil!
All of us would like a bright, new future for Baby Einstein where a different company owns it (preferably Disney again) and more quality videos and albums are released (and we also get re-releases of the previous videos). If anyone at Kids II is reading this, please reconsider owning my favorite company. Thank you.
34
The Decision Makers
Petition created on December 23, 2022