Anyone who grew up on Veggie Tales knows how big of an impact it had on their childhood, so when BigIdea decided to make a Christmas special called “The Toy That Saved Christmas”, every kid and Christian parent was looking forward to it’s release.

According to IMDB, the story follows the town of Dinkletown who are spoiled by Mr. Nezzer’s toy company, because Mr. Nezzer convinced everyone that Christmas is when you get stuff. When Mr. Nezzer makes the new toy Buzz-Saw Louie everyone wants one. But one brave Buzz-Saw Louie decides that getting is not the true meaning of Christmas, and he is determined to find what is.

However, one thing that not many people know its the journey to create this episode was incredibly stressful on it’s creators, and the creator of Veggie Tales was put on bedrest shortly after.

According to the VeggieTales fandom site:

The episode was made around September of 1996 and at that time, the air conditioning at Big Idea’s then headquarters had been shut off and was being replaced. Suddenly, a heat wave had just hit Chicago and the employees pushed themselves to get the episode out in time since they couldn’t ship out the Christmas special late.

Reports also state that they were working with a small staff, rushing to get the episode done by Christmas, and if they couldn’t get it out in time, it may never have been released.

The creator, Phil Vischer also had health complications following the release of this episode

As soon as everything was done, Phil Vischer began to suffer major chest pains from a bacteria eating at his heart. He had to stay in bed for the next month until he felt better.

So the next time you sit with your kids, or watch “The Toy Who Saved Christmas” for yourself, just remember those whose blood sweat and tears went into creating the episode