The Prodigal Pelican: Based on a Story Jesus Told is a Christian animated film released by Word Entertainment and Everland Entertainment on VHS in 1996. It was filmed in Multimation and produced by Susan Bowman and Ben Ryan for Vision Tree Films. The film retells the Biblical parable of the prodigal son but with pelicans.
Something interesting to note about this VHS is that its cover was designed by Ron Eddy, who later went on to work for Big Idea Productions' VeggieTales a year later (first as an art director for some VeggieTales books before working on many VeggieTales episodes a few years later).
The tape has not resurfaced anywhere online (especially YouTube), it has long since been out of stock and not sold on any auction sites (especially eBay or Amazon), and no libraries listed on WorldCat.org hold a copy of the tape, making this tape now a piece of lost media. At this time, all that survives of this is the VHS cover, found on an Amazon listing where the item is currently unavailable. There is also a rumor that this tape possibly has a rarer variant of the Word Entertainment opening logo (with the Sega Genesis-like synth fanfare tune), like the one that was believed to appear on some rarer prints of the original 1995 VHS of the VeggieTales episode Are You My Neighbor?.
Additional updates March 2024 from Director/Producer Ben Ryan • Vision Tree • visiontree421@gmail.com •
Sharable Parables was a beautiful heart project involving many talented people in Nashville in 1996. I believe I actually have master copies of this animation, and will see if I can get it digitized (from D2 or DigiBeta!) over the next few months. Fun version of pan-and-scan animation that we called Multimation (as it had CG effects over the P&S). Great story by Merrill Farnsworth. It was also great to work with Debby Boone and her husband Gabriel Ferrer who voice several characters. Unfortunately - this video series (of which there were 2 more) was launched in the shadow of Veggie Tales which took off to much deserved success! Wayne Zeitner - then of Word Records, now Crown Entertainment USA-was the Executive Producer of the Project.