I've been away from the forums for a bit until recently. In the time that I was away, I really didn't do much to keep up with the latest from Jehovah's corporation. So within the time I was away, Sparlock came along and got thrown into the garbage.
I found that little clip to be bizarre. REALLY REALLY bizarre. So I went and found the "Become Jehovah's Friend" clips on Youtube and watchted them. Again, the whole thing is really bizarre to me.
When I was going to the Kingdom Hall in the 1980s and 1990s, we didn't have this kind of stuff from the Watchtower. We just had books such as "My Book of Bible Stories", "Your Youth- Getting The Best Out of It", "Listen to the Great Teacher" and the "Young People Ask" articles in the Awake! that eventually morphed into a full blown book to replace the "Youth" book.
A JW cartoon was unthinkable. The other religions do stuff like that. We were not other religions! We are no part of the world! We must read books! Books! Books! Books!
I remember sitting in the Kingdom Hall with a pen and paper. On my notepad, I drew a space man on the moon. The person sitting beside me took my pen and wrote "Jehovah" on my picture. She ruined my piece of artwork. I took it as being wrong to draw things while in the Kingdom Hall. And now they're using fictional characters drawn on computers to convey a message to children. The magazines and books never had fictional characters. They were real! (Or at least that's how they were portrayed.)
While the core of the JW religion hasn't changed, their skin has changed. One of the new releases at the convention is highly aimed at young children. You can download coloring pages from JW.org. Is this the same religion that I grew up in? The same one that sucked all the fun out of everything? Why are they trying to make it fun now? Are they losing all of their youngest members while the old ones die off?
...and since when is it called "Family Worship"? It was always "Family Study"!