The videos show babies, toddlers and preschoolers under three years simple patterns, puppet shows, and familiar objects, such as everyday items, animals, and toys that are often accompanied by reorchestrated classical music written by composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, Johannes Brahms, George Frideric Handel, and many others, as well as some traditional rhymes.

The Baby Einstein Company was founded in 1996 by former teacher and stay-at-home mom Julie Aigner-Clark[3] at her home in suburban Alpharetta, Georgia, as I Think I Can Productions.

The original video shows a variety of toys and visuals interspersed with music, stories, numbers, and words spoken in seven different languages: English, French, Spanish, Japanese, German, Hebrew, and Russian.

The series began with a direct-to-video film in August 2005, with regular episodes airing on Playhouse Disney starting October of that year.

President George W. Bush mentioned the Baby Einstein Company in his 2007 State of the Union address, which Aigner-Clark was invited to attend.

Clark had also announced plans to launch a toddler brand called Einstein Pals,[10] including a line of videos, but the project has been abandoned since 2011.

[12] On October 14, 2013, The Walt Disney Company announced they had sold the Baby Einstein brand to Kids II, Inc., a longtime licensee of the property.

[14] The CCFC alleged false advertising based on an American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation that children under two should be discouraged from watching television.

[18] A 2010 study published in Psychological Science demonstrated that children who viewed the videos regularly for one month, with or without their parents, "showed no greater understanding of words from the program than kids who never saw it".

[22][23] The 2007 study, based on telephone interviews with parents, had been published in the Journal of Pediatrics and resulted in a lawsuit by the company's founders due to widespread negative media coverage stemming from the article.