What Muppet Fans Are Thinking About

minor muppetz

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Recently Kirk Thatcher was interviewed for The Muppet Mindset, and when talking about how the fans didn't like that there was a lot more focus on new characters and less on the known characters, he said that the Muppets should grow in characters and that The Muppet Show was introducing new characters all the time (though I feel the last two seasons didn't really have many new recurring characters, just Pops, Rizzo, Foo-Foo, and to a certain extent Lips and Gaffer, maybe Geri and the Attrics, they tried and then dropped Winny and Betsy Bird after one appearance each).

But then Sesame Street hasn't had many recurring characters in the past ten years. Of course that's a little different, as that's from Sesame Workshop as opposed to Henson, and I'm not sure whether Kirk Thatcher worked on Sesame Street. But then again, for the first three decades (maybe three and a half), Sesame Street was always introducing new characters, but then in the past decade new recurring characters have been less frequent. The only new main characters we've gotten were Abby, Murray, and to a certain extent Ovejita and Segri (and though he was around before, Horatio the Elephant seems to have become more of a main character in the past decade). And not only that, but many early supporting characters continued to appear frequently for three decades, before being dropped, used less frequently, or reduced to occasional cameos/background appearances (and not just characters originated by Jim Henson or Richard Hunt). Though at times some characters would go a few years without being seen in new material, only to come back on a semi-regular basis (this includes such characters as Mumford, Mr. Johnson, Grundgetta, and Hoots the Owl). Heck, there have been periods when the show didn't have much of longtime major characters like Ernie, Bert, Big Bird, and The Count (and is it just me or has Zoe been used a lot less in the last few years, even before Fran Brill retired?).

But as I type this, I think of something else: During all those years when new characters (who were intended on being major characters) were frequently being introduced, The Jim Henson Company owned the rights to the Sesame Street Muppets. Creation of new recurring characters lessened when Sesame Workshop obtained the rights to the characters, so maybe it is the two companies having different views on introducing new characters. Of course, reducing the show to 26 episodes a year might also have something to do with it (the 40th anniversary book has a quote about how with 26 episodes a year there's no room for "flop characters"), as well as the need for every episode to have many long segments (many of which are limited to a few or even just one familiar character) each day. And I have just now realized that in the last few years that Henson owned the characters and the first few years that Sesame Workshop owned them that most of the recurring characters introduced didn't last.
 

minor muppetz

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I often think about how in The Muppet Movie, It's a Very Muppet Christmas Movie, and Muppets Most Wanted, Miss Piggy briefly leaves the Muppets and then returns shortly, and yet those scenes aren't too consequential to the plot.

In The Muppet Movie, it's the least neccessary. Miss Piggy gets a call from her agent about a job in a commercial and just leaves Kermit, only to return to Kermit a few scenes later. Kermit's a little bummed during this time, but not too bummed. When they see Miss Piggy hitchiking, the Muppets are quick to have her back, even if Kermit seems a slight bit unhappy with her when she gets back in the car. But then they don't really do more with this. The only justification I can think of for this is because they needed some sort of dramatic scene right before the film broke.

In It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, Miss Piggy leaves the Muppets, they then feel the need to have a big celebrity guest star (which is how The Muppet Show always worked), when they couldn't get anybody to be the guest star Kermit realized that Miss Piggy was a big enough star (but she's typically always part of the Muppets, even with Frank Oz's busy schedule before Eric Jacobson took over her) and they convince her back after she had accepted a job on Scrubs where she's just an extra. So for this part, I guess NBC wanted the movie to promote Scrubs (or Henson wanted to please NBC by working in an appearance by the cast and set of one of their shows), plus they decide to get Miss Piggy back after a celebrity montage, but it still doesn't add up that Miss Piggy would be considered a big enough star to bring in big ticket sales, and yet when she leaves, she's simply an extra on a popular TV show (of course, I think it's odd that in the world without Kermit, reality shows make up most of television, since reality shows were just starting to dominate TV and at the time Kermit didn't have a regular gig on television, the previous year bringing us the first season of Sesame Street to not include any Kermit content).

And then in The Muppets, where it seems most neccessary but still inconsequential. They go to Paris to get Miss Piggy back, she decides she needs to have a talk with Kermit first (in a rather pointless nighttime walk around the city... Maybe not pointless, but one of the few scenes in the movie I don't really like), and shortly after getting the theater cleaned up she comes back and has a showdown with Miss Poogy, getting herself back in the Muppets. In a way, it is justified in that it's an attempt to include Miss Poogy and set up the Moopets as bad guys to the Muppets later on, but I don't really care much for the Moopets, and even if Miss Piggy did return right away, they could have still had the Moopets included. Fozzie would have had to have been doing something before rejoining Kermit, and the Moopets could have just tried to work with Tex Richman to bring down the Muppets because of Fozzie quitting (in fact, wouldn't Miss Poogy have left the Moopets to replace Miss Piggy as one of the Muppets? I wonder how the Moopets handled it when she left and later came back).
 

Muppet Master

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Yesterday, I went to Walmart, and I saw these muppet plushes of Fozzie, Gonzo, Kermit, and Animal. The weird thing was that they spelled fozzie like fozzy. That is either the largest typo ever or Disney really does not care. anymore.
 

WalterLinz

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Yesterday, I went to Walmart, and I saw these muppet plushes of Fozzie, Gonzo, Kermit, and Animal. The weird thing was that they spelled fozzie like fozzy. That is either the largest typo ever or Disney really does not care. anymore.
What company did their tags say? I mean, what toy company?:stick_out_tongue: Did they look like cheap carnival prizes?XD
 
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sesamemuppetfan

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Yesterday, I went to Walmart, and I saw these muppet plushes of Fozzie, Gonzo, Kermit, and Animal. The weird thing was that they spelled fozzie like fozzy. That is either the largest typo ever or Disney really does not care. anymore.
Get a load of this...
 

dwayne1115

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Wow just wow! I really am hoping that this is just a small error, but something telling me deep down that it is not.
 

minor muppetz

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Been thinking about the 2000 Muppets Game Boy Color game. At the beginning, there's a voice credits screen listing Steve Whitmire, Frank Oz, and Richard Hunt with voices. With Richard Hunt, they obviously re-used audio of him voicing Beaker. But I wonder why they did that, when Beaker had been recast for years and Steve Whitmire was involved with providing new dialogue for Kermit and Rizzo in the game (well I'm pretty sure Kermit's line "Hi ho, welcome back" hadn't been used anywhere previously). In fact I wonder if Frank Oz actually provided voices for the game or if it was re-used dialogue (there's a "hey wocka wocka wocka" from Fozzie and an "uh-oh" from Animal, I think both could have easily come from archival recordings).

Also interesting how voice credits were included at the beginning as opposed to completing the game. Do you suppose they knew people wouldn't complete the game and see the end credits (okay, maybe there is somebody who has, but I've never seen anyone admit to beating the game)?
 

JimAndFrank

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This just occurred to me:

In all 60 years of the Muppets, why has there never been a sight gag where Kermit sticks to a window?

Isn't that what frogs can do?
 
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