Which are muppets?

Maestro

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When you say "Muppets", what does that truly encompass? I realize that of course the cast of The Muppet Show and movies, and also the cast of Sesame Street is included, but who else/what other groups are? I am doing a speech for school about the Muppets and I want to make sure I cover everyone. :wisdom:
 

unclematt

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It includes the casts of The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, Muppets Tonight, The Jim Henson Hour, Bear and the Big Blue House, Dog City, City Kids, Little Muppet Monsters and Sam and Friends. I think that is all of them but thier might be more.
 

Mistersuperstar

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Wasn't "Muppet" just a term that Jim Henson used to describe any character that was created by the Henson company? I would guess that even characters like Flat Eric from the Levi's ad, Monkey from the UK PG Tips ad and any other Henson related character would and should be considered a Muppet.
 

unclematt

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It gets a little fuzzy in that aspect because then The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (from the first set of movies) would be considered Muppets
 

Maestro

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It gets a little fuzzy in that aspect because then The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (from the first set of movies) would be considered Muppets
Yes, by that definition anything from the Creature Shop would be considered Muppets. I also don't think that the characters created for commercials and ads really count as Muppets in most cases, but I could be wrong...
 

Skekayuk

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It's a tricky question, some definitions will include Creature Shop stuff, but I think many of their things don't really count. Although some Creature Shop stuff, such as Ghost Of Faffner Hall should. Not least because Ghost Of Faffner Hall, The Animal Show, and, Mopatop's shop all not only used some Muppet-style puppets, but even reused some of the minor puppets from TMS itself. (In some cases even with the original TMS puppeteers - for example Frank Oz doing Sam The Eagle on The Animal Show, while I'm sure Louise Gold must've done her Fish-Singer on Faffner Hall, and could she have reprised her infamous monster imitations on Faffner Hall? who knows....)

Generally, I'm not sure about counting such purely Creature Shop ventures as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Labyrinth or Dark Crystal. But there are situations where one might include them for brevities sake. For example on my fansite about Ms Gold, I've used the catagory 'Muppet Work' to define all her Henson puppeteering, as opposed to her performances for Spitting Image, Roland Rat and other distinctly non-Henson projects.
 

Mistersuperstar

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Good point. I am sure there is a very fine line between what is considered a Muppet and what is not. When Labyrinth is advertised, however, they usually use the term Muppet when saying things like "starring David Bowie with Jim Henson's Muppets" or something similar. I would class anything puppet-wise that Jim Henson did as Muppet related but I'm not sure I would call each individual character as a Muppet.


This quote is from Wiki:

"The Muppets are a group of puppet characters created by Jim Henson. Individually, a Muppet is properly one of the puppets made by Jim Henson or his company's workshop. Although the term is often used erroneously to refer to any puppet that resembles the distinctive style of The Muppet Show and Sesame Street characters, the term is both an informal name and legal trademark linked to the characters created by Henson.
The word "Muppet" itself was said by Henson to have been created by combining the words "marionette" and "puppet"; however, Henson was also known to have stated that it was just something he liked the sound of, and he made up the "marionette/puppet" story while talking to a journalist because it sounded plausible."
 

unclematt

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The Marionette/Puppet explanation was a question on Jeopardy today.
 
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