Peek-a-Boo

[Drtooth]

My point still stands. I'm just sick of Sesame Street and Muppet Babies getting the blame for the Muppets being "kiddy." These videos were no help either.

But then again, you can tell this was from the period where he wanted to do more things like Dark Crystal and Labyrinth... big projects with intricate puppetry for older audiences. I can't blame him for skewing the characters for kids when he had bigger ideas coming. But then again, the kiddy videos were important as well, since Henson was such a power house of media.

Still... Peek-a-boo... yeah.

 

[minor muppetz]

My point still stands. I'm just sick of Sesame Street and Muppet Babies getting the blame for the Muppets being "kiddy." These videos were no help either.

Well, Sesame Street could get the "Muppets are too kiddy" blame before 1976. I don't think Jim Henson did any "kiddy" productions before Sesame Street (and anything that could be considered "kiddy" wasn't broadcast, at least not until after Sesame Street began).

Perhaps people might think of the various video releases being kiddy, but I think the Play-Along Videos are a bit obscure (or at least semi-obscure) for casual fans to think of those when they think of Muppet videos for kids. I've only seen the videos at a couple of video stores, never seen any used copies for sale (and I don't remember seeing any new copies for sale, either), and until recently none of them have ever been rereleased (though clips from some of them were included in the Muppet Sing-Alongs opening).

And of the videos to be rereleased, Peek-a-Boo is the one I would have least expected. The only other one Henson retains the rights to is Mother Goose Stories, and that would have more consumer appear than this one. I searched iTunes to see if the Mother Goose Stories play-along video was there. As far as I can tell, it wasn't, but it looks like the whole series is (there's 13 half-hours available for download, and I didn't notice any overlapping titles). The ones with the classic Muppets would also be better choices for rerelease, as they have more recognizable characters (but of course it seems rereleasing classic Muppet content is low on Disney's list of priorities), and while Neat Stuff doesn't have anybody casual fans would know, the video and its concept are a lot better than Peek-A-Boo.

Of course, with putting Peek-A-Boo for sale for download and streaming, they aren't losing any money if nobody orders the releases.

Interesting fact I just remembered: Before I saw this video (and read the title) I thought the phrase was "Pick-a-Boo!"