The Muppets Character Encyclopedia coming Feb. 7 2014

[minor muppetz]

In thinking about how it'll be laid out, I've been thinking, if it's not arranged by productions, it would be cool if there was a musicians chapter. Featuring at least a full page for Rowlf and each member of The Electric Mayhem, followed by sections on other Muppet bands and groups. It would be great to know what the Muppets Tonight Band was called (Jim Lewis once said that the band did have a title but he couldn't remember what it was). And for bands where nobody had a distinctive personality, it would be great if it would at least have the names of each named member by the characters as they are pictured. It'd be great to know if the individual members of The Gogolala Jubilee Jugband had names, or if other members of Geri and the Atrics besides Geri had names (not counting instances where members were recycled into other characters).

 

[Mr Sweetums]

I'm actually thinking it's going to be an A-Z Muppet guide all the way from Animal to Zoot yet I hope we get something closer to what Minor Muppetz has described.

I'm so excited for this book, it's been on my merchandise wishlist ever since I was little back in comprehensive school and all my friends had the 150 Pokémon guide to catch them all... I wanted to catch Muppets. With this one and the new Jim Henson bio I can cross off two pieces of Muppet merchandise from my wishlist

Now where's my squeeze and sing Mahna-Mahna & Snowths soft toys!

 

[minor muppetz]

I'm actually thinking it's going to be an A-Z Muppet guide all the way from Animal to Zoot yet I hope we get something closer to what Minor Muppetz has described.

If it's in alphabetical order, then I'd expect Andy Pig to be listed before Animal. The official description does mention Andy and Randy Pig, though it's possible they're just mentioned/included in a section on Miss Piggy.

I feel it might also be cool if there could be sections on various types of characters following sections on main characters. Like a section on Kermit, then a smaller one on Robin, and then a section on other Muppet frogs. Or a section on Miss Piggy, followed by a section on other Muppet pigs (some would probably be more featured than others). I'd kinda like to see a section on Muppet monsters, the ones who are regular-sized, then a page or two on Sweetums, then a section on full-body Muppets, starting with the full-body monsters and then other full-body characters (like Fletcher Bird and the bad guys from The Muppet Musicians of Bremen). Maybe a section on rod Muppets (like The Bossmen and Gawky Birds) could follow that.

 

[minor muppetz]

Somebody mentioned that DK has put out a Disney A-Z character encyclopedia, and that updated books come out every few years (this would be something that could benefit from digital books, if they could be digitally updated). So I went to the book store to see if I could find one and see if that could give me an idea of what this will be like (the moment I heard of this Muppet one I assumed and hoped it'd be like DK's "Ultimate Visual Guide" books). Couldn't find the Disney character encyclopedias (maybe I could check every library in town), but I looked in several DK books outside of "The Ultimate Visual Guide" series, and it looks like most DK books have the same format, not just "Ultimate Visual Guide".

 

[dwayne1115]

I was looking at the DK website, and noticed that they do a lot of sticker books as well. Which would be kind of cool if they did one for the Muppets.

The only Disney character book I saw was for cars. The age range was for 7 year olds and up. It said it was done in hardback, and had 144 pages. The book said it would include over 250 different characters from Cars 1 & 2 and the shorts Car Toons.
So I think this is kind of what we will expect out of the Muppet book as well.

 

[MuppetGuy75]

That's definitely a must have!!!

 

[JonnyBMuppetMan]

Well, there's good news and some marginally bad news. I checked the Muppet Wiki page recently and while I could find no other source for this, it's said that the book will feature "more than 600 full-color photographs from the Henson Archives." With Shemin writing the book, it's great to see that Disney/DK are going directly to the source to make this as good as it can be.

And now the bad news, the cover was also posted on the site and... oh hey, look! Constantine's on the cover!

Hopefully, this is just temp art and any obscenities will be fixed when the book is ready for release, right? ......right?!?

 

[Drtooth]

Eh... I don't see the problem at all. DK Encyclopedias all look like this. Except, instead of the same Muppet Posers we always see, they're usually filled with the same stock art we always see for any given franchise. And all with a big blank white background.

 

[JonnyBMuppetMan]

Consider me in the camp of people who are sick of seeing that particular Kermit poser (I blame ToughPigs). At least now that we have a character who actually looks like that, I can look forward to continually refer to him as "good ol' Constantine" rather than complaining.

 

[Drtooth]

I do agree that they need to dust off those posers and give us some new photo shoots. They really should start at least before the new film comes out on some new promo material. As long as flat head Kermit, air Kissing Swedish Chef, and Gonzo in a Hot Pepper shirt off the cover, I can't complain. I mean, it's not like this problem is exclusive to Disney. Remember when they photoshopped the then current Piggy Head over old posters? That was far worse than this.

But stock photos and style guide libraries are another thing that seems to be an industry wide problem. The best we can hope for is that we get a new piece of artwork every so often for them to run into the ground. They have TMNT shirts in 2013 that use the same ugly, stiff character stock art from the 80's. Then they stopped using that, and hired artists to draw new, cartoony, show accurate ones.