Henson Rarities on Youtube

[The Count]

The requested info has been removed, next time please contact a moderator or staff member directly instead of self-reporting your own posts.

 

[minor muppetz]

My grandparents used to have a tape of TNT programming which included this commercial that I'm happy to see again (in fact, I was just thinking about this commercial a few days ago).

I don't remember the mention of the TNT Family Movie (only Fraggles, Looney Tunes, and Popeye).

I remember when seeing that, when it mentioned "Fraggle Rock and daily warm-up exercises", I mistakenly thought that "daily warm-up exercises" was a segment of the show (I saw this promo several months before I first saw an episode).

I wonder if there's any TNT promos for The Muppet Show online or in any fans collections.

 

[minor muppetz]

Something I must say about the TNT promo I linked in my previous post: Before seeing that, I mistakenly thought that Fraggle Rock was called "Fraggle Rock's" (and I thought they were called "Fraggle Rock's" instead of "Fraggles"). Seeing that promo set me straight. But then I thought that the animated series was titled "Fraggle Rock's" to create a difference.

Then, sometime before I had cable*, I remembered looking in the TV listings to see Fraggle Rock listed under TNT programming, didn't (to be fair, that promo mentions that it aired at 7am on Sundays, and the TV listings I got only listed programming that ran from 8am-midnight), but saw Fraggle Rock listed under The Disney Channel's programming, and was confused. I didn't know that the show switched channels, and I knew that the animated one had aired on the channel before, so I wondered if maybe both the live-action and animated shows were both titled Fraggle Rock (well I am right, but I didn't know that back then). Then a few years later, I saw that Disney was airing the animated one again, and it was listed as "The Animated Fraggle Rock", even though the on-screen title was just Fraggle Rock.

*Or maybe it was just after I got cable. I remember looking at the TV listings on the day I got cable to see what was on, it would make sense I'd look to see when FR was on TNT. A few weeks later, I got a baby sitter who had The Disney Channel, and on the first day after school, Disney Channel was on and I was pleasantly surprised to be watching FR.

 

[tygerbug]

Erik Adams of The Onion AV Club reviews our Henson Rarities channel:

Thank heavens for the VHS junkie, the VCR jockey, and the other nonprofessional, copyright-flouting cultural archivists preserving the not-so-recent, videotaped past on the internet. In the highly specialized field of Muppet preservation, there’s no more valuable public resource than Henson Rarities, a YouTube channel overseen by artist, writer, and filmmaker Garrett Gilchrist. Gilchrist has pulled hours and hours of Jim Henson- and Muppet-related footage from video-cassette sources, keeping commercially unavailable odds and ends like The Muppets Go To The Movies, The Fantastic Miss Piggy Show, and The Jim Henson Hour (the last of which proved handy for me on a recent assignment) in circulation. In addition to pulling Sam And Friends and Muppet Inc.’s anarchic advertising work back from broadcast oblivion, the channel also collects material that didn’t make it to air, like the pilot presentation for Handmade Video (a proto-reality show starring, among others, Dana Gould) or video footage from Henson’s 1991 memorial service in New York. Putting aside the ghoulish and voyeuristic subtext of the latter, the memorial service does serve as a testament to the amount of joy, kindness, and humor that Henson put out into the world—then again, that’s the takeaway from nearly every video on Henson Rarities. [Erik Adams]

http://www.avclub.com/article/political-satire-some-literary-maps-and-obscure-ji-228209

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK8JxjRYYaLbs9fgsu13iQw/videos

 

[tygerbug]

 

[D'Snowth]

After watching all of HEY CINDERELLA! I must confess . . . I think I can kind of see why a series wouldn't have worked too well (even though the original treatment was for Snow White, not Cinderella).

But that aside, admittedly, the production values aren't spectacular, the puppets weren't that great (King Goshposh must have been heavy and stiff because the lip-syncing was never precise), Kermit was kind of Eeyore-ish (but then again, living in a kingdom that persecutes frogs for no reason, can you blame him?), and it was hard to understand anything Splurge was saying.

The Fairy Godmother was perhaps the best thing about the special: she should have been a Muppet, she certainly had that Muppety sense of humor. And the cast was so obviously Canadian it was funny ("sore-y" and "a-boat" were heard constantly), but they picked good actors for the roles. The ball sequence was rather disorienting: the music kept changing with each cut and hardly matched the tone or style (though I loved those incompetent musicians that were obviously Jim, Frank, and Jerry wearing Muppet heads). Goshposh's incessent need for presents was amusing too.

I think overall, while it's certainly a piece of Muppet/Henson history, it just wasn't one of the better Muppet productions I've seen. Now I just need to see THE FROG PRINCE to complete the TALES FROM MUPPETLAND trilogy, but so far THE MUPPET MUSICIANS OF BREMEN is certainly head and shoulders above Cinderella.

 

[Mo Frackle]

After watching all of HEY CINDERELLA! I must confess . . . I think I can kind of see why a series wouldn't have worked too well (even though the original treatment was for Snow White, not Cinderella).

But that aside, admittedly, the production values aren't spectacular, the puppets weren't that great (King Goshposh must have been heavy and stiff because the lip-syncing was never precise), Kermit was kind of Eeyore-ish (but then again, living in a kingdom that persecutes frogs for no reason, can you blame him?), and it was hard to understand anything Splurge was saying.

The Fairy Godmother was perhaps the best thing about the special: she should have been a Muppet, she certainly had that Muppety sense of humor. And the cast was so obviously Canadian it was funny ("sore-y" and "a-boat" were heard constantly), but they picked good actors for the roles. The ball sequence was rather disorienting: the music kept changing with each cut and hardly matched the tone or style (though I loved those incompetent musicians that were obviously Jim, Frank, and Jerry wearing Muppet heads). Goshposh's incessent need for presents was amusing too.

I think overall, while it's certainly a piece of Muppet/Henson history, it just wasn't one of the better Muppet productions I've seen. Now I just need to see THE FROG PRINCE to complete the TALES FROM MUPPETLAND trilogy, but so far THE MUPPET MUSICIANS OF BREMEN is certainly head and shoulders above Cinderella.

Agreed with everything you mentioned. Also liked Splurge and Rufus/proto-Sprocket.

Don't remember much about the Bremen special, but The Frog Prince is definitely an improvement.

 

[Mo Frackle]

Do you know the story behind this appearance?

 

[D'Snowth]

Agreed with everything you mentioned. Also liked Splurge and Rufus/proto-Sprocket.

Don't remember much about the Bremen special, but The Frog Prince is definitely an improvement.

Admittedly, the earliest of Muppet projects are hit-or-miss, but I think a lot of that can be attributed to Jim trying to find the Muppets' footing beyond the tradition of lip-syncing to novelty records and such. I recently watched the original Tinkerdee pilot, and I was a little disappointed with it as well.

 

[D'Snowth]

Is there a reason why some Muppet productions have different versions with different titles? Like Bunny Picnic on Henson Rarities has scrolling end titles (and Grandpa Bean announcing the main title at the beginning), while the version I posted years ago has still end titles. Muppet Wiki also shows that Frog Prince has two different titles as well, one version that uses the same font as Bremen did for its titles, and a version that has fancier-looking typeface.