What is your favorite Sid and Marty Krofft shows?

[Collgoff]

How can those two characters be related? I mean Pufnstuf's a dragon and Stuff is a dog.

 

[D'Snowth]

There's two possibilities: 1. Pufnstuf's sister married a dog and their son took after their father, or 2. Stuff is adopted.

 

[Drtooth]

So Pufnstuf made a triumphant return today on a special episode of MUTT & STUFF, where it's revealed that Pufnstuf is Stuff's uncle.

There's certainly a family resemblance. I caught a couple minutes of this. I really don't care too much for the format of this show, but I do like how it paid tribute to the producers' roots (and no, no intended tree pun). No doubt the kids this show is meant for don't know who the heck these guys are, but my question is, will their parents? Unless they're the kind that somehow caught them in reruns or somehow got into them through DVD's, I really don't know if younger parents of the target audience would really get it either.

Still, nice to see the characters being reintroduced somehow.

 

[D'Snowth]

I've noticed that the puppets for MUTT & STUFF are built by one of the same builders that did the Mini-munk puppets.

 

[mr3urious]

I would love for the Kroffts to reboot H.R. Pufnstuf, if only to see how the puppets and set pieces would look on a bigger budget. And considering that the original never got closure, it's deserving of a reboot.

EDIT: Forgot about that feature film that the Kroffts have been planning with Sony since 2008. Hope they're able to stick with puppets in that one, but I doubt it.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

Forgot about that feature film that the Kroffts have been planning with Sony since 2008. Hope they're able to stick with puppets in that one, but I doubt it

If they can't get puppets then I would rather the entire film just be CGI instead of half CG and half live action.

 

[D'Snowth]

The Kroffts have outright refused to go the route of CGI, and are sticking to their guns on traditional puppetry - however, they have admitted that many of their puppets now are considerably more advanced than they were in the 70s, with much more radio controls for facial expressions and movements.

As for the Pufnstuf movie, as well as the Lidsville movie, I seem to recall reading recently that those are back in Developmental Heck over supposed interferences regarding the movies' tones and structures.

Aside from their MUTT N STUFF hit on Nick Jr., the Kroffts recently rebooted SIGMUND AND THE SEA MONSTERS and ELECTRAWOMAN & DYNAGIRL, but they're internet-exclusive; the former just had a pilot on Amazon and they're still awaiting to see if it will go to series, meanwhile the former was an eight-episode miniseries on some sort of a platform. While the new Sigmund puppets look remarkable, the new EW and DG look more like Steampunk Lara Croft wannabes.

I'm just still amazed that, given what a small, independent company that they are, that they're still managing to continue working to this day. It's baffling that they retain copyright and creative control over MUTT N STUFF, considering Nick Jr. is owned by Viacom, one of the biggest devil-worshipping international media conglomerates out there (but then again, they're also letting Bagdasarian Productions retain rights and control over ALVINNN!!! AND THE CHIPMUNKS, so maybe their business practices are slowly shifting). Marty often talks about how lucky he and Sid were back in the 70s and 80s in working with the right people at the right times, and how they probably would have never gotten any of their shows done today with the amount of corporate interfence among networks skyrocketing. For example: they personally put out a casting call for Witchiepoo for H.R. PUFNSTUF, and only two people responded - Penny Marshall and Billie Hayes; the former obviously wasn't right for the part (an obviously Bronx witch), while the latter got the part simply by jumping up onto their desk and letting out that trademark cackle; Marty says if they tried that today, the network execs would be auditioning hundreds of witches and not even give them any say in the casting decision.

On an unrelated note, Marty also recently revealed why he and Sid did less shows in the 80s: they were on the verge of going bankrupt. Their shows were very expensive to produce, and with them producing so many at one time (they had four shows going at the same time at one point in the 70s), they were on the verge of bottoming out financially, so they needed to slow down.

 

[D'Snowth]

The Kroffts are talking about rebooting The Bugaloos (again), and this time they're talking about getting Cyndi Lauper to play Benita Bizarre.

 

[D'Snowth]

@Censored Here's the Krofft there I was telling you about.

 

[D'Snowth]

The Kroffts are talking about rebooting The Bugaloos (again), and this time they're talking about getting Cyndi Lauper to play Benita Bizarre.

Here's some leaked photos of the Bugaloos reboot pilot (which, last I heard, hasn't been sold):

Here's the information that's available so far:

- Benita Bizarre won't be played by Cyndi Lauper after all . . . not sure who's playing her.
- Courage is a girl. I'd say this is an attempt by the Kroffts to make the cast more P.C. by having two boy Bugaloos and two girl Bugaloos, but they recently shared some conceptual artwork from 1969 that depicted Courage as a girl then, so maybe Courage was always intended to be a girl, dunno.
- It's hard to tell from these low-quality pics, but it looks like the Bugaloos in general are played by much younger kids than they were in the original series . . . I guess because this reboot is supposed to be a preschool show.
- Much of the original characters are still present, except that Woofer and Tweeter are now robots, and Sparky is a hand puppet instead of a full-bodied suit.