Muppet re-builds

[BEAR 2]

I’ve noticed that many times when a performer retires/dies their character gets re-designed somehow for the replacement performer. Particularly, I’ve noticed this recently with The Count, Elmo and Oscar. When the new performer takes over, they get a new puppet and the design is significantly different. Any thoughts behind this and what do you think happened to the first puppet?

P.S. the new Oscar design is weird.

 

[Froggy Fool]

Different performers have different preferences and often different hand sizes, that's why they usually rebuild them

 

[MuppetSpot]

Plus different performers have certain preferences with characters.

 

[D'Snowth]

Plus different performers have certain preferences with characters.

He literally just said that.

Different performers have different preferences

 

[MuppetSpot]

I know Peter said he loved the Ernie puppet from 1983, he was using. However, they had to retire it because it became too unusable. However, Peter kept the nose foam.