And before Dinosaurs and South Park was Britian's Spitting Image. AMAZING Show. It's one of my top favorites. I must be the only American who knows about it. I own almost every episode but it's such a rare show. And it was huge on Britian. It was from 1984-1996. And the only thing simular to the show that's still strong from 1988-today is French's Les Guignols De L'info. Amazing show, I watch it all the time on their site. I only wish I understood French. But the puppets are amazing and the visual satirie is dark and strong like Spitting Image, though Spits was more sillier. So if you like silly british humor and political, social and celebrity satire, I strongly recommend it. One of my all time favorite quotes was there was these two shakeshear actors they lampooned on the show. Larry and Johnny. Johnny has a duck by his feet saying hello to his friend Larry who's reading a newspaper at the park. "Johnny, Dear Johnny, Dear Dear Johnny, what are you doing here at the park today?" "I came to throw ducks to the bread" "No, it's throw the bread to the ducks!" "Really, I thought it was expensive." And I was just bursting with laughter. That's totally my kind of humor. lol
Well I think there was some sort of controversy with Ethel being thrown of a cliff by the Senoirs of America or something like that who didn't bother watching the ending of the show. The early episodes are funny, plus they swear more, usually just the H and D works, maybe the A word once. I remember Robby saying "Jesus Christ" and I was laughing. But the later ones, they didn't swear. Perhaps Disney got mad over that or something, I was amazed Disney allowed it to be satirical. Thumbs up for them on that.
But yeah the social satire is genius and totally one of my strongest influences in my comedic work. But my favorite thing about Dinosaurs was DinoTV and the hand and rod puppets. Lizzard Skizzard cracked me up, the Guns N Roses satire. "Welcome back to DTV, your in the middle of macho idiot rock, that's right, all weekend long, adalesent males shouting out meaningless songs. this weekend is brought to you by Beer! Now for our smashingly new band Lizzard Skizzard, they won the DTV award for fasted editing." lol Again, totally my sense of humor. There's so much detail in how those lines are written. And I'm still trying to master writing like that. I love it. Plus Steve Whitmire's Axl Rose sounded great. "I'M BETTER THAN YOU! YOU THINK THAT YOUR BETTER THAN ME-HE BUT I'M BETTER THAN YOU-HOO WOOOOW!" lol I wonder if Axl ever seen that. lol He seems like a guy who can't take a joke. How people can get mad at puppets and cartoons is beyond me. They can get away with more than humans could because they look so innocent plus they're a work of fiction. lol
That's why I love this industry and want to be a part of it someday.
I think Dinosaurs was probably the greatest alternative project from The Jim Henson Company besides The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.
I still need to put some Dinosaurs episodes back on my ipod so I can watch while I'm working out at power fitness lol