A thought on the use of the word "comeback"

[Drtooth]

Listen... I know what you're talking about. We have been burned before... but to spend all this money blitzing the heck out of a property they could just as easily shove into a closet and ignore while they trot out something with fleeting stardom that will make them a lot of money in the short run, but has no long term hold. Paramount/Viacom has been sitting on Mighty Mouse for years, only making an obscure T-shirt and Bobblehead, then pretending they don't even own it. Warner Bros is still struggling with what to do with their own Looney Tunes.

Even if you don't agree with the direction of the new projects, you have to agree that Disney wants to make this as successful as possible. Buying things like this is an investment, and you're gonna wanna make that money up any way possible. And so far, they've been pretty successful at it since they decided to have them sit out a couple years after, again, that Oz fiasco.

It's not that I'm not a little skeptic, but they've shown a lot of progress. They have a LOT more muscle than JHC had, and especially has now. Remember, we had 2 specials and 2 TV pilots go unfinished under Disney. Under JHC, did they even do anything? We had a lot more unsold scripts and planned projects under Henson. Let's face it. And guess what, that Muscle could even get the first theatrical movie in 10 years. No low budget telefilms that have to promote their own network, no low budget DTV's... an actual movie... and maybe an actual movie that has good writing and a good director.

 

[matleo]

Fine by me. You can go back to my 2008 posting on how 2010 will be the comeback year we've been waiting for, and I stick by that.

and if you don't want to go back to that one, you can go to 2005...

http://forum.muppetcentral.com/showthread.php?t=16998

or 2004....
http://forum.muppetcentral.com/showthread.php?t=8901

or 2003....
http://forum.muppetcentral.com/showthread.php?t=8663


Sorry Cory, hate to pick on you but I do it with love and I do it for a reason. Like I've said I've spent some time thinking about this and I've stayed out of responding to this thread for the last few days because there's been a lot of good thing said on both sides of the argument that I agree with. But this is where I have a hard time getting excited about the Muppet "comeback". It's like I said we've heard it before. And the part that's frustrating to me..the part that's really bothered me....is that it's not from Disney, or Henson, or Sesame Workshop but it's us. We take the smallest piece of news and run with it and tout it as the great comeback. Then when that news runs out or doesn't pan out the way we hope or whatever we just grab the next piece of news and announce it as the great comeback.


I'm not trying to rain on any parades here and I'm not saying we shouldn't get excited about the stuff coming out of Muppets right now. We should! It's how we let Disney, or Henson, or whoever know that YES YOU'RE ON THE RIGHT TRACK! There's some very very good work being done. In fact if anything I agree with Jamie (Frogboy) the most. I think the clips on the web over the last few years and specifically Bohemian Rhapsody are a huge step up in the terms of the quality but again we, as fans, have known about the quality of some of those videos for a while now...it's what allowed us to see 2008 as the comeback year.

And because of that, I have to agree with Frogster from the beginning of this thread. While Bohemain Rhapsody and the number of appearances are great, I don't know if that's enough for me to throw the label 'comeback' on it.

Having said all this, I am excited about the prospect of a Halloween Special, and the prospect of another movie and I'm very excited by the return of such familiar faces of characters like Floyd, Teeth, Scooter, Lew, Rowlf, and (I can't believe they actually used him!) Lips! But rather than run around and get all crazy about it I intend to just sit back and enjoy each project as it comes along.

--Matt

 

[frogboy4]

...but I will repeat...this is different than 2003, 2004 and 2005. It's not just about one YouTube video, one project or one product. There's a cascade of Muppety goodness set into motion like never before from Disney. I can understand if some people think it's too early to remark about a comeback yet, but the fact that the Muppets have gone rabidly viral on the web, they will be in everybody's mailbox this holiday season, they have numerous popular monthly comic books, they have an all-new album coming out, they have a huge theme park ad campaign and not only do they keep appearing on television, but even rare characters like Lips chime in...well, dude...this IS different.

Gone are the days of slumming for Long John Silvers for some face-time. These are some high-brow projects touched by a little Disney marketing magic. Television, print, web, music and hopefully a new movie if all goes as planned. You really can't pee in those cornflakes.

"I don't care what anybody else says, I'm having a great time!"

 

[matleo]

...but I will repeat...this is different than 2003, 2004 and 2005. It's not just about one YouTube video, one project or one product. There's a cascade of Muppety goodness set into motion like never before from Disney. I can understand if some people think it's too early to remark about a comeback yet, but the fact that the Muppets have gone rabidly viral on the web, they will be in everybody's mailbox this holiday season, they have numerous popular monthly comic books, they have an all-new album coming out, they have a huge theme park ad campaign and not only do they keep appearing on television, but even rare characters like Lips chime in...well, dude...this IS different.

Gone are the days of slumming for Long John Silvers for some face-time. These are some high-brow projects touched by a little Disney marketing magic. Television, print, web, music and hopefully a new movie if all goes as planned. You really can't pee in those cornflakes.

"I don't care what anybody else says, I'm having a great time!"

and again, I'm not disagreeing with you. This is different. My point is that I think we tend to burn ourselves or in this case burn ourselves out when we as a fanbase use the word 'comeback'.

and again, I'm not trying t **** in the cornflakes....although I'd stay away from lemonade is I was you.

But seriously, I think one of the things people are most excited about here is the movie and I don't think we're going to see that in 2010. I was thinking about this last night and in order to have the movie in 2010 it would have to come out later in the year when they've also got the halloween special planned. Which means two things. 1) they'd have to be filmed pretty much back-to-back. and B) they'd end up being released at about the same time. Which to me, would be overkill.

I actually think it'll be 2011 before we see the movie and I'm ok with that. Why? Because I want to see characters like Floyd, and Teeth and Scooter and Rowlf and Robin in them and I ant Matt and David, and Bill to be comfortable in those roles.THAT'S what I see Disney doing that has me the most excited. I see them giving the replacement puppeteers the room to get used to their characters so they can use them....really use them.

Like i said, i'm excited about 2010 and what the possibilities it holds. But personally I want to just enjoy it for what it is when it is and without all the "comeback" hoopla that we as a fanbase burn ourselves out on.

--Matt

 

[beaker]

and if you don't want to go back to that one, you can go to 2005...

Hey, I still stand by all of those posts. If I may, regarding my 2005 post(made in nov 2004), I playfully add a pretty big caveat how I was realizing as I was typing it how the cons outweigh the pros.

Now the cons:

*I'm still not sold on the decision for the next Muppet project to be Muppet Oz, tho I hold out a tiny bit of hope this will have some edge to it, and not be totally banal and limp.

*No actual theatrical film to look forward to

*No prime time show to look forward to

*possible saturation of quantity over quality merchandise. So far, since 2001 most the merch has been obscure, brilliant, and overall very very cool. Though I do like some of the Muppet Disney stuff, like the MV3D stuff.

Ok, so perhaps the cons outweigh the pros

(yeah my old posts are heavy on the [sic])

I in earnest tried to start that late 2004 post with optimism, yet realized(as I did in 2005/2006/2007/2008)
that there just was not much to be excited about.
What ended up happening, as DW and Luke have pointed out, was that Disney kept swapping out Muppet Studio leadership and aborting plans; so any starts to this point had the plug pulled on them.

Now, my august 2003 posting was made out of just the relief that EMTV was out of the picture. As you can see from the comments, we all thought that would herald in a new era...of course LITTLE did we all realize, that the Henson kids realized they simply could not do justice to the Muppets and had to give them up for adoption at the house of mouse.
As a caveat, I will say 2003 was by far one of the *best* years of modern Muppet merchandise in stores.

Finally, the last thread you linked to, from merely 2 weeks prior to the above post written in July 2003; I standby every word of that. In fact every word I said was pretty accurate and true to what was going on. Again, I talk about the plethora of merch that we hadn't seen in quite some time, as well as the other things that were being bandied about at the time.

My only cringe moment in reading those three threads is my over use of "1989", referencing the time where Muppets @ WDW was being wrapped and Jim Henson Hour had just aired as part of Jim Henson's last full year. This concept of continuing where 1989 left off was brought up in 1998 on here, in looking towards 1989 as being "the great return"...other than MFS(a huge box office disappointment), it never happened.

Now you said We take the smallest piece of news and run with it and tout it as the great comeback. Then when that news runs out or doesn't pan out the way we hope or whatever we just grab the next piece of news and announce it as the great comeback.
I absolutely agree! However, in recent years we all(as well as Jim Hill) have been quite vocal of the pessimism that springs from Disney fumbling the ball.

As has been pointed out, what *is* different is that Disney is going out of their way to show that "this is it", as they finally rolling out the long term gameplan we have not seen before...it's "go time", and Jim Hill picked up on this. I really credit the youtube stuff as a kind of barometer of young public sentiment, but as Luke points out it has to be the combined weight of tv, film, media saturation and good public reception.
Bottom line is, it seems Disney is going all out and making it clear they are(putting the Muppets at the forefront of their 2010 parks promotions was the big hint)

We knew the big rennassaince was bound to happen, we just(as I plainly did) tooted the horn a wee bit too often and too soon.

And because of that, I have to agree with Frogster from the beginning of this thread. While Bohemain Rhapsody and the number of appearances are great, I don't know if that's enough for me to throw the label 'comeback' on it.

Having said all this, I am excited about the prospect of a Halloween Special, and the prospect of another movie and I'm very excited by the return of such familiar faces of characters like Floyd, Teeth, Scooter, Lew, Rowlf, and (I can't believe they actually used him!) Lips! But rather than run around and get all crazy about it I intend to just sit back and enjoy each project as it comes along.

Nor should you label those things alone as a comeback.

But when Disney dedicates two big events at their inaugural
D23 convention to unveiling out their plans for 2010(when have they ever done this?) I think it demands attention.

I'm actually not excited at all for the Halloween Special. I'd rather see that creative energy put into the movie or something else unless it's really solid. Just seems like these tv specials/"movies" are a bit hit or miss...and it'd have to be something really interesting to really get the public's attention. Not sure if they are going the 22 minute route(like Monsters Vs Aliens Halloween special) or the usual 45 minutes.

 

[beaker]

...but I will repeat...this is different than 2003, 2004 and 2005. It's not just about one YouTube video, one project or one product. There's a cascade of Muppety goodness set into motion like never before from Disney. I can understand if some people think it's too early to remark about a comeback yet, but the fact that the Muppets have gone rabidly viral on the web, they will be in everybody's mailbox this holiday season, they have numerous popular monthly comic books, they have an all-new album coming out, they have a huge theme park ad campaign and not only do they keep appearing on television, but even rare characters like Lips chime in...well, dude...this IS different.

Gone are the days of slumming for Long John Silvers for some face-time. These are some high-brow projects touched by a little Disney marketing magic. Television, print, web, music and hopefully a new movie if all goes as planned. You really can't pee in those cornflakes.

"I don't care what anybody else says, I'm having a great time!"

That, and I think one acronym sums up why 2010 has long been engineered to be the comeback year by Disney:
D23.

 

[Frogster]

Copy/Paste this while you're at it:

"I know I drive some people crazy with what seems to be ridiculous optimism, but it has always worked out for me."
- Jim Henson.​

Let people be optimistic, eh?

I'm really sorry, but there's a massive difference between how Jim saw things, and how people who are running the Muppets today see things. lol And I'm not really going to copy and paste anything, it's just that, like I've said before, we've heard this song and dance more than once in the past. I'm not trying to run down people's optimism, and it's ok if some of you don't care for my opinions. But I really think what some of us are saying is to not count your tadpoles before they're hatched.

 

[frogboy4]

I'm really sorry, but there's a massive difference between how Jim saw things, and how people who are running the Muppets today see things. lol And I'm not really going to copy and paste anything, it's just that, like I've said before, we've heard this song and dance more than once in the past. I'm not trying to run down people's optimism, and it's ok if some of you don't care for my opinions. But I really think what some of us are saying is to not count your tadpoles before they're hatched.

I see Jim's famous quote as his outlook on life as a whole and not just the Muppet brand. Heck, sure Disney runs things differently. They way they've been running the Muppets since spring 2009 has been solid and successful. They have the marketing machine and man power to make that happen. Jim recognized that and it's why he originally wanted to sell.

Bottom Line: Disney owns the Muppets. They have made good on everything planned for this year and more. They have ambitious plans for next year and view the Muppets as an active property. Their recent attempts to show the public have been successful and overshot the mark.

 

[Drtooth]

I think the biggest clue that we're in for something big is the Bohemian Rhapsody video... not so much how big of a hit it was or anything like that. They had to have rebuilt a good number of those puppets... and that's a lot of money. Why bother rebuilding Strangepork for less that 3 seconds of footage? I mean, any puppet before hand had to have decayed a little by now. And Mahnah Mahnah HAS to have been rebuilt, since he doesn't have the floppy eyes and large nose of the last 2 Mahnahs (Muppets Live and Bandanna Week commercial respectively). This isn't just making Beaker, Kermit, or Piggy... big profile characters that get a lot of millage... these are pretty obscure ones that will either be used in a TV special, Movie or maybe even just a few more Web videos.

And frankly, if plans fall through and we only get Web Videos, that's like a milliondy twelve more things than we're getting out of Henson lately.n I see Frogster's skepticism... and yes... we could easily be burned again... but they're putting out an effort. Heck, we got Lips rebuilt as well. And that's a crap load more than Disney was doing even with their own characters as of late.

Seems that the Muppet "comeback" is coming at a time when Disney discovered itself all over. Remember, they bought them just when Disney's only goal was to get every 12 year old girl in the country to buy terrible albums of terrible pop stars they make up. Disney's actually doing what Disney's good at, pleasing as many potential consumers as possible.

 

[matleo]

Seems that the Muppet "comeback" is coming at a time when Disney discovered itself all over. Remember, they bought them just when Disney's only goal was to get every 12 year old girl in the country to buy terrible albums of terrible pop stars they make up. Disney's actually doing what Disney's good at, pleasing as many potential consumers as possible.

that's also very true. If I were going to ascribe the word 'comeback' to anything it would be Disney itself as a company. I think the build up with the Muppets is indicative of a much larger picture. It seems to me like Bob Iger is trying to get Disney itself back to being a creative company by putting creative people and in charge of their projects and not so many bean-counters. Looking away from the Muppets for a second I know there's a massive overhaul going on in Fantasyland at WDW, they've put john Lasseter in charge of animation, he's working on both 2D and 3D projects and of course there's all the stuff we've been talking on here. If I'm excited about anything, it's that Disney as a company is making a comeback!

I'm actually not excited at all for the Halloween Special. I'd rather see that creative energy put into the movie or something else unless it's really solid. Just seems like these tv specials/"movies" are a bit hit or miss...and it'd have to be something really interesting to really get the public's attention.

See maybe this is wehre we differ most. I'm just a bit more excited about this than the movie. For starters, I think it's more likely to happen and also more likely to happen in 2010. And second, like i said, I think it gives the replacement performers a chance to grow into the characters a bit so that when they get to doing a movie we (the fans) are bit more comfortable with Floyd, janice, Scooter, Robin, Lew, Rowlf, etc. You know, it's one thing for them to invest a into a 45 min. tv special and have us go "I like it but thought (insert favorite character here) sounded really off to me." versus Disney investing tons of money into a project , us paying to see it and saying "Wait where's my favorite character! This isn't the Muppets! I can't believe I spent money on this!"

Also, Also of the last four major Muppet projects (MFS, VMX, OZ, and LTS.....what the heck let's throw KSY in there too!...Of the last FIVE major projects the only one I've really really enjoyed and could watch over and over again is LTS. Which is the only one that's less then 45 min. I'd rather see them build on that with another special then try to outdo that and discover they couldn't.

I'm not saying I'm not excited for the movie at all. I'm just saying I'm more excited about the watching the learning curve I think they're putting themselves on to get there. I tihnk it was an interview with Dave Goelz (or maybe it was Steve) who said the early internet stuff was really just them getting back together and relearning how to do it,

Maybe that's what I look to 2010 as being. Not so much of a 'comeback' persay, but a tremendous period of growth for the muppet family of characters and their handlers. I think we've eseen some good stuff in the last year or two and I think it's going to get better, but I think we're on the uphill swing of the learning curve. and THAT's what I'm excited about right now.

--Matt