It's interesting that, while Roosevelt Franklin was pretty much only there in the 1970s, all video sources we have for the Headball segments come from 1980s episodes (of course, the English copy of the Hard Head Henry Harris one comes from an audio recording but fans already had a video dubbed in another language).
@minor muppetz Big Jeffy didn't really permanently replace the lavender Alphabeat. Jeffy appeared with the band in two season 21 episode street scenes, and then the next season (Cluck Around the Clock) it was back to normal, then after that, Jeffy was back (Gonna Rock You to Sleep). I was wondering if maybe they were just experimenting or if the lavender puppet got misplaced, found, and misplaced again.
I had thought Cluck Around the Clock came before season 20 (now I look at Muppet Wiki and see that not only is the copyright date 1990, but it has a "first appearance"* listed for season 22).
If the lavendar one was misplaced, couldn't they have just made another one? I wonder if they had permanent puppets for the Alphabeats or if they always just decorated the Anything Muppet patterns.
LittleJerry92 said:
As for Chrissy and Jeffy hanging together - I think it was by that point they just phased out "Rockin' Richard" (who I have always personally believed was the pumpkin one) and kept in "Chrissy" but used Little Chrissy as filler to avoid confusion (since the names in "Four" were from an album song and not necessarily cannon), making him a member of the Monotones in later appearances.
I can't decide if it's more unfortunate that they had two different characters named Chrissy (with one using a few slightly alternate names - Little Chrissy and just Chris) voiced by the same person or if they actually cared to avoid confusion and make him seem like a member. I don't think the members of Little Jerry and the Monotones were mentioned by name often, with "Four" being one of the biggest uses of their names (since their names are referred to there, it's a shame they didn't make that a visual segment), so it is great that they were at least consistent when it comes to their names being used, though Big Jeffy seems to have been referred to by name the most often - seems he was used quite a bit in the late-1980s/early-1990s and might have been referred to by name (in dialogue, not album credits) more often than Little Jerry. And yet around the same time, there was Mountain of Love which brought back the lavendar and pumpkin Monotones, referred to the lavendar one as Chrissy... But also mistakenly used the Pumpkin one for Big Jeffy.
Of course, they might have figured the kids wouldn't care (I think I would have as a kid, maybe slightly older than the target audience), but we all have noticed.
*The recent "trusted sources" that Muppet Wiki has been using have allowed more "firsts" (as opposed to EKAs), I've been told that they do indicate whether a segment premiered in that episode. I should look around more and see what all made their first appearances when.
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