how come miss piggy gets a mad face? how
Back when I made these smilies we were really tightened around an individual emotional theme. They weren't to be mere stickers. Matching the emotions and trying to include everybody's favorites was a challenge. Now we have characters ranging from The Muppet Show, Muppets Tonight, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, Bear in the Big Blue House and the Dark Crystal. Not too shabby. We recently updated them and added some new ones. Here's the run down on initially what happened.
We had these rather strong ones:
Kermit = Smile
Scooter = Wink
Teeth = Big Grin
Piggy = Mad
Bert = Frown
Tutter = Cry
Ernie = Silly/Tongue Out
Fozzie = Embarrassment
Gonzo = Concern
Beaker = Surprise
Bunsen = Question
Zoot = Cool
Animal = Angelic
Janice = Love
Statler = Boo
Waldorf = Boring
Rowlf = Sympathy
Then we filled in some gaps with a few more interesting ideas:
Oscar = Grouchy (an off-shoot of mad, but different enough)
Floyd = Sing (not a common smilie, but Muppety)
Red = Excited (not concerned or surprised - Red is excitement)
Gobo = Smirk (he "eh" smirk at times, but it's about the emotion)
Harry = Crazy
Sam = Attitude (it just works)
Pepe = Rolls Eyes (sarcasm is best represented by the prawn)
Forum members passionately lobbied for a Muppet Penguin. Why? Well it just isn't Muppety without penguins.
He comes in handier than I would have imagined:
Penguin = Zany (what else?)
Recently we wanted to revisit the smilies to add some and refresh them. Fans wanted more Sesame and Fraggles, I wanted a Skeksis and a particular member (he he) always wanted a Rizzo smilie.
This gave us:
Rizzo = Shifty (we could have had that from the beginning)
Swedish Chef = Hungry (good image, but doesn't scream hunger)
Big Bird = Wisdom (Sesame's real patriarch / Spinney book title)
Grover = Super (makes sense)
Cookie = Googly Eyes/Insatiable (ditto)
Sherlock Hemlock = Search (don't know what we did without him)
Count = Batty (stretching it a little bit)
Wembley = Coy (it's so Wembley we had to have it)
Doozer = Busy Workin' (this was cut from the original assortment)
Skeksis = Creepy (personal fave)
So, to get back to your question; sure Oscar could be Angry and Grouchy. I am often reluctant to use the pig because of her angry face, but that's really what she is for. Not even the Skeksis can instill the kind of fear the main pig can when she's on a rampage. There aren't that many Miss Piggy avatars used by forum members. I encourage that, What other
necessary and unused emotion would she express and with so few pixels to convey said feeling? Angry fits best. So, long story short - that's why and after many years of use it's likely to stay that way. Just think of it this way - how angelic is Animal really?
Hope this helps!
