Question about Muppets Commercials Characters

[spidie]

Hi All

I was recently reading Malcolm Gladwell's book "Tipping Point" and he mentioned at the end of the Sesame St chapter that Jim Henson worked in advertising before Sesame St. He said that Cookie Monster originally advertised Lays, Big Bird was a dragon and Grover was in IBM Adverts. I did a search for the Grover adverts but couldn't find anything - would anyone out there have any pics (or even better video!) of them.

Many Thanks
Steve

 

[The Count]

Hi and welcome to Muppet Central. Your best answer for these is to check the Muppet Wiki.

However...
It's possible that author may have confused Big Bird with the La Choy Dragon, two completely different characters.
Grover's earlier form, known as Gleep, was not in IBM commercials, that was Woolly Monster (a predecessor of Cookie Monster).
Also look up Arnold, the Munchos Monster, as that's the last of the ones you aluded to in your post. Hope this helps.

 

[spidie]

Thanks Count - I'll take a look at the wiki.

A friend of mine sent me this video in the end - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KNT0DF6yrg - Gladwell had it wrong, it wasn't Grover for IBM, it was Rowfl the Dog.

 

[muppet_dk]

Heres a few videos of the commercials you mention and as you can see the facts you have are a bit wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bfdaR4xMeU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEKOgOE-0b4

and heres a list of the early known commercials http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Commercials

 

[Drtooth]

What book is this? Seems he didn't do a lick of research when he was mentioning any of this. What is it about, anyway?