The Letter People

[Drtooth]

Thanks for mentioning my piece.

Gotta admit, he was a little hard to draw.

 

[D'Snowth]

FWIW, these are the Letter People we had when I was in kindergarten:

And interestingly, this was the mid-90s, and we were still using the original Letter People to learn the alphabet. The current Letter People are (not surprisingly) a lot more P.C. than they were back in the 70s, to wit: instead of all the consonants being male letters and vowels being female letters, half the alphabet is male and the other half is female, and their traits are a lot more cutesy too (Mr. J and his junk are now Miss J and her jingling jacket).

 

[Drtooth]

Those designs couldn't be any more 70's if you tossed them in a disco with funk music loudly playing into a pile of Screaming Yellow Zonkers.

 

[D'Snowth]

Admittedly, the more I look at those original designs, the more I think they look like stuff I would've drawn when I was in kindergarten, before I really developed any kind of style to my drawing.

And just for another example of how P.C. the new Letter People are today, remember when Mr. H had Horrible Hair? Know what he has now? Happy Hair. Seriously.

 

[Drtooth]

I have to admit, I think the song version vs. the show version of Miss O is like that. I know those things predate the series, but they really improved upon the character by making her obstinate instead of an optimist. And the song in the TV show is better too.

 

[D'Snowth]

I thought she was always obstinate. But then again, I think I remember her being an opera singer more than anything.

Kinda like Mr. K - I remember him more as a football player than for his kicks. I actually remember when we were learning about Mr. K, our teacher asked if any of us could tell what he does, I raised my hand and said, "He's a football player?" "No," she said, "he kicks."

 

[Drtooth]

This video has both the TV series and song and book series Miss O songs.

I really don't like that samba number, but LOVE that Gilbert and Sullivan-esque puppet show piece. Seriously, if she was an optimist in the show, she'd get very obnoxious very fast.

 

[D'Snowth]

The way these characters have suffered at the hands of Political Correctness Gone Mad really makes me wonder how it is after all these years Cookie Monster really hasn't become Veggie Monster, or how Oscar the Grouch hasn't become Oscar the Sweet Potato. Admittedly, Bert seems a lot more chill these days compared to the days of Jim and Frank (or even when Frank still did Bert when Steve took on Ernie).

 

[Mo Frackle]

We were lucky enough to see the LP episodes each week back when I was in Kindergarten (I guess our school had a bunch of old local TV showings lying around). It wasn't until I revisted this series a few years ago that I realized how... interesting some of the earliest puppets looked. I suppose the builders were really trying to recreate the look of the LP drawings.

At least one of the puppeteers (Allan Trautman) went on to work with the Muppets. Among the voice talents was a then-unknown Gregg Berger (Mr. Z).

A little history on the series:

 

[D'Snowth]

It's like I said, some of the puppets look decent enough, others not so much.

Puppets like Miss E, Miss O, Mr. P, Mr. Q, Mr. S, Miss U, and Mr. W, for example, are somewhere between looking professional and looking amateur.

Then you have puppets like Miss A, Mr. G, Mr. H, Mr. L, and Mr. N especially are pretty pitiful looking.

Mr. M looks like something I might have attempted to build.

My one problem with a lot of the puppets is they have no necks, which gives them such limited flexibility and movement.