HarveyK said:
The spider in Little Miss Muffet was scary to me as a tyke
There were actually two skits with Little Miss Muffet in the early years.
One skit had a Guy Smiley like Muppet as a movie or TV director of a Little Miss Muffet sequence. He would direct everyone to their places, then they played background music as an unseen voiceover recited the poem as LMM acted out her part (the tuffet would "crunch" each time she sat on it). But every time they got to "Along came a spider" they'd have to cut because the Anything Muppet that played the spider kept wearing the wrong costume. I think one time he was a fish. Finally, LMM herself ripped off the AM's incorrect costume and added the spider parts. She described the parts as she added them, such as the 8 legs. Upon completion, she was like "There we are, a nice spider... A SPIDER??? AHHHHHHH!!!!" as she ran back and forth then off the set. VOICEOVER: "And frightened Miss Muffet away."
The other skit was just your usual News Flash with Kermit the Frog. Kermit saw Miss Muffet walking by, and asked if she was ready to do the poem. As best as I can recall:
LMM: "What poem"
KERMIT: "You know, the poem. 'Little Miss Muffet, sat on her tuffet...'"
L: "What's a tuffet?"
K: (points) "Isn't it that thing over there"
L: "No silly, that's my waterbed." (pulls off a blanket and we see the bed in motion)
Kermit then mentions the curds and whey. LMM objects.
K: "But you GOTTA eat curds and whey. It says so in the poem."
L: "Did you ever eat curds and whey?"
K: "Well, no..."
L: "THEN DON'T TELL ME I GOTTA EAT 'EM. They're YUCKY."
K: "Well then, what DO you eat?"
L: "Crunchy granola. And this is the good kind, with raisins and dates." (LMM sits on waterbed and eats the bowl of granola cereal she brought along)
K: "So then, I guess we have some of the poem. Little Miss Muffet, sat on her waterbed, eating her crunchy granola. (editor's note: this WAS in the mid-1970s) Of course now we have the spider..."
L: "What did you say?"
K: "Oh, nothing, nothing." (spoken softly) "I didn't want to alarm her about the spider part"
L: "Spiders? Aww, they don't scare us women anymore."
A spider muppet does arrive on the scene, but LMM had made it clear she was not afraid of them. So the spider decides to scare the frog instead. As Kermit is trying to wrap up the report...
SPIDER: "Hey, frog."
KERMIT: "Huh?"
SPIDER: "Boo."
KERMIT: "AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"
Spider chases Kermit back and forth across the set, softly "boo"-ing a few times as he attempts to sign off.