Fisher Price's line of 40th anniversary plush have been pretty good looking. In fact, they have the absolute BEST Count VonCount plush ever to hit the market... even better than the 20 dollar Gund one.I also have to chime in with the wish for GOOD plush/puppets. Not just for Disney's Muppets but also SW's Sesame Street.
Now granted, since the Muppet fandom community got spoiled with the poser replicas most plushes that aren't meant to be high-dollar limited edition replicas will pale in comparison but really, it's been way too long (1970's!) since there's been a good line of toy Muppet puppets and Fisher Price as well as the various SST puppet lines demonstrated that yes, it is possible to make mass produced reasonably priced toys that were good (if not awesome) representations of The Muppets without crossing that line of being confused with the real puppets.
TP reported that last year's Toyfair, Disney had plush of the main 5 that looked very close to the puppets that they were witholding for the movie, either the further it got into production or for the movie... strange that they had something almost 2 years away there...and they wouldn't allow photos, so I'll take their word.
Sababa did a good job too... though, some of the smaller plush lacked the detail necessary to make them look more like the puppets (In the Electric Mayhem set, I felt if they did them bigger, they would have really captured the likenesses better... that and if Janice had the yarn hair and Zoot had the thread hair).
All and all, it can be done, but there is a huge difference between a plush pattern and a clay sculpted figural mold. As long as we don't get anything like the recent crop of crane game toys. Those were HORRIBLE!
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YES ! I agree with you. But I wonder if the next group of children would see them as for babies . You know these days children like want lots of action and gross stuff. Look at the new "G" movies coming out these days.... Some are very scary, violent and NOT something I would want my child to see. Tale of the Bunny Picnic and The Frog Prince are soooooo cute......