Your Thoughts: The Muppets Character Encyclopedia

[muppetlover123]

My book is on its way!

 

[minor muppetz]

While I understand that us Walters of infinitely obsessive Muppet knowledge would pick up on that potential reference linking with his appearance in The Frog Prince, it's an old comedy standard. The joke is that a big monster-type or big eater character would say they like "breakfast, lunch and dinner as their favorite meal" because they love any and all meals as their favorite, it doesn't matter which, so long as they get to chow down.

Actually, under "likes" the whole thing says that he likes "breakfast, lunch, and dinner (he's not much of a dessert person)". I keep forgetting which spelling is "dessert" and which is "desert", and didn't feel like checking the page. And it is kind of funny that he likes all three meals but not dessert. Though there are several monsters in the book that could have had those likes (Big Mean Carl, Behemoth, Doglion, and so on).

 

[minor muppetz]

The Muppet Mindset has posted a review: http://themuppetmindset.blogspot.com/2014/02/book-review-muppets-character.html

I kind of hope that tomorrow's Weekly Muppet Wednesday spotlights a character not in this book (who could have legally been included). Of course I don't know whether the next one was written before the book came out or not (whenever I send in Weekly Muppet Wednesday articles, it's usually on Wednesday after the latest one is online or Thursday).

 

[MuppetMazz]

Any issues with preorders from Amazon for anyone else? Mine hasn't shipped and doesn't provide an expected date. Curious....

 

[DutchMuppet]

Yesterday this book came in for me. It's a beautiful book! I showed it to various people and everyone priced it as 15 pound. When they saw the real price everyone was astounded. And sure some rare Muppets aren't included but for 10 pounds I can't complain!

 

[Minstrel Mayhem]

Australia is always the last to get stuff. we wont get it till early March.

I ordered mine from the Book Depository... usually only takes a week to get here after shipping, and is cheaper than buying retain in Australia 90% of the time.

 

[atrane]

I just wrote a short blog about it for The WDW Happy Place website. Loved the book itself; fun & quick read. Great to see some long forgotten characters, and visually interesting overall-hope it'll draw in some younger generations. I'll post a link after the owners give it their seal of approval.

 

[minor muppetz]

Looking at the Tough Pigs review, there's an image of the two-page spread with both Nigels. In the one with the conductor, one of the images is from The Muppets when Thog got stuck in an arch. Was that really an image to use (I would have expected that to be on the Thog page)? I know Nigel and the orchestra are there, but they're not the main focus. I would think that an image of Nigel from the pilot or the Kaye Ballard episode would have been better to use.

I was surprised to hear that a Snowth appears in the section on Koozebane. I think that's the only time the Snowths have been mentioned to be from that planet. With the Snowths having their own page (with Mahna Mahna), it would have been better if the space was used for characters not in the book who actually were referred to as being from Koozebane, like the Phoob, the Spooble, and The Extremes. I also saw that the Koozebane section includes Cute, the trumpet-nosed Fazoob, even though the Fazoobs have their own page as well.

I mean, it's not like the Monsters section has monsters who get their own pages.

 

[beakerboy12]

As much as I'm a little perturbed about the lack of Digits and Bill, Gill, and Jills, I love this book immensely. The information is solid and the backstories are fantastic and the humor riddled through it is hilarious.

Just seeing Mr. Poodlepants in print is amazing, let alone learning that he "Likes: pants, Dislikes: poodles". It's all just great. I also have to agree with someone on here, the inclusion of Sam and Friends characters was really great. The Muppet Cars spread was neat, too.

And I liked they even included nods at the similarities of characters. Namely, the compared Nigel to Droop and described Muppy's fur as "a little shaggier than Rufus'".

Overall, this book rocks. Buy it. Read it. Buy another one. Eat it, so you might internalize the information. Buy a third one. Sell it on eBay. And buy a fourth one, to cut up the high-resolution Mr. Poodlepants photo to pin on your wall.

 

[minor muppetz]

I got the book today. Enjoyed looking through it. I haven't even fully read every page yet (I've read most).

Somehow I expected the Sam and Friends section to only include images from The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years (well, a promotional image, that's definitely not a still), particularly since I knew that the only characters featured in this book are ones who did appear in the special. But I did wonder if they would have included other photos of Sam, Harry, and Yorick (even if not still images).

That is a great main image of Lips. I don't think I've seen that image before, and can't identify where it could be a still from (maybe Muppets Most Wanted, but it looks like the original puppet to me, not that there's much difference between the original and current puppets).

The section on Muppet birds says that it includes every Muppet bird who doesn't appear elsewhere. It would have been great if it said something about not including Big Bird. Maybe Disney wouldn't want him to be mentioned to risk confusing the public regarding who belongs to who, but perhaps it could have said "every Muppet bird (with the exception of a certain big bird)".

Considering the lack of behind-the-scenes stuff, it's interesting how on Bean Bunny's page, Muppet Vision 3D is referred to as "Jim Henson's Muppet Vision 3D". I wonder if that's the only time Jim Henson's name is mentioned.

I was surprised to see a still from Beautiful Day Monster's debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. Don't know if it takes much to include images from productions owned by other companies in books, but considering the book doesn't have characters primarily from the Sony-owned MTM, MFS, or KSY (though I never expected KSY characters to be in this). But The Ed Sullivan Show is the only production not owned by Disney to have images in the book (maybe the owners of the Sullivan Show charge less than Sony would).

And it seems this book shows a difference between Henson and Disney regarding non-fiction books (but considering this book avoids behind-the-scenes stuff, is this book "non-fiction" enough?): Both before and after 2004, pretty much every Jim Henson biography represents almost every major productions, with plenty of photos, regardless of if the distribution rights and characters are owned by Henson, Disney, Sesame Workshop, Sony, or whoever. But this book, at least when it comes to pictures, pretty much sticks to images from productions Disney owns (with the exception of The Ed Sullivan Show).