Wilkins and Wontkins Ads
Romeo and Juliet
And you can see that Jim got increasingly more creative with pushing the boundaries of what could be done in such brief spots, as they go along. In this set (which actually encompasses more than half of the 180 total he shot), there are a number of ones that riff on famous plays, fairy tales, historical moments, and more. In one, Wilkins-as-Juliet spurns Wontkins-as-Romeo for not loving Wilkins Coffee. In another, set at the Boston Tea Party, an English Wontkins admits that there never would have been a problem if they had only sent the colonists (embodied by Wontkins) Wilkins Tea! And when Wilkins plays William Tell and Wontkins takes the role of his son, Wilkins ends up aiming the arrow at Wontkins’ chest, not the apple on his head, when he refuses to drink the coffee.
Similarly, when Prince Wilkins awakens Sleeping Beauty Wontkins from her slumber and she tells him she hates Wilkins Coffee, the Prince snarkily tells the camera that he can’t believe he waited 100 years “for this old hag”! (Speaking of which, the crossdressing Muppets motif is something that Jim would use a great deal in Sam and Friends, as well, often with Kermit in a blonde wig, not unlike Bugs Bunny in drag.)
And in the Around the World in 80 Days bit, Wilkins Fogg knocks Passepartout Wontkins out of his hot air balloon rather than doing so to his heavy pile of Wilkins Coffee when reducing the weight becomes crucial. These literary-inspired ones also foreshadow later Muppet bits, particularly calling to mind the News Flashes on Sesame Street, where Kermit would play a journalist reporting live from the sites of classic fairy tales and stories, each with similarly fractured endings. There are also some fun time-and-place ones, such as Wilkins trying to send Wilkins coffee in a rocket to the moon years before NASA accomplished that with Neil Armstrong, and a Russian Wilkins secretly smuggling this American coffee into his country, admitting it’s better than the Communist brands!
Also, interestingly, you can see glimmers of famous Muppet techniques in how Wilkins and Wontkins were performed. It’s easy to spot very Kermit-like facial expressions, such as an open-mouthed nod/head-bob/laugh, shining through in Wilkins after each punchline, particularly since Wilkins’ shape is reminiscent of Kermit, as is his higher-pitched voice. Wontkins’ deeper, gruffer voice, meanwhile, calls to mind some of Jim’s other famous characters such as Rowlf and Dr. Teeth (Speaking of which, one thing I’ve always found fascinating about the Muppet puppeteers’ vocal performances is that most seem to have two categories of characters–higher-voiced ones and lower-voiced ones. Most of the characters in each of these groups sound alike to a degree, even while you wouldn’t necessarily be able to identify any given puppeteer’s high-voiced characters with his low-voiced ones. For example, with Jerry Nelson, Kermit’s nephew, Robin, and Gobo Fraggle’s voices have a similar, higher-pitched cadence, as do Pa Gorg and Statler in the lower register.).
Wontkins is shot.
Here, Jim is performing the voices for both characters (with Jane performing Wilkins’ puppetry, lip-synching to Jim’s voice), and it’s notable because it’s the first time that he used his own voice to create a character versus just lip-synching to records as in Sam and Friends, and in that way, we are really witnessing the beginning of his development as a vocal performer here. He is starting to embrace the role of puppeteer in a way he hadn’t before, not just hiding behind someone else’s recording (even if he is still hiding behind camera). This also provides the rare opportunity to see two of the characters Jim vocally performed interacting. Later on, once in a blue moon, Jim characters would perform together, such as in Kermit and Rowlf’s famous duet in The Muppet Movie, but more often than not, he kept those characters separate, as would Frank Oz later.
And speaking of Sam and Friends, just as with the characters on that show, Wilkins and Wontkins are both abstract shapes rather than definable as any particular species, and yet their shapes also foreshadow other classic Muppet odd-couple pairings. I already mentioned how Wilkins has some Kermity characteristics. Similarly, with his rounder shape and wilder eyes, you can see some of Fozzie in Wontkins. They’re also reminiscent of Bert and Ernie, though amusingly, with the personalities flipped. Here the uptight fussbudget is the rounder one, and the wisecracking one who loves pranks is the skinny, tall one. But the glee with which Wilkins abuses Wontkins often feels like a fairly direct foreshadowing of pranks such as Ernie stealing Bert’s nose. There are also a number of gags Jim would later recycle for The Muppet Show and other things, like the one where Wilkins places a phone call and asks for instant coffee, and the coffee instantly starts pouring out of the receiver. That exact gag would happen with water in the first season of The Muppet Show.