Even More Ads!
Today we have even more Muppet commercials! If you think this seems like a lot, I’ve only been able to scratch the surface due to their sheer volume and the fact that most aren’t available online. Firstly, we have a Cloverland dairy products ad featuring a rather jovial red cow singing a jingle while sometimes clapping her hooves together in excitement. What might be most interesting about her is how positively primitive in design she looks compared to later Muppet cows, such as Gladys from Sesame Street:
The next is very possibly my favorite of all the ads I’ve seen so far. Clocking in at about 2 1/2 minutes, it’s practically a long-form piece which spoofs the classic fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel, in the form of two children who happen upon a gingerbread cottage, complete with witch. Their names are Shrinkel and Stretchel (the same puppets from the earlier Billy and Sue ads), and the witch is our dearly beloved Taminella. In my Tales of Tinkerdee post, I mentioned that, at one point, Jim had been designing a puppet production of Hansel and Gretel (as we all know, he was fascinated by fairy tales) that wasn’t to be and yet he managed to use a lot of his ideas for it in Tinkerdee. Well, here, he was able to use even more of them in what is a very clever twist on the classic tale that manages to pay tribute to the grimness of the Brothers Grimm while completely flipping it on its head:
In this ad for Pak-Nit RX, a product that boasted about its ability to keep clothes from both shrinking and stretching in the dryer, the two little children wander lost not only for a day or two but years in a dark forest before happening upon the cottage. And although in the original, Hansel and Gretel are held captive by the witch for weeks, Gretel kept as a slave and Hansel being gradually prepped to be the witch’s meal until the siblings eventually manage to outsmart her, pushing her into her own oven, in this version, the witch instead pops both of them into the oven immediately!
Which might seem to be an abrupt, grisly end. But that’s when Jim subverts the tale yet again. Moments later, the kids pop out of the oven just as good as new and that’s because of the brilliantly meta reason that, even in the world of this story, they’re puppets and therefore made of cloth, and more importantly, were treated with Pak-Nit RX, which prevents clothes from shrinking and stretching! In fact, they’re the Pak-Nit RX Twins! We’ve seen flashes of genius in Henson’s earlier, bite-sized ads, but here, his imagination, sense of whimsy, and mischievous edge are given full, free reign, and it is a Muppety delight to behold.
Jim did two more Pax-Nit “fairy tale” ads after this, the second of which is called “Rumple Wrinkle Shrinkel Stretchelstiltzkin,” a twist on Rumpelstiltskin (the third happened a few years later, so we’ll cover it in a few days). King Goshposh–here called Impossible III–tosses a young damsel Muppet in a dungeon, commanding her to spin straw into “cotton fabric that won’t shrink or stretch out of shape,” as he heads off to a “gala beheading”. She doesn’t have to bemoan her fate for too long, however, for shortly after who should appear but…Kermit! Who is dressed in a minstrel outfit very similar to his Tinkerdee one, complete again with orange collar. He promises to help her if she’ll agree to marry him, which once again puts Kermit in the trickster character role that he apparently hasn’t fully shed yet, despite evidence in the commercials we watched on Tuesday to the contrary.
Rumpleshrinkelstretchelstitlzkin
But the maiden figures out his real name, calls him “Rumple Wrinkle Shrinkel Stretchelstiltzkin,” and poof! The not-yet-frog turns into a “handsome” man. Or at least according to the announcer. He actually is kind of goofy looking, and hey, who does this narrator guy think he is calling Kermit not handsome?! You just wait till “Bein’ Green” is written, buddy. But, anyway, she lives happily ever after with Pax-Nit RX, yadda yadda. You can watch it here.
Seriously, in what world is this guy better looking than Kermit?
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