Posts made in October, 2015
Shrinkenstein and Beyond
Shrinkenstein
Today, we return to more of Jim and Muppets, Inc.’s commercial work. All of them, as far as I can tell, are from 1967. The first is yet another Pak-Nit storytime, like the earlier Shrinkel and Stretchel and Rumple Wrinkle Shrinkel Stretchel Stiltzkin, however this time, rather than a fairy tale, Jim adapts and skews Mary Shelley’s classic horror tale, Frankenstein, into a fractured Pak-Nit fable called Shrinkenstein about a mad scientist–played by the apparently ever-popular Prime Minister muppet from Tales of the Tinkerdee–who creates an evil creature–played by the Muppet monster, Big V (who first devoured Kermit in the “Glow Worm” sketch)–who rampages across the countryside, causing clothes to shrink in the wash! And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling scientist, who “goes sane” just in time to create Pak-Nit, who defeats
Read MoreThe Hollywood Palace, Etc.
“Music Hath Charms”
Today, I have a whole bunch of Muppet variety show appearances from 1966-1967 to make up for my lack of this sort of footage for the previous decade, each of them fantastic in their own right, most of them musical, and two of them ending with Kermit being devoured by a monster (well, technically three, but as it turns out, one of these sketches was a recycling of a previous one), one of Jim’s signature sketch-ending touches.
We start out at The Hollywood Palace, a weekly show that was broadcast from the ABC Palace Theatre in Hollywood on Saturday nights. The Muppets appeared on the show twice, and I was lucky enough to be able to get both clips. The first was filmed on March 19,
Read MoreThe Muppets 1.04: “Pig Out”
Ed Helms rocks out with Sweetums and Bobo.
After a mostly fun but slightly shaky third episode, The Muppets rebounds…mostly in its fourth outing, “Pig Out”. If there’s one thing this show has been absolutely fantastic at, it’s been finding new ways to explore these classic characters, paying respect to their past incarnations while either planting little seeds that yield fresh revelations and perspectives or simply reasserting what we’ve always known and loved about them in entirely fresh ways.
A great example of the former in this one is the sweet little reveal that Sam the Eagle has a huge crush on Janice. Sam has never been the most–for lack of a better word–human Muppet. The reason that he’s so perfectly cast as a network standards and
Read MoreLa Choy and More!
The La Choy Dragon breathes fire.
As 1966 rolled around, Jim and Muppets, Inc., were handling more new ad clients than ever before, particularly with Rowlf’s immense celebrity helping to push them into household name status. And I watched a whole slew of them for today’s post, beginning with the commercials he filmed for the Wilson’s Meats company, featuring Skip and Scoop, two more Muppets who largely seem to be in the Wilkins/Wontkins mold of one character being more excited by the product than the other, however at least from the ads I got a chance to see, are actually a bit closer to the Bert and Ernie dynamic in that there seems to be less physical violence between them
Read MoreComo and Carson
The Reindeer sing for snow.
I’ve been mentioning the Muppets’ many, many variety show appearances ever since my third post here, and I’m happy to report that we’ve finally come to an era for which I was finally able to get some footage to watch (other than the “Glow Worm” sketch and the stuff from The Jimmy Dean Show, the latter of which feels a bit different, given Rowlf was a weekly fixture)! Both of these first two bits were filmed in December of 1965, and both are awesome, rare finds for Henson fans.
The first is from the 20th and was a sketch filmed for Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall and is easily one of my favorite things I’ve seen so far in this blogging journey. You can watch it here. In
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