Wilkins and Wontkins Ads
Wilkins and Wontkins
In 1957, as I explained yesterday, Jim and his partner, Jane, were approached by the Wilkins Coffee Co., a local brand in Maryland, to produce humorous commercials for them, and Jim responded with a series of ads that is pretty jaw-dropping even today. For the ads, Jim created two new Muppets: the skinny, tall, cheerful Wilkins, and the squat, short, perpetually unpleasant Wontkins, the basic gist being that Wilkins loves Wilkins coffee–he WILL drink it!–and Wontkins doesn’t–he WON’T drink it–but Wilkins won’t let that slide and so instead inflicts numerous, increasingly imaginative tortures on Wontkins for daring to refuse a cup of the precious caffeinated liquid gold.
Read MoreThe Early Years
Jim and Sam and Friends
James Maury Henson was born 79 years ago today, on September 24, 1936, in Greenville, Mississippi–which, not coincidentally, was also Kermit’s home state–living there with his mother and father, Betty and Paul, and older brother, Paul, until the family finally moved to Hyattsville, Maryland in the late ’40s. He grew up loving the movies, imagination, and play. His beloved grandma on his mother’s side, affectionately called “Dear,” instilled in him a love of all sorts of arts and crafts, from drawing to sewing to making props. Throughout his childhood, Jim would often be in the midst of huge, involved projects from the aforementioned ones to assembling homemade working radios and the like. Meanwhile, for entertainment, his family would gather around the radio and listen to comedy, radio dramas, and puppeteers such as Edgar Bergen (who was a huge radio star, despite
Read More