Stuff You Should Know - How Muppets Work

Episode Date: August 27, 2009

Jim Henson's Muppets, including the beloved Kermit the Frog, first came to life in the mid-1950s. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore the history and nitty gritty details of the world's most famous puppets in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HouseStuffWorks.com Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side? Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Hey Chuck Bryant. Hey Josh Clark. It's a beautiful day here at HouseStuffWorks, huh?

It is. I have a question for you, Chuck. Yes. Have you ever been half asleep and have you heard voices, Chuck? Josh, I've heard them calling my name. Is that the sweet sound that calls a young sailor? Oh, I can't remember the next line. It might be one and the same.

I think it is one and the same, yes. Clearly, we are speaking of none other than top 25 hit Academy Award nominated song Rainbow Connection. Yeah, as performed by a certain philosophizing frog in a swamp at the beginning of the Muppet movie, huh? Yep. We're going to be talking about how the Muppets work today. I know Josh is rocking in his chair right now.

He's so excited. I love the Muppets. Who doesn't love the Muppets? Well, you show me someone that doesn't love the Muppets and, you know, they've got a butt kickin' comin' to them via me. Yeah. Chuck's the Muppet enforcer, Muppet love enforcer. I think we should probably give a disclaimer, Chuck, if anybody is really attached to illusion

and doesn't really want to know the nitty-gritty details of how Muppets are made and moved about, they should probably not listen to this one. People that don't even want to acknowledge that they are puppets. Yeah. The dreamers, the dreamers. And me. Right. Yeah.

That's awesome. Yeah. So, Chuck, let's start at the beginning. Yeah. Let's start back in 1955. You've got to start with Jim Henson. Yeah. Well, yeah.

There are no Muppets without Jim Henson. It even says it right there in the article, how Muppets work, which you can find on howstuffworks.com, right? Right. Washington, D.C. has a local TV station, and I think the winner of 1955, a young college freshman, Jim Henson. 1955, dude. I know.

People probably had no idea that this went back that far. No. This guy was starting something huge at this time, right? I mean, it's puppets. Yep. Puppets were relegated to what, children's birthday parties, stuff like that. This guy's bringing them on the TV. Right.

Exactly. Huge. And what was kind of surprising is that this show, Sam and Friends, right? That was his first show. Mm-hmm. The one on the local Washington, D.C. television station. Right. Yeah, absolutely.

It was, I believe there was some satire involved, correct? A tad. Political satire parody. They parodied other television shows, and it ran for six years and got him on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Tonight Show. Yeah. And actually, this is where a little lizard-like creature who came to be known as Kermit debuted. Should I do it?

Yeah. Hi-ho. Kermit the Frog here. That is wonderful. Not bad, huh? Yeah. Chuck revealed before the, I guess, the reel-the-reel that's run by a hamster started rolling that he started with Kermit.

That was your first voice? First voice. What else do you got? Oh, my voices are mediocre at best, but I still like doing them. I got to tell you, you nailed Kermit. But I've been doing Kermit since I was like six. Right. Kermit.

Yeah. Well, you got him. I'm trying to get a yay out of Chuck. Yeah, I can't do a yay. I have a limited range. Well, Kermit, lizard-like Kermit, as we'll call him. Kermit was joined by some other wonderfully named puppets that weren't quite called Muppets yet.

Right. These are still puppets in Henson's mind. Uh-huh. You had Sam Yorick, Harry the Hipster, one of my favorites. Right. Professor Magcliff. I'm surprised it wasn't a hippy rob. No hippy rob yet.

Give it another decade. Right. Mushmellen and chicken liver were part of the regular cast. Right. Basically, it was Henson and a classmate of his named Jane Nabal, who later became Jane Henson. Yep. They met up and she kind of assisted him early on.

They fell in love, dated, fell in love, and she was actually replaced when they got married and had kids by one Frank Oz. Frank, a 19-year-old Frank Oz. And he was originally hired just to be the right hand, literally, of Rolf the Dog. Right. They call that technique right-handing. Right. We'll get into that.

Which we'll get into. And Rolf, actually, fun fact, Rolf the Dog with the big floppy ears, who's performed with the likes of Liberace, among others, was actually created specifically to sell purine and dog food. Yeah. After he did salmon friends, he produced TV commercials for a while with the early Muppets, a bunch of them. So this is clearly, we've transitioned into the era where there were Muppets.

We went from salmon friends and now Muppets are starting to come about, Rolf, Kermit's now a frog. He's made that sexual transition from lizard to frog, that rite of passage that every lizard has to go through. And there's still no TV show. We're in the 60s and everyone's getting to be aware of the Muppets. Chuck, like you said, they were on the Ed Sullivan show, the Jimmy Dean show, which you should have been in the green room for that one.

Sausage everywhere. He did create some pilots, but they never took. No one ever bought them up. No. And he got really close with ABC, but they walked on a deal. What really kind of catapulted him into a possible TV deal was the formation of a kid's show called Sesame Street. Yep.

The Children's Television Network started by Joan Acuni in 1968. Right. And Jim Henson always kind of thought of his puppets and the Muppets as for adults. Right. Like adult stuff. Oddly. Like even today, there's Puppet Up Uncensored, it's a live improv Muppet show that's carried on by his son, Brian, and that's very much in the tradition of Jim Henson's original

idea, which is these are puppets, but they're for adults, like there's just that kind of ironic twist that these puppets are cursing, you know? But apparently somewhere along the way, he came to figure out that children could be a very sophisticated audience, was a quote in the article. Absolutely. So he won along with Sesame Street, right? Yeah. And that's really where it blew up.

Everyone who grew up in the United States and probably elsewhere watched Sesame Street as a kid, and may still. And that's where we were introduced to Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird and Burton Ernie, Cookie Monster, that didn't get any more classic than that. No. Grover is my favorite Sesame Street character. Grover. Really?

Yeah. I think it's one of my favorites with a Grover finger puppet. Did you? This is back in like the old VHS days where you could edit, like I literally had to edit it all in camera as I shot it, and I used like a Ween song and a Grover finger puppet. He's pretty fun. Does this have nothing to do with karate, Chuck? No, no, these are my early filmmaking days.

Gotcha. It's fun. So, okay, so Sesame Street takes off, and it's still going today. I mean, this has got to be one of the longest running television shows of all time. Yeah. I think 60 Minutes has a beat, maybe General Hospital. Sure. Has General Hospital been on since the mid-50s?

I don't know who cares. Yeah, but, dude, that's a really long time for a single television show to run. That's a lot of crap. It is. They just shovel it on, don't they, Chuck? Yeah, back to the goodness of the Muppets, though. So he's almost there. He's so close.

He's been shooting pilots. None of them are getting taken up, ABCs walked, and a little show called Sarant Live starts up in 1975. Yeah, I did not know this until I read this article. I didn't either, Chuck. And I'm a big SNL fan. I'm trying to sound like I did know this already. Okay.

So the first season included sketches called The Land of Gorge. Yes, which were larger Muppets. And the SNL writer said, we're not writing for puppets. Yeah, in fact, I think their head writer is famously quoted as saying, I don't write for felt, which I thought was kind of... Who was that? Al Franken? No, it wasn't Al Franken.

I can't remember his name, but... Senator Al Franken? Senator Al Franken. It's so crazy. So that was very short lived. Similarly, Henson strikes a deal with ITC, and they start shooting the Muppets show in London, and syndicating it out to CBS, and this is 1976. Yeah, the pilot, though, I thought was interesting, I should mention, was the name of the pilot

was called Sex and Violence. They actually... I was watching it earlier, and one of the Muppets comes out, not one I could identify by sight, comes out and there's this huge thing carved out of stone. It says Sex and Violence, and the announcer says, and now the end of Sex and Violence on TV, and the Muppet presses a dynamite plunger and blows up Sex and Violence, and then the Muppet show theme starts. Well, there you have it.

Yeah, that makes sense then. Yeah. I thought it was just one of those ironic names or something. I don't think so. Like Jim Henson was trying to be ironically funny. I think he was still, but sure. Yeah. Gotcha.

The end of Sex and Violence. The Muppet show was born, and the rest is history. The end. The end. Thanks for coming. Chuck, what was your favorite Muppet? It's in Space. Nice.

That was good. How did you get your voice to do that? Any time you say those three words together, that happens. Well, let me try. You should try it at home. It's in Space. Huh, that was good. That was good.

Or the judges. The two old guys in the balcony? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What was it? Statler and Waldorf. Statler and Waldorf. Those guys were excellent.

I guess Waldorf. I guess we should talk about who the creator actually voiced specifically. He did, obviously, he did Kermit the Frog. He did Rolf the Dog. He did Waldorf. He did Dr. Teeth of? Electric Mayhem. The Electric Mayhem, which was the hippie band.

I think Dr. Teeth was probably modeled after Dr. John, that's a guess, but I think so. Yeah, he had that kind of New Orleans accent, didn't he? Yeah. He did travel in 2023, and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European River Cruises. And right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour.

That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. Visit gateonetravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gatethenumberonetravel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. Hey friends, whether you need it for work, school, or a special project, it's important to have the right printer, right, Josh? That's right, and the Epson Eco Tank is a new type of printer that doesn't use cartridges.

Stop buying expensive ink cartridges and save yourself the frustration of replacing ink cartridges ever again. That's right, the Epson Eco Tank printers have super-sized, easy-to-fill ink tanks and come with a ridiculous amount of ink. Yep, with the Epson Eco Tank, you don't have to worry about running out of ink, so start printing in color. All you want, kiss expensive cartridges goodbye. Get yours today, because Eco Tank is changing the way people print.

Eco Tank makes it easy, so make the switch. Add Eco Tank to your online shopping list so you can just fill and chill. Epson Eco Tank printers, available at participating retailers and at epson.com. And then Link Hogthrob of Pigs in Space. Of what? Pigs in Space. Excellent. And he did the Ernie half of Burton Ernie.

Yeah, who I have to say, Ernie's one of my favorite characters, I know he says to me street, but he's one of my favorite muppets. I kind of go for the really sweet, kind-hearted ones. Really? Ernie, Fossey. Yeah. Bunsen. Which one was Bunsen?

The little professor, the little affable professor with Beaker. Oh, yeah. Love them. Did you see Beaker doing Ode to Joy? No. It's pretty cool. It's on YouTube. Really?

Type in Meep and Ode to Joy, and it'll come up. Meep. Yeah, he's like, Meep, Meep, Meep, Meep, Meep, Meep, Meep. It's pretty cool. And of course, the chef, the chef, who... The Swedish chef who actually has the distinction of being the only muppet with live human hands unexposed or uncovered by gloves or anything like that. Yeah.

He's the only clip of the Swedish chef, and you can very easily see why they did that. He has to put dashes of things in and pinches and stuff in, so he actually has, I believe, Frank Oz's hands. Yeah. And then that's Jim Henson doing his head. Yeah, and we'll talk about the muppeteering in a minute, too, because it gets pretty intense. So I get ahead of myself sometimes. I know.

It's just exciting. And then, Frank Oz, of course, which was the other half, and I think the quote in the article, which I thought was cool, was Jim Henson said that Frank Oz was probably the person most responsible for the muppets being funny. Right. Frank Oz is a very funny guy. He is. He also did...

He also puppeted and voiced Yoda in all the Star Wars. Oh, you knew that, did you? Yeah. I think everyone did it. Frank Oz did Yoda. And he did Rolf the Dog. I'm sorry, he right-handed Rolf the Dog. Jim did the voice.

That's what... Remember, that's what he was hired for at age 19. That's right. He did Burt. The Burt half. He did Grover, your favorite. Cookie Monster. Animal.

I love Animal. A lot of screaming of that one. Miss Piggy and Fuzzy Bear, of course, two of the iconic characters. And Frank went on to direct movies. He worked with Henson for, like, 30 years. And then directed movies. He directed What About Bob and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and some other classics. I'm going to tell you, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is one of the greatest movies ever made.

And he's acted, too. He was in The Blues Brothers briefly. Oh, was he the corrections officer who hands him back his prophylactic? Yes, he is. One prophylactic. Later on, he reprises that role sort of in trading places. He plays the officer checking out Dan Ackroyd in prison in that film, as well. Gotcha.

So he's a specialist. He plays officers giving prisoners their... The poor guy has a tight cast. Poor Frank Oz, yeah. So Chuck, you want to get into a little behind the scenes stuff? Yeah, why not? We might as well. Well, let's start with how a Muppet is made.

Yeah, Josh. The Muppets were created only by Jim Henson. He did all the original sketches, and he built some of the original Muppets when he was still kind of a small shop. Yeah, but he figured out pretty quick that he had too many in his head, and he needed too many to just do it himself. So, yeah, he started out using some materials like paper mache. That didn't work out because it was too hard.

And then he tried different kinds of foam. I think he used foam rubber, but found that that deteriorated. Yeah, so he's reticulated polyfoam, which is, I imagine, very much like foam rubber, but a little more durable. Right. And I think it's more flexible because that gave him the opportunity, if you stick your hand in Kermit's head to operate the puppet, to move your knuckles around and like he would raise an eyebrow, and it would give him a little more feature to his face.

Chuck, you know I love lore. I want to toss this one out. Kermit, lizard Kermit, pre-great transition Kermit, was actually made from... His, the skin of Kermit was made from a fuzzy green coat that Jim Henson's mother owned. Yeah. And his eyes were two halves of a toy, which I'm not familiar with. I wouldn't either. Wacky...

Wacky stacks? Yeah, wacky stacks. I've never heard of that. Cut in half? Yeah, they always kind of look like ping pong balls with the little pupils drawn on. Yeah, well, let's go ahead and talk about that. The pupils? Yeah, that's a...

They say that they do the eyes last when they're building muppets because it's the most important part. And the pupils are actually very important. And this I didn't know either. The bigger the pupil, the younger the muppet. Right. Pretty cool. Yeah, and it really kind of makes sense.

It gets the point across that they're kind of wide-eyed and innocent and unfamiliar with the horrors and evil of the world. Right. And it says they also tilt the pupils in slightly to give them more focus. Well, they move them closer together. Because if they just put them on these huge eyes where they should be in the middle, muppets would look like they had lazy eyes. Right.

And the man responsible for this was one of the first guys that Jim Henson hired. His name was Don Salin, or Solon. Yeah, Solon. Solon. I get the impression that this guy was the man behind the man in a lot of ways. Jim Henson was this very creative, artistic person, and he knew what he was doing. But I think Don Salin was the one who was like, okay, I'll make it work. Well, he was definitely the master, like a sewer, it sounds like.

He came up with the Henson stitch, which he very graciously named after Henson, the Henson stitch, which is, I guess, a method of sewing that hides the seam. Yeah. Because you don't want to see a seam right there. It's like, oh man, I forgot that's a puppet. Exactly. And this is so chock-full of things I never knew. I'm so glad we're doing this.

Kermit the Frog actually has a stitch, a Henson stitch, going right up the center of his nose. And you would never know it because the Henson stitch and the little fuzzy felt kind of helps to hide it. Yeah, and the fuzzy felt actually is called Antron Fleets. It's the covering of Kermit and most of the other, you know, that kind of Muppet skin. Yeah. They actually call it Muppet Fleets, that fabric.

Sort of like a worn tennis ball. Yeah, you know you've arrived when there's a type of textile named after your creation. For a stitch, sure, named after you. Yeah. So, most Muppets, well, there's either two ways you can go about it. There's either the hand and rod method of operating or a live hand. Right. You've got the live hand and that is when you literally stick your arm into the arm

of the puppet, into a glove, or in the Swedish chef's case, a natural hand. Right. And there's actually two people operating it. Let's start with the hand and rod one, or rod and hand. Yes. So, most Muppet tears, Chuck, are right-handed. And so their right hand would be inside the Muppet operating the head, the face, that kind of thing.

Yeah. Their left hand would be holding the two rods that were attached to the Muppet's hand. Grover's an example of a hand and rod one. Right. So, the left hand would make the hands clap, that kind of thing. These two very thin dowels, you could move them with your fingers, right? Sure. So, one person can operate it.

Right. And actually, since most Muppet tears were right-handed and they were operating with their left hand, most Muppets are left-handed, since they were operating the hands with it. Yeah. Another cool fact. Except there was one Muppet tear who was left-handed and all of her Muppets were right-handed. Oh, really?

No, I didn't know that. Yeah. Man, I'm learning so much. And then occasionally, you know, clearly if one person's operating both hands, there's a limited amount of things they can do. That's where the right-handing comes in. If you need specific movements done with both hands, then a second Puppet tear comes in, operates only the right hand, which is what Frank Oz was hard to do in the case of Rolf.

Right. Ernie's another example, too. Is he right-handed? Yeah. There's one Muppet tear who's two guys standing next to each other. There's one guy who has his right hand up as high as it can go and he's operating the face and then his left hand is up the arm of the Muppet and then the other guy has his right hand up the Muppet's right hand.

Right. There's two people operating these three parts and they do a pretty good job. But you really, you think about it and you just, you look at Ernie or something and you don't, you wouldn't think that there's two people operating them and it sounds very cramped and close. Yeah. And it is. Yeah.

I mean, talk about Henson at the beginning of the Muppet movie when Kermit's on the log. Oh, yeah. Well, sure. When the shots in the movies where you don't see a human, well, I guess let's backtrack a little. What they usually do was a technique that Henson invented called platforming up. So they would build the actual Muppet stage about eight, you know, six to eight feet off the ground so the puppeteers could stand fully upright so they don't have to bend over.

Sometimes when that wasn't possible, they built trenches for the, for the Muppeteers to get down in. And then for the movies, which is what you were talking about for the scenes where like Kermit was sitting on the log and singing Rainbow Connection at the opening of the film, Jim Henson was in a little capsule, cramped down under water. Under water sealed with this thing all around. There's a tube sticking up out of the water, probably disguised as a reed that allowed him to breathe.

Exactly. But they were showing off right out of the bat, right out of the gate. They did a 360 shot of Kermit on the log to show that. Right. No wires. Right. This is not a marionette. Pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty cool. I love that. And then they did scenes where they were like riding bicycles and in some cases I think they had to have multiple, they called it Muppet Switching where they had like a full body Muppet that they would occasionally have to use the marionette wires. Or they would have a little person in it.

Or they would have a little person or they would use a remote control which came a little bit later. Also, this was my favorite, when they had a Muppet driving a car, the car was actually being driven. So the Muppet would be in the front seat, the Muppeteer would be crouched down in the back seat operating the Muppet and then there would be a little person in the trunk driving the car with remote control. Looking at a video screen.

Yeah. They're actually extremely sophisticated. What they have to do, this is incredibly complex. Imagine having to build, like you have to know exactly what's going to happen in every scene. Right. Then you have to build the set to accommodate a human person and a Muppet and their Muppeteer. I know.

So there may be several different levels. It sounds very dangerous. Yeah. And then as a Muppeteer as well Chuck, they have, and they have had since the 70s, monitors strapped to their chest so they can see what their Muppet is doing, right? Which is all backwards. It is backwards. So they have to know that if they are looking at the screen and they want their Muppet to

move left, they have to move right. Very uncomplicated. I mean, I imagine that the wiring, the neural connections of these people's brains are very unusual. If you could slap them in a Wonder Machine and take a look at them next to like one of ours, I'll bet you'd notice some real distinction. Yeah. We should write an article on Muppeteer's brains.

Be good. And you're dead on, man, because one of the Muppeteers, there's been about a hundred of them. One of them named Dave Golsett. It takes maybe five years to do everything without thinking about it. In fact, I still find it difficult. And Frank Oz said, what you're doing is so complicated that you really don't have time to think about what you're doing.

First your body understands, and then your mind grasps what you're doing sometimes. Yeah. So very complicated stuff. There's one other kind of Muppet. We've got hand and rod, live hand or right hand Muppets, and then there's full body Muppets like Big Bird. Sure. And this is actually, you know, Big Bird's as tall as he looks.

What is he? Like eight feet tall? He's pretty tall. So there's a Muppeteer in there, probably a fairly tall Muppeteer on platform shoes. Five inch shoes. Standing up with his right hand going up to Big Bird's mouth. And it's a reach too. Yeah.

Can you imagine? Yeah. I'll bet they feel like Neil Pert all the time. Right. You know what? You should look on the article actually, and there's some really good, excellent illustrations that shows like Big Bird with the person inside of it. And it is a stretch, man.

That would get really, really tiring, just physically exhausting, I would imagine. Yeah. So the right hand's up, the left hand's controlling the left hand, and then there's a wire connected to the left elbow that's connecting Big Bird's right hand, or that's controlling Big Bird's right hand. Right. Which is why, if you notice, if you watch Big Bird, when the right hand goes up, the left hand goes down.

When the left hand goes down, the right hand goes up because it's like a little pulley system. Right. But we were talking about, you know, Muppeteers performing in trenches on the set, or platforming up, or, you know, how difficult it is to create these sets. And once you know what they're doing, you can see it pretty easily. Like I was watching a clip of Steve Martin playing dueling banjos with some Muppets on the Muppets show, right?

Classic. And they're doing it like, I guess, in between performances, because they're out in the theater seats. And Steve Martin doesn't move the whole time. So God knows how many pits are on either side of him, and how far he would fall if he stepped one way or the other. And then some of the other Muppets are in the rows of seats behind him. So this clearly provides a trench for the Muppeteers, too.

Once you kind of know how they did it, you can see the techniques in use. It's pretty interesting. Yeah. I bet it was a cool set to visit for sure. The sets, we're usually speaking of sets, where there were a couple of ways they could do it. Muppet-sized, when there was only Muppets involved, which would be scaled down, obviously, or when the Muppet show was famous for having celebrity guests each week.

When humans interacted, and as they do on Sesame Street, too, they would have kind of a mix. Some things would be human-sized, and then they would do, it's a technique called force perspective, when they would make a door 7 eighths the size of a real door in the background to make it look like it's really far away, or just to bring everything to where it all matches up. Fantastic. Pretty cool.

Yeah, that is cool. What's the quote from Carol Burnett? Because the article talked about humans interacting with Muppets, and what's it like to act with polypone? She said something like, when you're standing next to Kermit, and interacting with him, you totally believe him. Right. She was on the Muppet show a lot, wasn't she?

Yeah, she was. And the other cool thing was they said that between takes, they said the puppets would often just kind of chit chat with the actors, like making small talk, just totally buy into it. Yeah. It was a good show to do. Yeah, it was a good time for it too. And Chuck, if you notice, there's a lot of, there's so much going on on the Muppet show.

Yeah. They really nailed the realism, in part, because there are so many Muppets going around. Yeah, and the big scenes. Right. And then you have the stars, clearly, like Miss Piggy, Kermit, Swedish Chef, Bunsenbeaker, all them. But then you also have some Muppets who you just don't really recognize. The background extras, basically.

Right. There's actually a name for these Muppets. They create blank slate Muppets, and then, depending on what they need, they have all sorts of costumes, eyebrows, eyes, noses, all that stuff that they can just switch out real quick. Pretty cool. And what do they call them? Well, there's a couple of names.

Originally, they were called Anything Muppets, but the one I like, they were called What Nots. Yeah. I love that. I knew you'd like What Nots over Anything Muppets. Well, who wouldn't? Yeah. The What Nots would be a good band name.

You're ready to travel in 2023, and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours in European River Cruises. And right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. Visit GateOneTravel.com for more information or to book your tour.

That's GateTheNumberOneTravel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. Hey friends, whether you need it for work, school, or a special project, it's important to have the right printer, right, Josh? That's right. And the Epson Eco Tank is a new type of printer that doesn't use cartridges. Stop buying expensive ink cartridges and save yourself the frustration of replacing ink

cartridges ever again. That's right. The Epson Eco Tank printers have super-sized, easy-to-fill ink tanks and come with a ridiculous amount of ink. Yep. With the Epson Eco Tank, you don't have to worry about running out of ink, so start printing in color. All you want, kiss expensive cartridges goodbye.

Get yours today because Eco Tank is changing the way people print. Eco Tank makes it easy, so make the switch. Add Eco Tank to your online shopping list so you can just fill and chill. Epson Eco Tank Printers, available at Participating Retailers and at epson.com. So yeah, they were basically the background extra of the Muppet Show and they would just interchange these guys and girls. I guess they were gender-specific, sure. Sure.

Ms. Piggy actually had her own costume designer, or her own real human costume designer for the Muppet Show. Right. Well, not few, but one of the Muppets that wore clothes, a lot of them were in the buff. Yeah. Kermit was. Well, Kermit actually wore his trench coat sometimes. Well, when he was on Sesame Street, he was the roving reporter where he had the trench

coat and the hat and everything, which was pretty awesome. I love the idea of a frog reporter. And then on the Muppet Show, his character was kind of the lead producer of the show. That was kind of the idea of the show. That leads me to the 30 Rock thing that I was going to tell you about. Okay, lay down. The television show, 30 Rock, there was a thing on the internet, someone did on a blog, I think, where they linked the Muppet Show to 30 Rock and how they were basically the

same show. And Liz Lemon was Kermit trying to pull the show together amid the craziness. Oh yeah. Jane Krakowski was Ms. Piggy and I can't remember the other characters, but they kind of tied each one to the other and the only one who they couldn't get a representation of was the Alec Baldwin character, which I thought was pretty interesting. Maybe he would be Carol Burnett. Yeah, maybe so.

Or I think they said he could have been both Waldorf and Statler. Gotcha. Something like that. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Chuck, I guess that's kind of emblematic of the Muppets, right? The Muppet Show produced a bunch of spinoffs. First of all, you've got the three movies, right?

Yeah. The Muppet movie, The Muppets, Take Manhattan, and The Great Muppet Caper, all three of them excellent, excellent films. And apparently there's Seth Rogen and Jason Siegel, the actors from Knocked Up were trying to make another Muppet movie. And I don't know if, yeah, I don't know if that's ever going to happen, but they were kind of in talks with the Henson people to write a script and make another Muppet movie. Did you ever watch Fragile Rock?

Did I watch Fragile Rock? I didn't actually. Dude, Fragile Rock was on when I was 11, 12, and 13 on HBO. So you did watch Fragile Rock. Right when I first got HBO. Yeah. So you just answered the question. So yes, I lived and breathed Fragile Rock.

Okay. I lived down in Fragile Rock. Chuck, you will be happy to know, or possibly dismay, that there is a Fragile Rock movie that's supposed to have already come out that hasn't yet, but I imagine it's coming down the pike. It is. I looked it up today and right now they have the date listed as 2011. Good God.

So we'll see. Okay. And Fragile Rock is not the only one. Did you ever watch Muppet Babies? I did not. That was after my time. That was right in my time. Probably embarrassingly, maybe slightly after, but I still watched it.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, that was a really, really good cartoon. Barbara Billingsley played the nanny whose face you never saw. Oh, really? Yeah, they used to have some great adventures. I didn't know that. They took me along on.

And then my favorite was Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas. Have you seen that? Oh, man. Are you joking? How old are you? It came out in 1977. I was six years old. I was one.

Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas. Have you seen it, Jerry? No. Jerry hasn't seen it. Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas is one of the best Christmas specials ever in the history of Christmas specials. I'll check it out. It was awesome.

Okay. The River Bottom Nightmare Band was, there were two bands. There was Emmett Otter, clearly with his Jug Band, who were these little nice otters that played country jug music. And then there was the Evil Faction, which was the River Bottom Nightmare Band. And they did this hard rock heavy metal stuff, and they had a snake Muppet that was swimming around in a tank. It was awesome.

That's pretty cool. Really, really good. I will check that out. I'll add that to a Christmas story, and it's a wonderful life. You totally should. Okay. Well, that's pretty much Muppets. They're still going on.

As we mentioned, Brian Henson's doing the Puppet Up Uncensored improv show. Yeah. I think you can catch them at Comic Con in San Diego, Australia. TBS had some stuff. I'm pretty sure if you type in Puppet Up on the Internet, it'll bring up some stuff for you. There was a Broadway show. There is a Broadway show called Avenue Queue.

It's like a revision of Sesame Street, but with adults, a little more drama. Yeah. They had to work it out with the Henson Company to get approval. And they wanted Tony in 2004 for Best Musical. Yeah. Good move there. Yeah. And I want to just recommend, if anyone visits Los Angeles ever, or lives in Los Angeles,

if you live there, you know about it. But the Jim Henson Company is located at the corner of La Brea and Sunset, and it was the original Charlie Chaplin Studios. So it's this really cool, old, kind of English tutor studio, but it's small. It's not like some big studio. It's right in the middle of Hollywood, so it's not very big. But you drive by there now, and it's got a big archway right when you drive in. And on top, there's like an eight-foot-tall Kermit dressed as the Charlie Chaplin little

tramp character with the top hat and cane and everything. Cool. It's really cool. And the Hitler mustache? Yeah, the Hitler mustache. No, I don't think he has the mustache, actually. So Chuck, I want to leave everybody with a really chilling thought. Imagine Jim Henson, back in 1955, had decided to go into accounting, and this world was

a world without muppets. Are you trying to make me cry? Isn't that a weird thought? Are you trying to make me punch you in the neck? Imagine there are no muppets. It really kind of barrels it into perspective. We should write a book called A World Without Muppets. Like some sort of alternate reality fiction.

Really awful. It's nothing but war. So thank you, Jim Henson, who everyone knows sadly in 1990, passed away of a kind of pneumonia. They said it wasn't actually pneumonia, but it was a bacterial infection that shut his organs down. Basically, he complained of flu-like symptoms to his wife or his ex-wife, who he was still close with. I think they were separated at the time and went to the hospital and 20 hours later died.

Yeah. It was very, very sad. But his children continued that tradition, and his son does not actually do the voice of Kermit, as many people thought his son, Brian, a lot of people thought that he took over for Kermit. It was actually me. I took over for Kermit. Yes, you did.

That's my side gig. Yeah. So that's muppets. I could go on for hours. I know you could. I've got to stop you right here. We're going to press stop on the stopwatch, okay? Okay.

Chuck, are we doing any listener mail today? No, Josh. No listener mail. Okay. In the next special episode, we want to play it out with a little treat for the fans, a little snippet from a song we all know and love, so without further ado, take it away. Thanks for coming, everybody. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

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