Muppet Babies (the original one, not the 2018 reboot) debuted on September 15th, 1984. That means that Muppet Babies (again, not the 2018 series) is turning 40 years old this week! That’s a big deal for the not-2018 Muppet Babies, which we will furthermore just assume you can do math and figure out the difference.
As we did with The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock, the ToughPigs team considered reviewing every episode of the classic series on its 40th anniversary. But not only could we not muster up enough enthusiasm for the idea, we just couldn’t foresee a situation where most of our readers would want to read that over the next eight years.
And honestly, that’s bonkers. There are 107 episodes of Muppet Babies – more than Fraggle Rock, almost as many as The Muppet Show, and way more than Aliens in the Family. It aired for eight whopping years, and even more beyond that in syndication. If you know anything about kids TV and how fast audiences outgrow shows, you’ll also realize that it means there have been several generations of kids who grew up on Muppet Babies. Myself included.
So it begs the question: Why isn’t there more love for this series?
The easiest answer is: Because it’s hard to find. And yeah, that’s true. If you were lucky enough to have the old commercially-released VHS tapes, you’d at least have some of the episodes. But if not, you’d be relying on YouTube or those people at comic cons who sell DVD sets of pirated TV shows.
But until recent years, Muppet Babies has been almost as accessible as any other Muppet series. Remember, there was a time before The Muppet Show was on DVD or Disney+. Fraggle Rock only had a few commercially-released episodes before full seasons made their way into our homes. And just about any number of bootleg episodes of Sesame Street can be easily found online. But nobody’s sharing classic Muppet Babies episodes like they do for the episode where Mr. Snuffleupagus runs the New York Marathon.
It’s also possible that the quality of the show keeps people away. Kids today are used to shiny CGI and celebrity voice actors in their cartoons. It takes a special kind of nostalgia to appreciate Saturday morning hand-drawn animation. There’s a charm in the repetition of movement or spotting illustration errors. It’s ugly, but it’s our ugly.
But animation has never been where Jim Henson’s creations shine. I could wax poetic for a while about why puppets are always better than something created in a computer (Waldo withstanding), but I’ll save that for another time. Even as a kid, I recall watching Muppet Babies and wishing I was watching Muppet Adults instead. Not because I necessarily preferred one over the other, but because cartoons were never going to be as enticing to me as practical effects and characters.
To get down to the bottom of this – and to celebrate Muppet Babies’ 40th anniversary – I decided to revisit the very first episode, “Noisy Neighbors” and see how well it holds up.
The episode, for those of you who haven’t memorized all 107 Muppet Babies eps, involves the titular babies in their familiar nursery. Half of them are pretending to be in a submarine (complete with Gonzo’s nose as a periscope), while the other half are in a battleship, and they go to war. Naturally, 1984 kids at home ate this up, since we all grew up watching Das Boot.
To paraphrase the great Huey Lewis, those kids were just too darn loud. So loud, they woke up their neighbor, Officer Carruthers, who calls Nanny to complain several times throughout the episode, insinuating that if the kids don’t keep down the racket, he’ll throw them all in jail. ACAB.
Everyone’s cool with staying quiet except for Baby Animal, who has the attention span and the volume of a snowblower. To calm him down, Baby Piggy reads him a story about a princess and a dragon, which takes us into their fantasy world. Later, Baby Gonzo pretends to be Superman, with Baby Animal playing the part of King Kong.
Then, through no action of anyone featured in this episode, Officer Carruthers calls and says he’s off to work the graveyard shift, so the kids are welcome to make as much noise as they want. Problem solved, and everyone falls asleep. The excitement is palpable.
So, what worked about this first episode? The fantasy elements are charming as heck. Princess Piggy, Fozzie fighting a dragon with bad jokes, and Gonzo spoofing one of the greatest pop culture icons of all time. It’s also just nice to see new versions of these characters we already knew and loved, even if no one really got a good enough spotlight to individualize their personalities.
What didn’t work? There’s no setup to the characters or setting, which relies on us knowing who the core Muppet characters are, as well as how the nursery works. We’re just overlooking all the questions that continue to haunt us 40 years later like: Why does Nanny leave them without any supervision? Is this supposed to be a prequel, or are we still in Miss Piggy’s dream from Muppets Take Manhattan? And where are their parents??
But the big thing that sticks out is the length. At 24 minutes, it feels like an eternity compared to any other preschool cartoon from the past few decades, which are closer to the 11-minute mark. It was a different time, so it’s easily forgivable, but it’s strange to see. The longer time frame does allow the show to take its time without rushing through the plot, leaving time for two extended imagination sequences and a song.
So, does this show work without the benefit of nostalgia? Because believe me, I do enjoy watching it, but so much of that is because I absorbed so much of this during my early years as a miniature Muppet fan. I hate to say, I think it’s best left in the past. Despite some truly great moments in the episode, it feels too dated for most kids to enjoy, and just like it did for me when I was young, it left me wishing I’d watched Muppet Adults instead.
But seeing as this is Muppet Babies’ big anniversary, I’d say it’s worth a revisit. Either for your own nostalgic purposes or for you younger folks out there to really see what life was like in the 1980s. The show is charming and strange, and it’s a valuable part of Muppet history. And because it isn’t available commercially in any form, I feel comfortable recommending other methods, such as YouTube, to find episodes to try out.
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by Joe Hennes – Joe@ToughPigs.com
