We’ve got more Muppet news to catch you up on! So if you’ve been living under a rock, now you’ll have no excuses for not knowing about all this oh-so-important stuff!
Sesame Street has released material on cassette, CD-ROM, DVD, and Laserdisk. What next, penguins? No, USB shaped like the characters’ heads, of course. Sesame Workshop just debuted their newest tech, each of which will feature a different Sesame video (including some great ones like “A Celebration of Me, Grover” and “Cookie Monster’s Best Bites“) and empty space for your own music or data. They don’t quite have the same portability as a normal thumb drive, but how many excuses do you really need to carry Abby Cadabby in your pocket?
Yo, Kermit the Frog is da bomb! Or, that’s what some folks at a school in Colorado thought when they called in the bomb squad to check out a Kermit doll. Crazy Harry is still at-large and wanted for questioning.
“Song of the Cloud Forest”, a special first seen on The Jim Henson Hour will be released onto DVD on April 13. The special features an environmental message that’s so hip nowadays, as well as cameos by Jerry Nelson and Fran Brill. You can imagine which one we’re more excited about.
Speaking of Jerry Nelson, he has a brand new album out called “Truro Daydreams”. If you haven’t bought it yet, then you are put on probation until you do. Seriously.
The Economist put out a fluff piece asking the all-important question, Are the Muppets liberal or conservative? That sound you hear is everyone on the internet rolling their eyes in unison.
The TLC program Cake Boss recently had a Sesame Street-themed episode in which they got to hang out with Cookie Monster and his pals. And then they made a cake that looks too good to eat. Click here to watch the entire episode. But be warned, I think the video gave me a couple cavities.
Hey, do you like Fraggles? Do you like puppets? If your answers to those questions were yes and no, then you’ll love the animated Fraggle Rock series, which just came to DVD last week. While I’m sure they’re alright in their own regard, they’ll always be Fraggle Rock’s dimwitted little brother to me.
Many of us are LOST fans over on the ToughPigs forum, so it was eyebrow-raising to us to see this picture of a Muppetized Dr. Chang. Is it real? What does it mean? Who is performing him? I have so many questions, and with only one season left, I doubt the LOST writers will have time to give us all the answers we need!
The Jim Henson Company’s latest web-based endeavor is Wilson and Ditch: Digging America, which features two gophers on a road trip, teaching kids about this great land of ours. The show uses the fancy technology that translates puppetry into CGI (like Sid the Science Kid), but on a much cheaper-looking level. Still, if you can get past the non-Pixar visuals, it’s not a bad show. It’s far from great, but there are lots of good laughs from puppeteers Brian Henson and Paul Rugg. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for indeterminate accents…
Lastly, we have updated the ToughPigs Twitter account address from Tough_Pigs to @ToughPigs! No more underscore for us! Nothing else has changed, so it’s not really that newsworthy. But we’ll keep on keeping you informed of the latest Muppet news instantly on Twitter. Y’know, in case there’s ever a Muppet news emergency.
Click here to speak with an indeterminate accent on the ToughPigs forum!
by Joe Hennes – joe@toughpigs.com
