Merry Christmas from Mikey's Muppet Memorabilia Museum

Ernie and Bert Christmas decorations by Kurt S. Adler Inc. These were sold in clear plastic bags with a cardboard section at the top (seen above). Big Bird, Grover and Cookie Monster were also available in this series. There is no date on the packaging, but they were made in the 1990s. I bought these two at a craft store.

Get Your Honkers In A Row

Here they all are together at long last! At the risk of sounding like a complete nut case, I've been trying for YEARS to accomplish this photo. That is, to get all of my plush Honker toys in one place. With all the boxes of Muppet stuff that I have, these little guys ended up being packed away in different places. If I would find one or two, the others would inevitably be buried away in storage and inaccessible. So finally it has happened that I've found them all. Here's the happy new family! The taller 9 inch Honkers (orange, pink, and purple) were made by Hasbro/Playskool in 1983. The smaller 8 inch fuzzy Honkers were made by Applause in 1992-93. Applause also made larger sized plush Honkers that look identical to these 8 inch toys, as well as at least one hand puppet. Does the fact that I know all of this make me a Honker Historian? Hmmm?

Funko! Please make more Muppet Wacky Wobblers!!!

In 2013 Funko introduced their collection of Muppet Wacky Wobblers. In addition to Kermit, Animal and Dr. Teeth (shown above) the set included Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear.  I really enjoy these figures and find them to be the best Muppet collectables made in quite some time. It would be really awesome if Funko would make additional characters, especially Floyd Pepper. He would look awesome in this style next to Dr. Teeth and Animal. Funko has recently added two new Muppet characters to their Pop Vinyl figure series, so here's hoping they will also be making some new Muppet Wacky Wobblers.

  

Floyd Pepper, bass player for the Electric Mayhem Band

Photo from Muppet Wiki: http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Floyd_Pepper

Wouldn't it be nice to have a Wacky Wobbler of Floyd? It's always baffled me as to why he's not marketed more often as he's easily one of the coolest Muppet characters. I've e-mailed the Funko company to ask if they will be making any more Muppet Wacky Wobblers but have yet to hear back. Maybe if enough Muppet fans contact Funko, the company would be more inclined to produce another series of Wobblers? Who wants more? I do, I do!!!

Muppets Most Wanted Film Review

On March 21, 2014 the Muppets newest film Muppets Most Wanted arrived in theaters across North America. It likely goes without saying that my expectations for this movie were very, very high. I'm also a very picky Muppet fan too!

So how did the movie fair? Well, I do have some issues with it but for the most part I'd say that this is the best Muppet movie since their third film The Muppets Take Manhattan, when Jim Henson, Frank Oz and all of the original Muppet performers were still involved. Coming from an obsessed Muppet freak like me, this is high praise!

If you haven't seen the movie yet you might want to stop reading here as I don't want to spoil anything for you!

Things that I especially liked about this movie include the opening number "We're Making a Sequel", seeing all the original Muppet show background characters in action again (Foo Foo, Bobby Benson and his Baby Band, etc.), the absence of Jason Segel (he took up too much screen time in the 2011 movie), the helicopter scene with the Muppet Ladder (awesome!) and what Miss Piggy does to Constantine in the helicopter (hilarious!). But mostly what I liked is that the classic Muppet silliness seems to have come back into focus. (Although they were excellent films, I found Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island lost that aspect of the Muppets. Muppets from Space is best left out of the conversation!)

Strange as it may seem for me to say, however, I found the movie was too long. This from the guy who watched The Muppet Show DVDs in marathon style each time a new one was released (Bye the way Disney, where are seasons Four and Five?!?!). If they had edited the film down a bit more I think it would have come off being even funnier, but as it stands I found the pacing is still off a little. This has more to do with the scenes with the human actors than those with just the Muppet performers, who I think are in top form in this film. Second, although I really liked the character of Kermit's evil double, Constantine, and found him to be very funny, I also found he got too much screen time compared to the original frog who I had actually gone to the theatre to see! That lost the movie major points in my books.

The last criticism is not necessary about the movie, but about how some of the puppets of Muppet characters have been changed. Animal, for example, now has huge bags under his eyes which I dislike completely. He had them before but never as huge as that! (See above picture). Floyd Pepper from the Electric Mayhem band, who is one of my top five favourite Muppets, now has a fabric covered bottom lip so that it's much fatter than what it used to be when it was just foam. Sam the Eagle's head is also now fabric covered rather than foam, including his beak, which I think changed the look of the "Muppet" aspect of the character too much. Seeing that they are made of foam is part of what makes the characters Muppets, in my view. That being said, as I'm a puppet maker myself I completely understand the challege of re-creating the entire cast of Muppet characters to make them look identical to their 1970s or 80s counterparts. Not only would the sewing and sculpting be a major undertaking, but finding or even creating the same type of fabrics and other materials that are needed to reproduce each character is clearly an art in itself.

All in all, definitely an awesome Muppet film that is worth seeing, and much better than the 2011 movie!

Vintage Sesame Street Knickerbocker plush toys!

For an entire decade in the 1970s Knickerbocker produced a wide assortment of Sesame Street plush toys. I've finally added most of what I have in my collection to this blog. See the "Sesame Street 1969-1979" page: http://mikeysmuppetmemorabiliamuseum.blogspot.ca/p/sesame-street-1969-1979.html

Muppets Most Wanted coming next month!

The new Muppet movie "Muppets Most Wanted" will be here soon! Scheduled to open March 21, 2014, it's just a little over a month away! Above is a nifty image from the Muppet Central website showing the classic Muppet gang...and Pepe, who I'm only just realizing has been hanging out with the Muppets for 20 years now. So he's technically a classic character too! (He's also either brave enough or foolish enough to hold onto Animal's chain for this picture! You'd think after 20 years he would know better.) This is a great picture of the Muppets, I like how they are all posed, It's also interesting to see Dr.Teeth with his hat off. I don't think he's ever done that before...at least not that I can recall. I'm also glad Scooter is back in with the mix. He was always one of my favourite characters. Even though his voice is completely different now, I'd rather have him as part of the gang than not. I'm not too fond of how they changed the look of Floyd Pepper though. He now has a fatter bottom lip which I think just looks weird. His voice is really well done though.

Here is a picture of the giant movie display that was at the theatre when I went to see the Lego Movie tonight (Feb12, 2014). It's made so that you can walk around the back and go inside the vault to get your picture taken with the cast, so I did!

It's a good thing Scooter isn't in the picture, otherwise it would have been hard to tell which one is me. And forget about Miss Piggy, Fozzie is the real photo hog! Wocka wocka! In any case, I thought this was quite an impressive display. Disney certainly is going all out to promote the film. Just look at all the money they leave lying around. But seriously, I really do hope this is a good movie otherwise people might vault from the theatre.