It's Friday afternoon. So let's take a trip down memory lane with The
Muppets, The Fraggles and Labyrinth, shall we? There's nothing better
to do.
Obviously
The Muppet Show is held dear to many a child of the '80s. This has the Swedish Chef, Animal, Beaker, Miss Piggy and the dulcet tones of Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.
Here's the Swedish Chef, teaching you how to make donuts:
And a behind-the-scenes clip of the making of
The Muppet Show (the whole thing is on YouTube. Get amongst it.
Many people love
The Dark Crystal as well. Though is scared the living shit out of me. Let's see if it's still spooky now we're all grown up ...
I'm not really scared anymore. Just cheesed off by the crummy quality.
Onwards!
A personal favourite is
Muppet Babies, which sucked away many afternoon hours of my prepubescent childhood. Baby Animal and Baby Beaker were clearly the best. 4evz.
Fraggle Rock took up the remaining hours of my prepubescent childhood. How GOOD IS THAT BASS LINE IN THE INTRO?
Of course, many of us had our first into to Jim Henson via
Sesame Street.
This should ring a few (nostalgic) bells:
One of the best things about
Sesame Street was watching the little kids interact with the puppets. Check out little John-John. Ladies, get ready for your ovaries to burst:
And then there were the Yip Yips, which just kind of annoyed everyone.
Henson was also involved with the '80s flick
Labyrinth. Puppetry and David Bowie. Who would've thunk it?
In addition to his own puppetry projects,
Wikipedia tells us that Henson also aided others in their work. In 1979, he was asked by the producers of the Star Wars film
The Empire Strikes Back to aid make-up artist Stuart Freeborn in the creation and articulation of enigmatic Jedi Master Yoda. Henson suggested to Star Wars creator George Lucas that he use Frank Oz as the puppeteer and voice of Yoda. The rest is cinematic history.