The Muppets Before The Muppets

Imaginary Worlds

Eric Molinsky

Arts, Science Fiction, Fiction, Society & Culture

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 January 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In honor of Muppet*Vision 3D closing at Disney World, we look at the history of The Muppets before Kermit joined Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear. Two decades earlier, Kermit was hanging out with Sam and Friends -- a local TV show in Washington, D.C., that launched Jim Henson's career. This episode comes from the podcast Sidedoor, produced by The Smithsonian with support from PRX. Their host Lizzie Peabody journeys back to 1955 to figure out how this eccentric cast of puppets built the foundation for everything Jim Henson would do afterwards, from Sesame Street to The Muppet Show and even Labyrinth. And the Sidedoor team ventures into the conservation labs to learn what it took to revive these crumbling hunks of foam and fabric when they landed at the Smithsonian. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our
0:05.4	disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. Happy New Year, everybody. We'll be back with new episodes in two weeks.
0:13.3	But for today, I'm going to play an episode from the excellent podcast, Side Door, which is produced by the
0:19.6	Smithsonian. The episode is about the Muppets. I wanted to play
0:24.7	this episode for two reasons. First, you might have read the news that Disney World is closing
0:30.0	Muppet Vision 3D. It's a short 3D film featuring the Muppets, which has been playing at Disney
0:37.3	World since 1991.
0:40.3	It was also the final project overseen by Jim Henson before he died.
0:45.3	Muppet Vision 3D is expected to close in 2025, and it will be replaced with a Monsters Inc. experience.
0:53.3	I love Monsters Inc experience.
0:57.8	I love Monsters Inc, but I am sad to see Muppet Vision go.
0:59.1	It was really great.
1:03.1	The other reason I want to play this episode is because a year and a half ago,
1:07.9	I interviewed the puppet designer Bonnie Erickson about our time working on the Muppet show.
1:12.2	In that episode, I talked briefly about how the Muppets came into existence, but I didn't get a chance to do a deep dive because that was a process which went
1:17.3	back to the 1950s. This episode from the podcast Sider works as a companion piece to my interview
1:25.1	with Bonnie Erickson. They explore Jim Henson's early days in
1:28.9	puppeteering, and they talk with people who are trying to preserve the Muppets, not just his
1:33.4	cultural content, but literally preserve the Muppets themselves. That's something Bonnie Erickson
1:39.1	has been involved with. In fact, you'll hear her in this episode. So I'm going to hand things over to Lizzie Peabody, the host of the podcast, Side Door.
1:59.7	This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.
2:04.3	I'm Lizzie Peabody.
	...

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