This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

And we return to our American stories.

Joining us now is Brian J. Jones, giving us a little insight on how some of America's most

beloved characters came to be. And we're talking about the Muppets. And the Muppets creator,

the man, the driving force, the driving creative force behind the Muppets, Jim Henson.

Take it away, Brian.

Coffee commercial. Jim Henson. Take it away, Brian. Coffee commercials back in 1957 are very different than they were now.

Usually they were about 10 to 15 seconds.

Normally what they would do is they would put a picture up on screen of coffee and, you know, coffee coming with steam and this beautiful

shot of coffee beans. And they would just say, you know, enjoy a great cup of coffee in the

morning from Sanka. And that was essentially the commercial. You've got about 10 seconds to get the

message across. So while Jim is performing Sam and Friends on television in Washington, D.C., he's

approached by a local coffee company called

Wilkins about doing commercial work for them. The Wilkins people were big fans of Jim and the

Muppets, and they asked Jim if he would like to develop advertising for Wilkins coffee. So what Jim does

is creates two characters called Wilkins and Wonkens.

And in Jim's idea, Wilkins is the character that will drink Wilkins coffee and Wonkens is the

character that won't drink Wilkins coffee. And if you look at Wilkins and Wonkens, it gives you a very

early idea of Jim's sort of sense of comedy and building in that you've got

Wilkins to sort of tall and skinny and won't to sort of triangular and squatty. And that's Laurel and Hardy.

It's it's it's tall and skinny versus short and fat up against each other. Jim love that. You see that

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