The Nerd's Eye View

You know me, I love - and I mean LOVE - the Muppets. Growing up, I remember them as a part of my life. The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas, Muppet Babies, the various Muppet movies and even the short lived Muppet Magazine figured large in my life. When Jim Henson died, it was like a death in the family, and I thought that was it. There would be no more.

Of course that didn't happen. The Muppet Juggernaut did not peter out, but it returned with a different face, and voice. The Muppet "property" had been bought out by Disney, and the Great Mouse had seen fit to commercialize them. But in the manner of most Disney properties they were misused, put in terrible vehicles, and subsequently devalued. Even the more pure Sesame Street was tainted, adding a little red marketing tool to dumb things down further from simple Grover. So where does that leave us? Watching Avenue Q and wishing that we hadn't watched something from our past fade away.

Just the other day, my friend at The Crew sent me this link from the NY Times. FAO Schwartz, the venerable NY toy store, has a Muppet bar, where you can create your very own Muppet. I'm not sure how to feel about that. Part of me wants nothing more than to have own, to make it look like myself, my friends, my family. But the other part, well, the other part wonders whether that isn't the last gasp of the Muppets we all know and love. Endless mediocre reflections of people who don't even know them.