When did Kermit become a frog?



In the early days of the Muppets, the character Kermit was not a frog. He was introduced in 1955 on the show Sam and Friends with roundish feet instead of flippers and no collar. As Jim Henson described: "all the characters in those days were abstract"; Kermit was simply a lizard-like creature, and was not a specific species. Kermit truly became a frog in the late 1960s. However, the exact moment of the transformation has been unclear. Whereas most official sources list the 1971 TV special The Frog Prince, research shows it happened earlier.

Jim Henson: The Works, mentions that Kermit first gained froghood for The Frog Prince. Jim Henson, himself even said so in a [[1982] Cinefantastique interview].


 * Jim Henson: ...back in those days you may have read somewhere, but I didn't call him a frog.
 * Judy Harris: Right, he was just Kermit the thing.
 * Jim Henson: Yeah, all the characters in those days were abstract because that was part of the principle that I was working under, that you wanted abstract things.
 * Judy Harris: He didn't turn into a frog until you did The Frog Prince for a TV special.
 * Jim Henson: Yeah, that's right.
 * Judy Harris: That was the first time he got flippers and his little pointed collar?
 * Jim Henson: Right.

Jim Henson (and Kermit) again reinforced the notion on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee in 1990.


 * Jim Henson: When [Kermit] was first made he was, all my characters were abstract, he wasn't really a frog. He was a lizard-like character. But he became a frog when we did a show called The Frog Prince.
 * Regis Philbin: Oh, I see. Yeah. And he stuck right away? He hit?
 * Kermit: Ah, yes. Once a frog I just stayed a frog there after.

However, Kermit was already a frog, complete with flippers, in the 1970 television special Hey, Cinderella!. He was also a frog in the first season of Sesame Street in 1969.

But even before that, in the 1968 special The Muppets On Puppets, the then flipper-less Kermit was referred to as a frog two times.

In one Ask Henson.com responce, Henson Archivist Karen Falk provided the following quote on the issue made by Jim Henson in 1985:

"When I started doing this little local television show, Kermit was more a lizard-like character. We frogafied him over a couple of television specials we did years ago, before Sesame Street. So he just slowly became a frog. I don't think there was a conscious move to do that...

He's very primitive as a puppet goes because he's really like a glorified sock puppet. But he changed a little bit - a few years after I first made him because when I first made him, he was - all my characters in those days were abstract. And he was sort of a lizard-like character. And then after a few years, we changed and made more of a frog-like body for him and gave him flippers for feet. And that was for a special we did called The Frog Prince that he became more of a frog."

Whereas many official sources say it was 1971, Kermit was first officially recognized as a frog on-screen four years earlier in 1968. The frogafication didn't happen over night and was not truely solidified until The Frog Prince, however The Frog Prince was not the origin of Kermit's froghood, nor was it his first gig as an amphibian. This slow change is evident even as far back as 1966 when the Muppets appeared on The Mike Douglas Show. In a segment with Kermit, Florence Henderson is tacken aback by his sudden appearance. In response she remarks, "He scared me, I didn't expect a frog!"