Muppet Wiki

Kermiteye Welcome to Muppet Wiki!


Please visit Special:Community to learn how you can collaborate with the editing community.

READ MORE

Muppet Wiki
Register
Advertisement

Performer box order[]

Many of these characters employ the 3 person performer box to list a body performer, a face performer and a voice performer. However I've noticed that there is no consistency in the order of these roles in the box. For example, Earl Sinclair's box goes voice-face-body, while Fran Sinclair's box is voice-body-face and Andre is face-body-voice and there are other orders out there. Should there be a standard order for these three-part roles? And if so, what would that order be? -- Brad D. (talk) 03:30, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, the on-screen credit order was face, body, and voice, so for myself, I'd go with that. Either that or voice first, but I think it would help to go with the credits (most of the one-shot characters, I think, are face-body-voice, or a few may still just be voice because the original editor wasn't able to check for the others). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 05:31, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Creatures[]

I noticed that many Dinosaurs characters are in both Category:Creatures and Category:Dinosaurs Characters while some are just in "Dinosaurs Characters". Is the idea to have all the Dinsaurs Characters (with the exception to humans characters, unseen characters and other non-creature characters) be in the catch-all "creatures" category as well? Are the ones left out of creatures, such as Bob Hack and Sid Turtlepuss (to name just a few) an oversight -- or are the ones in there (such as Earl Sinclair and Solomon the Great) a mistake? We voted that Dinosaurs are creatures, so any anamatroic dinosaur puppet character would be a creature and go in there...right? -- Brad D. (talk) 09:03, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Peter had decided to add the Creatures tag. I hadn't initially planned on adding the tag, just because of the sheer number of characters. But he never got around to doing all of them and missed quite a few. So that's why. So if you want to, go ahead and add it to any you see, though an exception should be made for Turtlepuss and Needlenose, and any other Unisaur types we add, since they're collective patterns rather than characters on their own. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 14:42, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Guest/Utility Characters?[]

Well, between BradFraggle and myself, we've added all the major recurring characters (though we still need to flesh out one or two of them). However, now there's the issue of the guest characters. The main reason I'm uncertain about it is due to puppet recycling. I like the way the Anything Muppet page is organized, with a common starting point to see which puppets were reused as which characters. However, not sure how to do it for Dinosaurs, as at present I don't know that anyone here is familiar with official terminology (though I'm considering e-mailing a couple of the performers with websites, to ask if they can recall if there was any particular terms used). I'm thinking here of the six or so full-body puppets recycled for one-shots, extras, and recurring minor characters. Right now, not sure just how or even if to note the re-uses on the character pagesm, as we create them, but here's some general notes, for now, and my own descriptions:

  • Short, brown turtle-like dinosaur- used for Sid Turtlepuss (Earl's co-worker), Myman, Bettleheim, Hank the guard ("Life in the Faust Lane"), Muse ("Charlene's Flat World"), Clerk ("Son Also Rises"), UFO! Show Host, General H. Norman Conquest ("Nuts to War")
  • Tall, needlenosed, purple dinosaur- Mr. Pullman the science teacher, the doctor in "Golden Child," Richard in "Refrigerator Day", assorted female characters
  • Fat brown horned dinosaur- Grown Up Baby, Gus Molehill, Al Harris, Lucius ("Last Temptation of Ethyl"), Andrew, Dolph, Ray Gherkin, and sans nose horn, for The Job Wizard and Shelly ("Dirty Dancing")
  • Green dinosaur- another of Earl's co-workers (Ed?), Mel Luster, Dr. Ficus, the Devil, Walter Sternhagen, and interestingly, *every* character voiced by Thom Sharp in the final season (and always with the same two puppeteers, David Greenaway and Pons Maar).
  • Female dinosaur- used for both Mindy (Charlene's Friend) and Caroline Foxworth; cycling through my taped episodes when time allows, but I had a vague notion there may have been one other specifically female dinosaur puppet (used for Wendy Richfield, I think?), but not sure.

The handpuppet re-uses are more myriad, but notable ones include:

  • Frilled dinosaur- Elder in Chief in "Nuts to War", Judge Machina, Mr. Harold Heffer from "What Sexual Harris Meant," and as a female, court stenographer ("Charlene's Flat World") and the shopper ("Power Erupts")
  • Crinkly, humanoid-faced dinosaur, used for the Chief Elder in several episodes (but with different voices), Mr. Ashland, Winston the attorney in "Earl's Big Jackpot," judge in "Charlene's Flat World," etc.
  • Gray, bronto-esque faced dinosaur used for Mr. Lizard and others
  • Cleft-chinned, tyrannosaurus rex-esque dinosaur, used for Captain Heroic (or whatever Baby Sinclair's TV idol was named) and assorted newscasters or interviewers
  • Duckbilled blue dinosaur, used for the sitcom wife ("Dirty Dancing") and the Richard Simmons dinosaur
  • Stegosaurus -used mostly in background, notably as government clerk in "And the Winner Is," a newsboy in "Charlene's Flat World," USO soldier/stagehand in "Nuts to War," etc.

Haven't had time to catalogue the prey creatures yet, but Arthur Rizzic resurfaced as the Nielson family in "Family Challenge" and one of the forest animals in "Nature Calls," and one of the Grapdelites also showed up in the latter (while a Thornoid is seen floating over the possessed Baby in "Terrible Twos").

So, um, yeah, not quite sure what to do with this info for now, but lodging it here for the record anyway, if anyone has thoughts, additions, or a way to coherently integrate any of this (possibly an article titled Utility Dinosaurs?) (Particularly interested in Brad's input, as he's done the most work on that section overall.) --Andrew, Aleal 21:30, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not sure how to categorize it, but an article that shows which characters came from the same puppet would be awesome. It looks like you have a great start here, I know that many dinosaurs were reused (because building new unique ones for every role would be expensive and time consuming). Many times they just took old dinos and reworked them a little to make someone new, especially for a minor or one time only role. When rewatching episodes I find myself noticing that "hey that's the same dinosaur from _____, just with a different outfit and accessories". I'm not sure if there was an official term for them, and I'm not sure what to call them either but maybe some else will (Utility Dinosaurs, Generic Dinosaurs, Reused Dinosaurs, Recycled Dinosaurs, Universal Dinosaurs…) . However an article on them and listing who came from the same ones would be awesome. Start one up (based on what you have here) and I'll see if I can add anything too it…I'm sure others will too. -- BradFraggle 05:22, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Andrew, I think that's a really cool idea, and like Brad said, you've got most of the info that you need. I think you can use the same structure as the Anything Muppets pages -- either as one big article, or branching off into a separate page for each puppet.
In the Muppet Monsters, a lot of the names that we use are from the first major appearance of the puppet -- like Beautiful Day Monster, Luncheon Counter Monster and Big Mama. If we don't have anything official to go on, then I think it's fair for you guys to come up with names for the puppets, based on the most memorable characters that they were used for. I'd call the turtle-faced guy "Sid Turtlepuss", for example, and then note all the other characters he was used for. You guys clearly know more about this stuff than anybody else here, so you might as well go ahead and put names on things. If somebody comes along later with actual inside knowledge, then we can always change stuff then.
As for a general class name, how about "Anything Dinosaurs"? -- Danny Toughpigs 05:49, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, now we have a category name (as provided below), so starting work on the page. Charting earliest appearances is the hard part, but I'll throw together what I have right now, and we can prune and others can add to it later. Brad, though, if you have access to a tape of "A New Leaf," I'd appreciate it if you could check the name given to the green full-body character who was Earl's co-worker (I think it was either Ed or Lou, but can't be entirely sure; come across several other episodes with him, but haven't caught a name and can't seem to read his nametag). For structure, I'm thinking full-body dinosaurs, hand puppet dinosaurs, and refrigerator/prey creatures, or possibly just "Other Creatures". Andrew, Aleal 18:45, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
MuppetDude here (I didn't know how to sign in). According to a MuppetZine interview with Bill Barretta, the puppets/costumes that were frequently reused were called Unisaurs.
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:VtG-SLZqew0J:muppets.scarecroe.com/bbint.htm+Unisaurs&hl=en
--Tony, MuppetDude
Thanks, MuppetDude (and especially for supplying the link). Well, that settles what to name the page! --Andrew, Aleal 18:41, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
And now for a new topic...what do they call the Whatnot-like puppets on "Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss"?--Tony, MuppetDude 12:45, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Subcategories[]

I was trying to think of ways we could narrow this category for people looking for specifics things. For example, there are different species in common that we can observe. We can also observe male and female characters. Possibly Dinosaurs characters who are parents? Tyc 05:20, October 18, 2011 (UTC)

Advertisement