Frackles

Hr Four-Monsters — Two Frackles (left and right) with the Screaming Thing (top) and the Koozebanian Phoob (bottom).

The Frackles are a group of monsters who first appeared in the 1970 special The Great Santa Claus Switch as the henchmen of Cosmo Scam, the villain who tried to replace Santa Claus.

The group included Snivelly, Boppity, and Gloat, among others. Several of the Frackles were later reused or reworked for other projects, including The Muppet Show, and some changed to monsters or other creatures, such as Gonzo (originally known as Snarl, the cigar box Frackle) who moved away from the Frackle label to become a "whatever."

Five Frackles were mentioned by name in the lyrics of a song featured in The Great Santa Claus Switch. Following the special, they became ancillary characters who were usually unnamed or renamed, similar to Whatnots, Anything Muppets, and Anything Monsters who often changed appearance, performer, name, and gender depending on the sketch. The Frackles had no distinct traits or personalities, and functioned as utility monsters.

Six new Frackles debuted in the fifth season of The Muppet Show, similar in design to the established Frackles. In 2001, when the Muppets appeared on Family Feud, a new Frackle named Mo was introduced.

When Fraggle Rock was in development, the question arose of choosing a name for the characters' species. According to Michael K. Frith, Jerry Juhl kept returning to the moniker "Frackle," which when softened to "Fraggle," became the final choice.^[1]

Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones suggests that the word may come from "Grackle," another name for blackbird.^[2] The major Frackles are all birdlike.

The definition of what is a Frackle, rather than a generic monster, narrowed over time. It appears that as originally sketched for The Great Santa Claus Switch, all of Cosmo Scam's henchmen could be called Frackles, and in a 1971 Dick Cavett Show appearance, Jim Henson offhandedly refers to Lothar and Thog in this way. However, dialogue by Cosmo Scam in the special seems to suggest that only the smaller creatures are Frackles. By the time of The Muppet Show, only the beaked-birdlike creatures were referred to as Frackles, and any new Frackles created resemble Boppity and Gloat, thus defining what a Frackle is.