Wonder Woman

Lynda Carter and Wonder Pig as published in a 1997 Starlog article. Art by John Byrne.

Abby Cadabby as One-Da Woman.

Telly's home decorated with superheroes.

A Wonder Woman-esque cast member of Pre-School Musical on Sesame Street

"Super Butterfly"

Bruce Cayard's Wonder Woman

Dog City’s "Wonder Whippet".

Zoe and Abby in the Wonder Women! documentary.

Gadot's self-described Kermit belly.

Wonder Woman is an iconic superhero from the DC Comics universe who first appeared in October of 1941. She was created by husband and wife team William "Charles" Moulton Marston (a psychologist who developed the "lie detector") and Elizabeth "Sadie" Holloway Marston (psychologist, lawyer). Diana, Princess of Paradise Island, has appeared in comic book stories consistently since her debut, but her most popular venture into pop culture is the 1970s television series starring Lynda Carter.

References

• The Muppet Show episode 419 makes several references to Wonder Woman in honor of guest star Lynda Carter's famous portrayal of the character on TV.

• Miss Piggy takes on the persona of "Wonder Pig", directly spoofing the character's outfit and abilities. She even asks Carter if she's sorry she didn't bring her Wonder Woman costume.

• Kermit plays up the Wonder Woman references in his audience introductions.

• The episode's sub-plot features the Muppets training to be superheroes. While reading lesson two of his superhero manual, Fozzie learns about the basics of deflecting bullets with magic bracelets: another reference to the canon of Wonder Woman's abilities often shown in the series.

• When Super Sheep makes his superhero transformation, the transition is presented as an ode to the sequence used in the series when Carter changes from Diana Prince into Wonder Woman.

• A 1975 Sesame Street cartoon (First: Episode 0798) animated by Bruce Cayard features a man imagining several characters his companion may have met today, one of which is a caricature of Wonder Woman (the statuesque figure is featured in contrast to Superman, wears an outfit clad in stars and stripes, a tiara, and holds a lasso).

• A picture of Wonder Woman is hung on Telly's wall in a Sesame Street News Flash sketch.

• Big Bird lifts weights in Sesame Street Episode 2060 and wonders "what it would be like to be real strong, like Wonder Woman or Herry Monster."

• When Eliot Shag is on the lookout for a new female role model for Rosie O'Gravy in the Dog City episode "Springer Fever," he turns to the Wonder Woman-inspired "Wonder Whippet".

• The "spinning" motif would later be used by Super Grover in The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, again referencing a distinct trait made popular in the 1970s Wonder Woman television series.

• During Elmo's 2001 appearance on Hollywood Squares, he fields a question about a comic book character's chocolate gobbling sidekick, Etta Candy. He answers Captain America, but Etta Candy had been featured in Wonder Woman comics since the 1940s.

• In the Pre-School Musical segment from Sesame Street’s 39th season, a girl named Mariella sings about playing in dress-up corner. One of the costumes she puts on is a Wonder Woman-esque outfit including a tiara, golden girdle and bracelets. She places emphasis on her "superhero cape" in song, and remains in this persona throughout the remainder of the number.

• Miss Piggy again uses the spinning trick to quickly change her clothes in a Studio DC television special. Making an additional reference to the Wonder Twins from the cartoon Super Friends, she announces just before her spin: "Wonder wardrobe powers... activate!"

• Piggy is seen wearing a slightly different Wonder Woman costume in a Template:Medialink for The Muppet Show Comic Book: Family Reunion.

• Abby Cadabby attends NumericCon in Elmo's Super Numbers as her favorite number superhero, "One-Da Woman". Her outfit is almost an exact replica of Wonder Woman's (complete with bracelets and lasso) with the addition of the number 1 on her belt and tiara. She sings the character's theme song, "she da one, she da woman, she's One-Da Woman!"

• Prairie Dawn dresses up as "Super Butterfly" in Sesame Street Episode 4629 wearing a similar Wonder Woman-inspired costume as Mariella in "Pre-School Musical".

• Two days before the theatrical release of the first Wonder Woman movie on June 2, 2017 (and the week after its Hollywood premiere), Miss Piggy tweeted, "Moi will make a superhero movie just as soon as I see a script about a flying diva who battles bad taste and rescues fashion victims." [1]

• On August 7, 2017, while the Wonder Woman film was still playing in cinemas, Rizzo the Rat tweeted, "With all the rats that work in Hollywood, you’d think there’d be more movies about us. Anybody want to make #WonderVermin?" [2]

• Baby Piggy's superhero theme in the Muppet Babies episode "Super Fabulous vs Captain Icecube" references Charles Fox's theme from the 1970s Wonder Woman TV series musically and visually. [3]

Muppet Mentions

• During a sequence criticizing the materialistic twist on the "girl power" movement of the 1990s, the 2012 documentary Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines features a Sesame Street coloring book from 2011 called Girls Rule with Zoe, Abby Cadabby, and Prince on the cover.

• While filming reshoots for Wonder Woman (2017), Gal Gadot was called on to perform in her Wonder Woman outfit while five months pregnant. To hide the change in her physique during wide shots, filmmakers replaced a portion of her costume with green fabric that could easily be manipulated with CGI later. "On close-up I looked very much like Wonder Woman," Gadot says. "On wide shots I looked very funny, like Wonder Woman pregnant with Kermit the Frog." Gadot reiterated the story during a May 23, 2017 appearance on The Tonight Show, again likening her appearance to that of Kermit. (YouTube)

Connections

Wonder Woman 1970s TV series

• Red Buttons played Ashley Norman in the pilot
• Barry Dennen played Adolf Hitler in the second season Wonder Woman episode "Auschlass '77"
• Cloris Leachman played Queen Hippolyte in the pilot
• Roy Rogers played J.P. Hadley in "The Bushwhackers"
• Shields and Yarnell played Doug and Formicida in "Formicida"
• Brian Tochi played Darrel in the third season episode "The Deadly Dolphin"
• Fritz Weaver played Dr. Solano in "The Return of Wonder Woman"
• Debra Winger played Drusilla in "The Feminum Mystique" and "Wonder Woman in Hollywood"
• Harris Yulin played Mark Bremer in "Wonder Woman in Hollywood"

Wonder Woman: Cheetah On the Prowl 1982 book-and-tape set

• Produced and Directed by Christopher Cerf
• Narrated by Michael Kingsbury Frith
• Frederick R. Newman as Colonel Steve Trevor
• Sonia Manzano as The Cheetah and Woman of Paradise Island
• Kathy Mullen as Aphrodite, Goddess of Love
• Christopher Cerf as Soldier
• Christina Frith (Michael Frith's daughter) as Woman of Paradise Island and Princess Diana's Friend
• Music by David Conner
• Engineering by Doug Epstein (sound engineer on several Sesame projects)
• Special Thanks: Jonathan Frith, Sharon Lerner

Wonder Woman 2009 animated movie

• Rosario Dawson voiced Artemis
• Nathan Fillion voiced Steve Trevor
• Virginia Madsen voiced Hippolyta
• Oliver Platt voiced Hades
• Keri Russell voiced Wonder Woman
• Tara Strong voiced Alexa

Other

• Judy Collins wrote the introduction to Wonder Woman Archives Volume 1 (1998)
• Rosario Dawson voiced Wonder Woman in five DC animated movies (2015-2019)
• Michael Dorn voiced Ferdinand in Wonder Woman: Bloodlines (2019)
• Luke Evans played Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)
• Dakota Fanning voiced young Wonder Woman in the Justice League animated series (2004)
• Rupert Gregson-Williams scored Wonder Woman (2017)
• Tippi Hedren voiced Hippolyta in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Triumvirate of Terror" (2012)
• Doutzen Kroes played Venelia in Wonder Woman (2017)
• Amy Mebberson illustrated Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman (2014)
• Allan Neuwirth wrote Realworlds: Wonder Woman (2000)
• Oliver Platt played comics publisher M.C. Gaines in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)
• Cobie Smulders voiced Wonder Woman in The Lego Movie (2014)
• Cree Summer voiced Hippolyta in DC Super Hero Girls (2019) and Wonder Woman: Bloodlines (2019)
• Jill Thompson (Jim Henson's Labyrinth: Artist Tribute) wrote and illustrated Wonder Woman: The True Amazon (2017)
• Marv Wolfman wrote and edited Wonder Woman comics in the 1980s