“Never heavy-handed, but with a light and zany touch, the show delved into crucial themes, such as the importance of friendship, kindness, and self-esteem. Blending animation, live-action, and puppetry, Muppet Babies served up heaps of joy with a touch of adult humor.”
So said authors Joe Garner and Michael Ashley of Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies in their book, It’s Saturday Morning: Celebrating the Golden Era of Cartoons, 1960s-1990s.
Debuting forty years ago this fall, Muppet Babies introduced the brilliance of Jim Henson and his characters to a new generation in a different way, with an animated series that remains beloved to this day.
The Muppet Babies in “The Muppets Take Manhattan”
Network executives approached Jim Henson about an animated Saturday morning show with the Muppet Babies featured in the scene.
In his book Jim Henson: The Works, author Christopher Finch wrote, “The more Jim thought about the idea, the more he liked it. The concept that evolved during a series of meetings and informal discussions was a cartoon series based on toddler versions of some of the most popular Muppet Show characters, Kermit, Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie, Animal, Ralph, and Scooter (Scooter’s twin sister, Skeeter, was created for the show in order to provide it with another strong female character).”
Each episode of Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies was set in their nursery, where a Nanny (voiced by Barbara Billingsley of Leave it to Beaver), who we only see from the shoulders down, watches over them.
Here in the nursery, the Muppet Babies pretend and play games, and through their imagination, these adventures come to life.
In the episode “I Want My Muppet TV,” the Muppet Babies’ TV breaks, and they each have to make up their own shows to entertain each other. Bunsen and Beaker wind up in a scene from Ghostbusters, the whole gang winds up as the crew on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise from Star Trek, and Miss Piggy appears with Johnny Carson as a guest on The Tonight Show (each brought to life by combining live-action and animation).
MUPPET BABIES comic books were published by Marvel (and later by Harvey Comics)
Episodes like these from Muppet Babies were much different from Saturday morning TV at the time, as authors Garner and Ashley noted in their book: “Though these Muppets were babies, or more appropriately toddlers, the show never talked down to kids. If anything, it possessed a knowing sensibility encouraging curiosity.”
In addition to Billingsley, Muppet Babies featured a talented voice cast, including Frank Welker as Kermit, Laurie O’Brien as Piggy, Howie Mandel as Animal (Dave Coulier voiced the character in later seasons), Greg Berg as Fozzie, Russi Taylor as Gonzo, and Katie Leigh as Rowlf. Skeeter (Mandel), along with Bunsen Honeydew (Coulier) and Beeker (Welker), joined in later seasons.
The series’ success also attracted some big-name guest stars, including Whoopi Goldberg, Tom Selleck and Stan Lee.
Bringing the Muppets to life in animation was a natural transition, as author Finch notes in his book, “From childhood, Jim Henson was always fascinated by animation. When he bought a Bolex movie camera from his Sam and Friends earnings, practically the first thing he did was to acquire a secondhand stand for it so that he could use it as an animation camera.
He loved to explore a kind of freehand animation, in which paintings seemed to come to life, and later, he adapted many of the techniques he had taught himself in order to provide little animated segments for Sesame Street.”
Finch also notes that the animation in Muppet Babies displayed Henson’s expansive imagination and interest in trying something new. “The approach to animation reflects his penchant for mixing genres and generally ignoring hard and fast rules.”
Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies (a co-production of Henson Associates and Marvel Productions) debuted on CBS on September 15, 1984, and ran until November 2, 1991. The show’s tremendous success not only spawned a wave of merchandise but also went on to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program in 1987 and 1988.
In 2018, a reboot of the series, created with computer animation, was produced for Disney Junior.
The immense popularity of Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies and its continued admiration forty years later is a direct reflection of Henson’s genius, as the show’s voice director, story editor, and head writer Hank Saroyan stated to authors Garner and Ashley: “He wanted children to believe that anything is possible. That’s the only thing that’s going to save this planet – the power of imagination.”
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
One of the notable talents behind “Muppet Babies” was writer Jeffrey Scott, son of director Norman Maurer and grandson of Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, who helped develop the concept for television and wrote the scripts for practically every episode of the show’s first three seasons. I have Scott’s 2002 book “How to Write for Animation”, which is a good read even for those of us who aren’t contemplating a career change in that direction. He gives a thorough account of the process of writing for animation in the modern age, as well as some useful advice on writing in general.
I’m afraid I can’t comment on the show itself because I never saw it. I’m one of those rare people for whom the Muppets have no appeal whatsoever.
Not sure if that book includes the nutty anecdote I always think about when it comes to Muppet Babies and Jeffrey Scott: he was hired to do the entire first season of Captain N, but the vice president of children’s programming at NBC was under the impression that all of his Muppet Babies scripts had to be rewritten. Scott managed to get the job by calling up Jim Henson himself, while he in London working on Nicolas Roeg’s Witches adaptation, and asking him to set the record straight.
That anecdote isn’t in Scott’s book, so thanks for mentioning it here!
Here is one of Jim Henson’s abstract animated pieces, to Chico Hamilton’s “Drums West”, showing incredible rhythmic precision (and humor):
https://youtu.be/Pn6Kj0DpP84?si=6M6jOrcLBC0eAu6u
According to Charles Solomon, “Muppet Babies” critics complained that turning puppets into cartoon characters denigrated both art forms. (Presumably “Pinocchio” doesn’t count.) But it did start a craze: “Disney Babies,” “Flintstone Kids,” etc.
Charles Solomon? You can’t believe anything that pompous know-it-all. He infects everything he’s written with his opinions and ego.
I worked o the show for its first four years as a storyboard artist and model designer. It was one of the best crew and series I’ve ever had a hand in.
We all re-wrote Jeffrey Scott’s mediocre-at-best scripts. (Too bad the author of this column gets info from books instead of from the still working talents who actually CREATED the shows!)
I didn’t know about the doctoring the scripts. Do you remember any examples of what you change, Scott?
The official story, as told in Brian Jay Jones’ Henson biography and elsewhere, has become that the Muppet Babies were the surprise hit of Muppets Take Manhattan and the TV series followed as a result of demand; not only does that seem unlikely given that the film was released on 13th July 1984 and the TV series debuted a mere two months later on 15th September 1984, documents like the official bible for the series seem to predate the release of Muppets Take Manhattan. Not that it matters that much, it was a great scene and I think Henson rightly sensed it had the potential to be a merchandising juggernaut and a way above average Saturday Morning cartoon series to boot.
Eh. Even as a kid when I was the target audience I wasn’t a huge fan of Muppet Babies. I watched it on occasion but it was never appointment television.
And that theme song, eych!
I thought the theme song was good enough. Besides, it seems to be a way better show than Dic’s “Get Along Gang” (which only had one season, not surprisingly).
Muppet Babies was one of those shows that was just good for what it was. I was the target age group when it came out. Knowing Jim Henson’s history (and please correct me if I’m mistaken), I’m surprised he liked working on this show. Between his work on Sesame Street, which he didn’t seem to enjoy, and the edgier Muppets, it’s interesting that Muppet Babies came to be.
A lot of what made Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies such a roaring success was the way that it leaned in on other media properties by doing direct parodies rather than crafting things that seem similar but aren’t. The Star Wars parody featured clips from Star Wars and followed the story arch of the original film. Their Wizard of Oz parody likewise used a lot of the same iconography and story of the MGM classic. Since Marvel was the production house, there are quite a few Marvel parodies, most notably one where Animal cosplays as Spider-man and another where, I believe, Stan Lee (or another Marvel artist) is depicted in live action getting covered in Spider-man webbing (AKA: silly string).
These derivative re-tellings of the media of the time are responsible for the way Generation Xers connected so strongly to media franchises like Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters, or even the Golden Age of Animation. Muppet Babies like luxury car commercial don’t function to promote consumption, but functioned to remind consumers that the things they watched were good and they were good for being a part of the in-crowd who paid to be a part of that media experience.
By the time the 90s came around, there weren’t as many direct parodies produced by outside studios because of they way media companies began protecting their IP with iron fists. Why would Disney want a Marvel production, at the time, doing a Little Mermaid parody when they can produce their own Little Mermaid TV series to build interest in the franchise? Why would Universal want Nelvana doing a Jurassic Park parody when they can just produce their own show with Lego? Most of the parodies we saw after the 80s were aimed at putting edgy, borderline-inappropriate references in kids shows to give the adults in the room a chuckle. While I don’t necessarily have an issue with making kids shows easier on parents, I think the edgy parody or the meta commentary reference have all but become the norm to the point where it is broadly the only kind of joke in a lot of kids programming today. I mean… the Muppets sitcom from several years back is kind of the culmination of this trope (If Kermit were real, he would have broken up with Miss Piggy a lifetime ago. Amirite, guys? Amirite? Wouldn’t it be funny if Fozzy were a kleptomaniac? Why aren’t you laughing?)
I remember this cartoon when I was a kid. It took me a while to know that this cartoon was not only based on a fantasy sequence in a live-action movie, but it lead to a lot of imitations or cash-in attempts in the 80s and 90s.
The Flintstone Kids
A Pup Named Scooby-Doo
Tom and Jerry Kids
Yo Yogi
What got me into this bizarre cinema and monster movies was… Muppet Babies. There was one episode called “Out of This World History”. It had scenes from the 1925 version of “The Lost World.” As a six year-old, I found it so cool. It made me wish that I want to watch movies like that. Look where I am now.
In the late 2000’s I saw some anime based on Fujiko-Fujio. I liked it. Why? Because they remind me of Muppet Babies.