On my first day working at the Muppets in 1987 someone handed me a Kermit just like the one in the picture below. For all I know, this is the same one. It’s not a Kermit puppet, it’s a version made to be posed for photos. But to me, on that day, it was a dream come true. I was actually freelancing for the company Jim Henson founded, the one that made the wonderful Sesame Street characters, and the Muppet Show and the Muppet Movie! I was in heaven.

So I’ll jump around a bit. I recently was invited to attend the grand opening of the Muppet exhibit at the Maryland Center for History and Culture in Baltimore. This exhibit has been traveling the country for many years. I’ve been to the permanent one at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NY but had not seen this one yet.

Seeing everything brought memories streaming back of the year I worked there. I saw names of people I met and puppets I knew well. Nothing I had worked directly on was in the exhibit but that’s understandable. I enjoyed working there but my contributions were small.

I started by working in the photo studio where they were setting up for the next issue of Muppet Magazine. That’s where they handed me a Kermit. I helped stage some sets for photos of Danny Devito and Wil Wheaton (I even stood in for him for lighting purposes) and I got to build my first Muppet, this cute book character.

I then was moved up to the workshop. They were beginning to work on the NBC show called “The Jim Henson Hour”. This was designed to include the Storyteller episodes created for British television and would include old and new Muppet characters.

One episode of the show included Dog City, a gangster movie with dog characters. I got to build one dog, a whippet. He’s third from the right above. He was not a main character and ended up being dressed as the newsboy in a number of scenes.

Here is a video of the opening number from Dog City:

They asked all of the designers to work on sketches for potential new Muppets. I submitted a few but none were chosen. I did get to do some preliminary designs for Waldo, the first computer generated Muppet. The final design was done by , who I enjoyed working with.

I built one other original Muppet, a Whatnot. These are Muppets that can be dressed up for different roles. I never got any photos. I was also asked to help out on other projects and met some people who would help further my career. I met Tim Clarke who introduced me to the folks at Seven Towns in London, UK where I worked on the Mini Boglins and other toys designs. I also met Jim Mahon who I worked with on other toy projects.

So this is definitely not in chronological order as most of this was in 1988 but for Christmas 1987 the workshop created the holiday windows at Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue. It was all hands on deck as we spent all night installing the set pieces. One of them was a scene of Kermit and Miss Piggy in a Hansom cab. Kermit was putting a huge, real diamond ring on Piggy’s hand. We were there so late that they brought in coffee and donuts in the morning. We actually had breakfast at Tiffany’s.

I was also invited to Jim Henson’s Masked Ball. I had worked there since the fall of 1987 but I had only met him twice, in passing. At the masked ball there was a receiving line and I shook his hand there.

So if this was a dream job, why did I not work for more than a year at the Muppets? A couple of reasons. The Jim Henson Hour was in production during the writers strike of 1988. The show had wonderful elements but had issues related to the fact that their regular writers were not available. The show had low ratings and was cancelled after only 5 episodes. So, being freelance, I moved on to other jobs when production wound down.

I have to admit to another reason. Having worked on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and then Peter Gabriel’s’ Big Time music video, I was probably a little full of myself. For some reason, instead of putting me on the floor of the workshop with the freelancers I was given a station with the permanent artists, many of whom had worked on the original Muppet Show, The Muppet Movie, Muppets Take Manhattan and other fantastic projects. Between my ego and the understandable resentment for my placement in the workshop I kind of blew it. I didn’t make as many friends as I could have if I had been a bit more humble. I learned an important lesson that I should have learned from Sesame Street years earlier.

Then, two years later, Jim Henson died suddenly. I contacted some friends I had made and found out about the memorial service that was going to be at St. John the Devine Cathedral on the Upper East Side. I attended in a white dinner jacket and red hightop Converse sneakers I had bought for the occasion (if you attended you could not wear black). It was both sad and joyous, an amazing celebration of the life of this incredible man who has touched all of our lives and I am honored to have had my brush with his creativity. There is a video of the event, it was not televised but it was recorded. I recommend you watch it to see all of Henson’s friends and family who participated.

Over the years I did other projects related to the Muppets; some toys I sculpted, plush designs and even a glass Cookie Monster Christmas ornament but I never did work directly for the company again. A few years ago I was looking to see if I could find a photo of my Newsboy Whippet Muppet. I was adding some images to my school visit presentation when I discovered I had one more connection to Jim Henson that took 30 years to find out. When I worked on Dog City, it was in the New York City workshop. The show was filmed in a studio in Toronto. I came across behind the scenes footage someone had taken on their home video camera. They had only uploaded it to YouTube in 2016. In watching it I realized that my Muppet was being performed by Jim Henson himself! I was floored. I could not believe that I never knew that he had put my Muppet on his hands and brought it to life. Below is an edit showing him performing with my puppet on his right hand in the opening number.

You can see the whole video and many more from the time here. Enjoy!