I was going to title this post, "Disney doing everything they can to screw up the Muppets." But that was too long.
The New York Times reports on the fact that Disney is attempting to bring the Muppet "brand back from the dead," as "youth marketing expert" Samantha Skey puts it. ("Youth Marketing Expert" is code for "Spawn of Satan", but that's another topic.)
Eventually, odds are that the Disney Marketing Machine (another term that, loosely translated, means "Spawn of Satan") will succeed in cramming the classic characters down the gullets of children everywhere. This is the company that made Miley Ray Hannah Montana Stewart Cyrus Lipschitz (one of those names is fake – guess which!) one of the most successful stars of all time. They've even managed to convince kids that "High School Musical" is something other than awful. So the task of getting that audience to like something that is actually good shouldn't be too tough, right?
The thing is, despite our warm memories of all things Muppet, not every enterprise Kermit and Co. have been involved in has been a success, especially after Papa Henson passed away. "Muppets Tonight" (not mentioned in the Times article) was a flop, not because of bad marketing, but because the show wasn't very good. (I liked it a little bit, but mostly for nostalgia reasons.) And Disney has been trying to get the characters into the Disney machine for some time and so far it hasn't worked out.
Bottom line: since so many parents love them some Miss Piggy, once they see her, they'll want their kids to love her too. So if Disney can manage to put the Pig and her friends in places where both the parents and the kids can see them, they will probably succeed in getting a return on their investment. It doesn't take a marketing genius to figure that out.
Here's the thing about The Muppets. At their best, they are fully realized characters, despite the fact that they are not actually alive. Charles Grodin told a story once that went something like this: when he was filming "The Great Muppet Caper", he turned to Miss Piggy (played by Frank Oz) between takes. He told "her" that he wanted to try the upcoming scene a different way. After a long pause, Oz/Piggy replied (in character, while not being filmed), "Well, I don't really see it that way, but if you want to I guess we can try it." Why tell that story? Because that's what made the Muppets great. Not the green felt, or even Miss Piggy karate chopping anyone who had eyes for her beloved Kermie. It's the characters and the people who played them. To think that you can just pluck Fozzie Bear and the rest into another situation and assume that everyone will have the same positive feelings about them as before is kind of silly.
On a slightly different tack, does it bother you that Disney is taking these characters we grew up with and turning them into shills for generic Disney product?
Source/image: NYTimes
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