The Strictly Commercial Award winner for best ad of 1963

Before Jim Henson was able to tell stories with his muppets on "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show" he paid the bills by making advertisements and industrial videos. His ads for Wilkins Coffee are relatively well known, and mostly feature a muppet who doesn't like Wilkins Coffee getting injured by a Kermit-esque muppet Really:


However I had never seen any of Henson's video he had made for major companies. Sometimes these were produced for internal marketing, sometimes he was making instructional videos.

This one below is surprisingly hip considering it was for a meeting of Bell Telelphone owners:



I love the design of the robot and my favorite line is "Correction. (blows up a butterfly) The Machine. Does not have a soul. It has no bothersome emotions."


(Photo at top is of what appears to be that same robot puppet being fixed by Jim Henson and Henson's longtime head writer Jerrry Juhl while guest on the Jack Paar's talk show.

Photo via Jim Henson Company clip via filmdrunk.)

best muppets parody trailer yet.

The muppets did a parody trailer based on the girl with the dragon tattoo remake trailer*



Holy shit that thing is amazing. Don't just just sit there reading my text about it, watch the damn thing again.


Fuck yeah Muppets.

Footnote(s):
*on that topic: am I the only one who thinks its weird the David Fincher set the remake in Sweden and is having Daniel Craig speak with a swedish accent is kinda weird? I mean not shot by shot remake of Psycho weird, but still makes the film like more of a needless retread than it would if they actually changed, well, any of the elements.

Terry Gilliam makes me happy

I love well down "making of" documentries. I remember as a kid Jim Henson had some specials (I think it was part of "The Jim Henson Hour" where he showed how muppets were made, and even how the sets for the specials were made.

This video gives me a similar feeling of joy. Watching a movie maker who I love explaining to me how he does what he loves.

This isn't at all advertising related but I just wanted to share it with the world.



Oh and since youtube has everything, here is that Jim Henson Hour episode. The show was apparently from 1989, but wiki tells me I probably saw it on Nickelodeon in reruns in 1992.



(The comments section indicates parts of this episode had to be removed due to a copyright claim from lionsgate pictures, which just makes this the even more quinntessential youtube viewing experience.)





Terry via Filmdrunk