I have a question that has been unanswerable for me for quite some time. No one I know remembers this.
During the Apollo 11 mission there was a lot of time to fill on TV between Important Things Happening. I vividly remember seeing one such program, but I may be mistaken on the details:
The program was designed to give the younger viewers, which I was one of, an insight into the entire solar system. The framework for this was that NASA was sending a long-duration mission to all of the planets. Because it was impossible to make a ship with an adequate life-support system to last the 20-odd years such a mission would take, they decided to send a Muppet, who didn’t need food or water (or air). The program showed the dispatches back from the intrepid explorer at each planet he visited.
I remember being impressed by the sadness of the poor Muppet, 20 years removed from home, all alone in the cold of space.
I cannot find any evidence that such a show ever existed. Assuming that I don’t have important details wrong, everytime I try to search for Muppets in space, I either get Pigs in Space (good, but a totally different head. Totally) or Muppets FROM Space (much too new). I can’t find anything on the Muppets website, or IMDB, either.
Does anyone else remmeber this? Can anyone give me any insight into this program? Was it really Muppets? When was it made? Is it available anywhere?
Yeh, I remember that! An aged Kermit finally returning to Earth after a round trip to Pluto. Unfortunately there seems to be tons of stuff from the late '60s that’s darn near unfindable. Like the afterschool special about the boy who raised a pet Triceratops that hatched from a chicken egg.
That reminds me… Every time I hear the word “triceratops,” I’m reminded of the first place I heard the word: a kid’s mystery I read in grade one, where some strange thing was going on in a Natural History museum, and a wee kid heard the important clue as “Try Sarah Tops,” which of course led them on a wild goose chase looking for an imaginary girl, instead of looking under the reconstructed skeleton. Anyone remember that story?
The Muppets were well-known before Sesame Street, having appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show as early as 1966. From that page, I count 15 appearances there before Sesame Street premiered. That was about as big a venue as you can choose back then.
So by the moon landing, the Muppets were well known to the American public.
And thanks, too, for the link, which brought me back to the inchworm sketch from 1966, my first encounter with the muppets – or at least the first that I recall. Although, obviously, I’d gotten hazy on the dates.
(I often get hazy on dates, though.)
If Jim Henson and Joe Raposo aren’t in heaven, I don’t wanna go!
I don’t think it was Kermit but rather a generic puppet. I remember the host explaining that they were using a puppet because of the savings on life support or something to that effect.