Andy Chase

I suppose this shouldn't surprise me after seeing the Muppets pimped out to Pizza Hut in a recent TV ad, but I never thought I'd read that Disney has bought Jim Henson's Muppets.

Let the direct to video and merchandising crapflood begin! While it's true that Jim Henson himself was in talks with Disney before he died in 1990, I would like to think that any arrangement he made while still in the picture would have left him with careful control over his creations... as it stands now, the Jim Henson Company will hang around for a while in an advisory/production role, and then... who knows? In the clutches of Disney's, wherever the Muppets end up will probably not be any place Jim Henson would want.

This is really just the other shoe dropping 14 years later; A lot of the warm, fuzzy, genuineness of the Muppets left this earth with their creator fourteen years ago; things I've seen Muppets in since then have all had a celebrity-cameo-on-a-sitcom feeling. "Hey, remember us? We're the Muppets! Buy our videos!"

How sad it is now to read the quote at the top of the Muppet Central tribute to Jim Henson:

"I don't know who Jim Henson is, but I've heard he has his hand in a lot of things around here." - Kermit the Frog

Not anymore, Kermit.