News Update: April 21, 2011

NEWS UPDATE: April 21, 2011

Our good friends over at Mighty Fine T-Shirts have alerted us to some fun new Muppet and Sesame Street t-shirts available in their store. There are three odd but cool Sesame Street Zombie t-shirts. Designed by Evan Cheng, these shirts are exclusive to Mighty Fine and include Big Bird, Elmo, and Oscar zombies declaring "B is for Brains," Bert and Ernie zombies who are frenemies of the human race, and, finally, The Count simply shouting "Blah!". These shirts are odd, indeed, there's no denying that... but they are officially licensed Sesame shirts and relatively cute, so think what you will! Mighty Fine also has a great selection of Muppet shirts and other Sesame Street shirts as well. Check out their whole stock!

Our friends working on the upcoming essay collection From Fraggle Rock to Farscape have asked us to pass along the information that deadline for entries for inclusion in the upcoming book is fast-approaching. If you would like to submit an article for the collection, simply write an essay having to do with anything from Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Dog City, and basically anything Henson-related that isn't Muppets or Sesame Street and submit your article or your idea to jennifer.garlen@gmail.com. The publishers are really hoping to develop a book that covers the wide breadth of Jim Henson's work--so have at it, Muppet fans!

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, which is now the distributor of Sesame Street DVDs, has released a press release on WBShop.com for a new DVD set they're calling "Sesame Street: The Best of Sesame Street Spoofs" and is scheduled for release on July 5. The spoofs will come in two volumes, so presumably this will be quite the collection of Sesame's greatest parodies. Here is the official DVD synopsis from Warner Bros.:

From the beginning, Sesame Street has always been known for entertaining both children and adults with spoofs on popular culture that happen to teach something too! Now the best of these segments have been culled together in a special 2 disc set for Sesame Street fans featuring classic content on disc 1 and more recent spoofs on disc 2. On Sesame Street, "Grey's Anatomy" becomes "A's Anatomy", "Mad Men" is really about teaching emotions, and "The Closer" is about "open" and "close". Fans will be nostalgic over old school classics "Hill Street Two's", "Born To Add" and "Miami Mice". This special collection will be treasured by adult fans of the series but can be enjoyed by the entire family.

After that super cool news of an awesome release from Sesame Workshop, check out this lame release from Disney: the 2012 calendar from The Muppets which is essentially a reprint of the Muppet parody calendars from 1999. Yes, only the hippest parodies for the Muppets now... Men in Black, Driving Miss Daisy... what more do you need?

While we're still on the subject of merchandise, the Vinylmation Muppets Series 2 figures are finally available to order on DisneyStore.com. The figures can be ordered individually in blind-boxes or you can order a box of blind-box figures that comes with 24 and is guaranteed to include ever figure, including the chaser (Waldo C. Graphic). Or, you can just be like me and order all 12 on eBay... (That's my collection in the picture.) (Anyone selling/giving away a Kermit figure?) 

Everyone's favorite touring exhibit from The Jim Henson Legacy, Jim Henson's Fantastic World, is finally coming to New York City! Starting in July, the exhibit will find its home for the remainder of the year in Astoria, Queens where Jim Henson's work will be featured on display. For more information on the exhibit finding its place in New York, check out this article from The New York Times.

Friend of the blog and amazing creator, Lance Cardinal, was featured on Discovery Channel Canada with his incredible custom Muppet Theater playset. The video can be seen online for a limited time only, so be sure to check it out as we watch our friend Lance hit the big time! 

The Muppet Mindset by Ryan Dosier