Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-10581381-20181104041616/@comment-37627195-20190219072035

Lesser known facts about the early versions of popular Muppets:

-Kermit the Frog used to be a lizard.

-Oscar the Grouch used to be orange.

-Miss Piggy used to be Miss Mousey. She was the total opposite character we know now. A sweet, innocent mouse that would never karate chop anybody and didn't have that diva mentality that Piggy does.

-Cookie Monster used to have big vampire-like fangs.

-Speaking of Cookie Monster, originally the character didn't even exist. In the first season of Sesame Street, they had the Beautiful Day Monster instead who was a blue monster that would regularly torment Kermit and Bert & Ernie in comedic ways.

-Telly Monster has a meaningful name. Before becoming the purple triangle loving character we know today, Telly used to be the television monster. He was a full on TV addict back then. The reason they changed the TV loving part of him is because they were worried that it would encourage kids to sit too close to the TV, a rather dangerous habit that any responsible parent would discourage their child from getting into.

-Prairie Dawn used to be a totally different Muppet girl named Betty Lou.

-Elmo used to have a deep voice and actually used his pronouns correctly.

-Grover used to be green and went under the name "Fuzzyface".

-Snuffulupagus used to have creepy yellow eyes that were replaced due to unintentionally scaring children.

-The Count used to have the power to hypnotize people into doing his bidding. So yeah, he was once a total badass.

-That orange hippie guy that sings the popular Muppet song Mnah-Mnah used to have an actual name. In the earlier episodes of The Muppet Show, he was named Bip Bippadotta but no for some unknown reason they always just refer to him as "The Mnah-Mnah Guy" without giving a proper name.

-Gonzo used to have droopy eyes which made him look depressed. I'm glad they changed that because it's rather weird for a comic relief character like Gonzo to look like he's going to cry any minute.

-Big Bird was originally going to be a character intended for adults. His name was Scred and he was a bird-like alien that was going to appear on an R-rated puppet project Henson was working on called "The Land of Gorch". He said that despite using puppetry, the show would've featured innuendos and family unfriendly violence galore. It's sad that The Land of Gorch never came out because it probably would've helped the puppetry genre become adult similar to what The Simpsons did for cartoons.

-Crazy Harry used to be named Crazy Donald.

-There used to be only one Muppet cow. Her name was Gladys and they would use the same cow character every time due to a lack of resources. This became a running gag between the Muppet performers later on.

-Pip and Pop from Bear in the Big Blue House used to be named Pimmel and Pummel but were scrapped because Pummel sounded too violent.