User blog:GizmotheMogwai17/I think I found the puppet precursor to Happy Tree Friends from the '50s

Before he became the creator of The Muppets, Jim Henson was quite the edgy, dark humored fellow. His original projects were these hilarious commercials for coffee that honestly felt more like comedy skits than actual commercials. Just like HTF, they had the appearance of something for little kids but were far from child friendly. These shorts featured executioners, shoot outs, bombings, electrocution scenes, stabbings, and pretty much every other carnage you can image. With puppets being seen as a kid's only format in the 50s it's amazing that something that twisted could even see the light of day back then. Although it isn't as bad as modern day "adult kid shows" such as Wonder Showzen, Robot Chicken, or TripTank due to the fact that '50s TV censors were much stricter than they are now. It pretty much is the puppet HTF without the blood, because obviously gore would've been too controversial even by these commercials' standards back then. But they certainly included as much adult content as they could possibly get away with back then and always tried to find new ways to push boundaries which is evident through the fact that the deaths in these shorts get more graphic and disturbing as they go on. Check out this hilarious compilation video if you want to know what I'm talking about. Who knows, maybe the HTF creators go the idea of the show from this. It's certainly the earliest example of the "subverted kid's show" trope on mainstream television that I can find: