Entertainment
Muppets at 50: How Jim Henson’s Felt Icons Became a Billion-Dollar Franchise That Still Prints Money
The Muppets, created by Jim Henson, have thrived for over 50 years, starting with “Sam and Friends” in 1955 and gaining fame through “The Muppet Show” and various films. Despite challenges, including Henson’s passing in 1990 and subsequent ownership changes, The Muppets remain culturally significant, entertaining generations globally.
It’s easy making green: Muppets continue to make a profit 50 years into their run
Jared Bahir Browsh, University of Colorado Boulder
A variety show that’s still revered for its absurdist, slapstick humor debuted 50 years ago. It starred an irreverent band of characters made of foam and fleece.
Long after “The Muppet Show”‘s original 120-episode run ended in 1981, the legend and legacy of Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo and other creations concocted by puppeteer and TV producer Jim Henson have kept on growing. Thanks to the Muppets’ film franchise and the wonders of YouTube, the wacky gang is still delighting, and expanding, its fan base.
As a scholar of popular culture, I believe that the Muppets’ reign, which began in the 1950s, has helped shape global culture, including educational television. Along the way, the puppets and the people who bring them to life have earned billions in revenue.
Johnny Carson interviews Muppet creator Jim Henson, Kermit and other Muppets on the ‘Tonight Show’ in 1975, ahead of one of an early ‘The Muppet Show’ pilot.
Kermit’s origin story
Muppets, a portmanteau of marionette and puppet, first appeared on TV in the Washington, D.C., region in 1955, when Henson created a short sketch show called “Sam and Friends” with his future wife, Jane Nebel.
Their motley cast of puppets, including a lizardlike character named Kermit, sang parody songs and performed comedy sketches.
Henson’s creations were soon popping up in segments on other TV shows, including “Today” and late-night programs. Rowlf the Dog appeared in Canadian dog food commercials before joining “The Jimmy Dean Show” as the host’s sidekick.
After that show ended, Rowlf and Dean performed on the “Ed Sullivan Show,” where Kermit had occasionally appeared since 1961.
Rowlf the Dog and Jimmy Dean reprise their schtick on the ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ in 1967.
From ‘Sesame Street’ to ‘SNL’
As Rowlf and Kermit made the rounds on variety shows, journalist Joan Ganz Cooney and psychologist Lloyd Morrisett were creating a new educational program. They invited Henson to provide a Muppet ensemble for the show.
Henson waived his performance fee to maintain rights over the characters who became the most famous residents of “Sesame Street.” The likes of Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster and Big Bird were joined by Kermit who, by the time the show premiered in 1969, was identified as a frog.
When “Sesame Street” became a hit, Henson worried that his Muppets would be typecast as children’s entertainment. Another groundbreaking show, aimed at young adults, offered him a chance to avoid that.
“Saturday Night Live’s” debut on NBC in 1975 – when the show was called “Saturday Night” – included a segment called “The Land of Gorch,” in which Henson’s grotesque creatures drank, smoked and cracked crass jokes.
“The Land of Gorch” segments ended after “Saturday Night Live’s” first season. ‘Saturday Night Live’s’ first season included ‘Land of Gorch’ sketches that starred creatures Jim Henson made to entertain grown-ups.
Miss Piggy gets her closeup
“The Muppet Show” was years in the making. ABC eventually aired two TV specials in 1974 and 1975 that were meant to be pilots for a U.S.-produced “Muppet Show.”
After no American network picked up his quirky series, Henson partnered with British entertainment entrepreneur Lew Grade to produce a series for ATV, a British network, that featured Kermit and other Muppets. The new ensemble included Fozzie Bear, Animal and Miss Piggy – Muppets originally performed by frequent Henson collaborator Frank Oz.
“The Muppet Show” parodied variety shows on which Henson had appeared. Connections he’d made along the way paid off: Many celebrities he met on those shows’ sets would guest star on “The Muppet Show,” including everyone from Rita Moreno and Lena Horne to Joan Baez and Johnny Cash.
“The Muppet Show,” which was staged and shot at a studio near London, debuted on Sept. 5, 1976, in the U.K, before airing in syndication in the United States on stations like New York’s WCBS.
As the show’s opening and closing theme songs changed over time, they retained a Vaudeville vibe despite the house band’s preference for rock and jazz.
The Muppets hit the big screen
“The Muppet Show” was a hit, amassing a global audience of over 200 million. It won many awards, including a Primetime Emmy for outstanding comedy-variety or music series – for which it beat “Saturday Night Live” – in 1978.
While his TV show was on the air, Henson worked on the franchise’s first film, “The Muppet Movie.” The road film, released in 1979, was another hit: It earned more than US$76 million at the box office.
“The Muppet Movie” garnered two Academy Award nominations for its music, including best song for “Rainbow Connection.” It won a Grammy for best album for children.
The next two films, “The Great Muppet Caper,” which premiered in 1981, and “The Muppets Take Manhattan,” released in 1984, also garnered Oscar nominations for their music.
As ‘The Muppet Movie’ opens, Statler and Waldorf tell a security guard of their heckling plans.
‘Fraggle Rock’ and the Disney deal
The cast of “The Muppet Show” and the three films took a break from Hollywood while Henson focused on “Fraggle Rock,” a TV show for kids that aired from 1983-1987 on HBO.
Like Henson’s other productions, “Fraggle Rock” featured absurdist humor – but its puppets aren’t considered part of the standard Muppets gang. This co-production between Henson, Canadian Broadcast Corporation and British producers was aimed at international markets.
The quickly conglomerating media industry led Henson to consider corporate partnerships to assist with his goal of further expanding the Muppet media universe.
In August 1989, he negotiated a deal with Michael Eisner of Disney who announced at Disney-MGM Studios an agreement in principle to acquire The Muppets, with Henson maintaining ownership of the “Sesame Street” characters.
The announcement also included plans to open Muppet-themed attractions at Disney parks.
But less than a year later, on May 16, 1990, Henson died from a rare and serious bacterial infection. He was 53.
At the end of ‘Fraggle Rock’s’ run, its characters look for new gigs.
Of Muppets and mergers
Henson’s death led to the Disney deal’s collapse. But the company did license The Muppets to Disney, which co-produced “The Muppet Christmas Carol” in 1992 and “Muppet Treasure Island” in 1996 with Jim Henson Productions, which was then run by Jim’s son, Brian Henson.
In 2000, the Henson family sold the Muppet properties to German media company EM.TV & Merchandising AG for $680 million. That company ran into financial trouble soon after, then sold the Sesame Street characters to Sesame Workshop for $180 million in late 2000. The Jim Henson Company bought back the remaining Muppet properties for $84 million in 2003.
In 2004, Disney finally acquired The Muppets and most of the media library associated with the characters.
Disney continued to produce Muppet content, including “The Muppet’s Wizard of Oz” in 2005. Its biggest success came with the 2011 film “The Muppets,” which earned over $165 million at the box office and won the Oscar for best original song “Man or Muppet.”
“Muppets Most Wanted,” released in 2014, earned another $80 million worldwide, bringing total global box office receipts to over $458 million across eight theatrical Muppets movies.
The ‘Muppet Show’ goes on
The Muppets continue to expand their fandom across generations and genres by performing at live concerts and appearing in several series and films.
Through these many hits and occasional bombs, and the Jim Henson Company’s personnel changes, the Muppets have adapted to changes in technology and tastes, making it possible for them to remain relevant to new generations.
That cast of characters made of felt and foam continue to entertain fans of all ages. Although many people remain nostalgic over “The Muppet Show,” two prior efforts to reboot the show proved short-lived.
But when Disney airs its “The Muppet Show” anniversary special on Feb. 4, 2026, maybe more people will get hooked as Disney looks to reboot the series
‘The Muppet Show’ will be back – for at least one episode – on Feb. 4, 2026.
Jared Bahir Browsh, Assistant Teaching Professor of Critical Sports Studies, University of Colorado Boulder
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Entertainment
30 years after ‘Reasonable Doubt,’ Jay‑Z’s career embodies hip‑hop’s biggest contradictions
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“Reasonable Doubt” was not the first rap album I ever owned. But Jay-Z’s debut was the first hip-hop album I bought with my own money.
30 years after ‘Reasonable Doubt,’ Jay‑Z’s career embodies hip‑hop’s biggest contradictions
Jabari M. Evans, University of South Carolina
“Reasonable Doubt” was not the first rap album I ever owned. But Jay-Z’s debut was the first hip-hop album I bought with my own money. More importantly, it was the first one I studied as a young writer who aspired to become a rapper, a dream that eventually came true.
Jay-Z sounded cool in a way that resembled a jazz musician more than a conventional rap star. He rapped with a quiet calm that also conveyed supreme confidence. His lyrics were layered, skillful and unorthodox.
Yes, the tracks often revolved around drug dealing. But the hustlers who populated “Reasonable Doubt” weren’t degenerates. They were refined and astute thinkers. And unlike other gangsta rappers, there was a moral quandary at the heart of his storytelling. In tracks like “D’Evils,” Jay-Z’s narrator turns crime, aspiration and paranoia into meditations on capitalism and the psychic cost of wealth:
We used to fight for building blocks
Now we fight for blocks with buildings that make a killing
The closest of friends when we first started
But grew apart as the money grew, and soon grew black-hearted
And later:
My soul is possessed by D’Evils in the form of diamonds and Lexuses
The cinematic complexity displayed in its tracks helps explain why “Reasonable Doubt” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and why it still matters 30 years later.
But the album also launched the career of a rapper whose own trajectory has come to mirror hip-hop’s own transformation.
In 1996, hip-hop was still fighting for legitimacy. Three decades later, it had been folded into the mainstream. Kendrick Lamar can win a Pulitzer Prize, Nas can have an endowed fellowship at Harvard University, and Jay-Z, who once couldn’t get signed to a label, can create a label of his own and become a billionaire business mogul.
Is it even possible for hip-hop to be seen as countercultural in 2026? And what happens when hip-hop’s most successful outsider becomes central to the very institutions he once seemed to challenge?
From moral panic to corporate behemoth
When “Reasonable Doubt” was released, hip-hop was both ascendant and under siege.
In February 1996, Tupac Shakur came out with “All Eyez on Me,” which became one of the bestselling rap albums of all time; seven months later, he was shot and killed. His friend-turned-rival, The Notorious B.I.G., was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting the following year. The media often cast these high-profile deaths as proof that rap music was inseparable from street violence, and the moral panic around hip-hop’s influence on young listeners only intensified.
How times have changed. Today, hip-hop powers advertising campaigns, luxury branding and streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, rap surpassed rock music as the most popular music genre in the U.S. in 2018. Today, it accounts for roughly 1-in-4 on-demand audio streams.
Jay-Z has played an outsized role in that transformation.
Since 1998, he’s won 25 Grammys for his own music. In that time, he’s also built a business empire. There’s his talent agency, Roc Nation; his streaming platform, TIDAL; his venture capital firm, Marcy Venture Partners; and his luxury alcohol brands, Armand de Brignac and D’Ussé. Through Roc Nation, he’s also a strategic partner with the NFL, advising the football league on its entertainment programming.
Forbes currently pegs his net worth at US$2.8 billion.
Confronted on capitalism
In April 2026, GQ published a long interview with Jay-Z.
This was a big deal: Jay-Z hadn’t interacted with the media like this since 2017, when he was promoting his 13th solo album, “4:44.”
How would one of hip-hop’s elder statesmen reflect on his career and his many successes?
In the interview, Jay-Z didn’t present his riches as a complicated outcome of capitalism’s contradictions. Instead, he talked about his wealth as if it were something his critics had failed to understand. When asked about the belief that there’s something inherently suspect about accumulating so much money, he pushed back:
“It’s almost like a cop-out. You get to demonize this group of folks without fixing the actual system that exists […] Your morality defines who you are. Your morality is not defined by a dollar amount.”
As for the notion that his career trajectory was somehow hypocritical:
“The only thing I heard coming up was the American dream. You could make it, if you pull yourself up by the bootstraps. I heard that my entire life – until we started being successful. Then it was like: You’re selling out because you’re making money.”
He then went on to insist that being handsomely paid is not some sort of betrayal to hip-hop, art or his community.
“I make art first and then I make sure that I’m compensated for my art. … That [capitalist] structure exists; I just see the world for what it is, not for what I want it to be. I’m a realist.”
To me, Jay-Z certainly sounded persuasive. He also sounded defensive. I think that’s because hip-hop has long been haunted by the idea that wealth compromises credibility, even as the tracks have always contained aspirational themes of luxury and entrepreneurship.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game
For my generation, Jay-Z sold aspiration in addition to albums.
I wore Rocawear denim suits in high school with a kind of conviction that now feels almost funny to admit. In college, drinking Belvedere vodka, which appeared in many a Jay-Z track in the early 2000s, felt like a rite of passage.
That’s because Jay made luxury seem urbane, sophisticated and distinctly Black. Even later in life, when I’d smoke Cohiba cigars, drink D’USSÉ or read about art collecting, I felt like I was living inside a script he had helped write.
Looking back, I can see that much of my admiration for him was cloaked in materialism. Now, I think about the work of political scientist Cedric Robinson, who wrote extensively about what he called “racial capitalism.”
He argued that capitalism has always been structured through race. It does not merely tolerate racial hierarchy; it depends on it. That means Black wealth – even spectacular Black wealth – does not automatically equal Black liberation. One Black billionaire can be held up as evidence of progress, while the broader system that continues to produce Black inequality remains intact.
In other words, if Jay-Z’s ascent becomes shorthand for Black progress, then the critique of the system that continues to oppress those at the margins starts to fade. The culture begins to confuse exceptional mobility with collective freedom.
At the same time, I don’t think Jay-Z can be simply understood as a sellout. Communication scholar A.J. Escoffery has written a lot about what he calls “reparative media.” Essentially, he calls for media institutions to do more than offer tokens of representation to marginalized communities. Media companies need to be built or owned by those communities.
Jay-Z’s defenders will sometimes describe him along these lines – as a Robin Hood-like figure who has taken capital from historically white-owned institutions and redirected some of it toward Black communities or Black entrepreneurs. Even if those gestures remain, at heart, capitalist – like his investments in cannabis brands – he’ll often use his positioning and clout to fund minority-owned businesses.
In the GQ interview, the rapper seemed to acknowledge the compromises he felt compelled to make, and he spoke of the limits Black artists face in industries they do not own:
“[There’s] nowhere you’re going to go that Black people control distribution and control media. At some point you’re going to have to partner with somebody.”
In that, Jay-Z highlights what hip-hop continues to grapple with. The genre no longer has to prove it belongs in the mainstream. But it has to figure out what it means to survive without being fully absorbed by it.
Jabari M. Evans, Assistant Professor of Race and Media, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of South Carolina
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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amusement and theme parks
Mattel Adventure Park and VAI Resort Continue to Grow, But Opening Date Remains Uncertain
Get the latest update on Mattel Adventure Park and VAI Resort in Glendale, Arizona. Construction continues in 2026, but officials have yet to announce an opening date.
GLENDALE, Ariz. — One of Arizona’s most anticipated entertainment developments continues to make visible progress, but visitors eager to experience Mattel Adventure Park and VAI Resort will likely have to wait longer.
Located near State Farm Stadium in Glendale, the massive VAI Resort project and the adjacent Mattel Adventure Park have been under construction for several years. While the development has transformed the skyline west of Phoenix, recent updates indicate that neither attraction currently has a confirmed opening date.
New Reports Suggest Further Delays
Recent reports published in spring 2026 indicate that VAI Resort officials continue to maintain their policy of announcing an opening date approximately nine months before welcoming guests. Because no such announcement has been made, industry observers and local media outlets now believe a 2026 opening is becoming increasingly unlikely.
The uncertainty extends to Mattel Adventure Park, which was originally expected to open in 2022 before being delayed multiple times. After missing its latest target of late 2025, references to a specific opening date were removed from public materials. Park representatives have stated that they currently have no update regarding an opening timeline.
Construction Continues Across the Property
Despite the delays, construction remains active throughout the resort and theme park complex. Visitors traveling along Loop 101 can easily spot the towering Hot Wheels-themed roller coasters that have become some of the most recognizable structures on the site.
Drone footage and construction updates posted throughout 2026 show ongoing work on hotel towers, entertainment venues, infrastructure, and various attractions within Mattel Adventure Park.
The official VAI Resort website continues to promote its future offerings, including luxury accommodations, restaurants, entertainment venues, retail spaces, and the world’s first Mattel Adventure Park.
What Guests Can Expect
When completed, Mattel Adventure Park is expected to feature attractions inspired by some of Mattel’s most recognizable brands, including:
- Barbie™ Beach House
- Hot Wheels™ Bone Shaker™: The Ultimate Ride
- Hot Wheels™ Twin Mill™ Racer
- Thomas & Friends™ attractions
- Masters of the Universe-themed experiences
- Mattel Games-themed attractions and activities
The park will be Arizona’s first fully themed indoor-outdoor amusement park and is designed to offer experiences for guests of all ages.
Meanwhile, VAI Resort is planned to include four hotel towers with approximately 1,100 rooms, a large entertainment district, multiple restaurants, retail shopping, convention facilities, and a state-of-the-art amphitheater designed to host major concerts and events.
A Growing Vision
One factor contributing to the project’s lengthy timeline appears to be the continued expansion of the resort’s scope. Developers have repeatedly described VAI as a destination that has evolved far beyond its original vision, adding new hospitality, dining, entertainment, and retail components over time. Earlier project statements noted that these expansions affected scheduling for the adjacent theme park.
The development remains one of the largest tourism and hospitality projects currently underway in Arizona, with investments estimated at more than $1 billion.
Looking Ahead
For now, both VAI Resort and Mattel Adventure Park remain works in progress. Construction activity continues, new attractions are still being promoted on official websites, and developers have shown no indication that the project has been abandoned. However, without an announced opening date, Arizona residents and visitors will need to remain patient as Glendale’s ambitious entertainment destination moves closer to completion.
While many expected to be riding Hot Wheels coasters by now, the latest updates suggest that the world’s first Mattel Adventure Park is still a destination for the future rather than the present.
Related External Links
- Mattel Adventure Park Official Website
- VAI Resort Official Website
- City of Glendale Economic Development News
- State Farm Stadium Official Website
- Visit Glendale Arizona Tourism Guide
- Epic Resort Destinations
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Celebrate America’s 250th Birthday with Summer Deals, Savings and Prizes
(Feature Impact) America’s 250th birthday calls for celebration, and this summer, it goes well beyond backyard barbecues and poolside parties.
Watch this video to learn more
To help mark the milestone, Circle K is rolling out refreshing deals, new merch and exciting prizes as America’s Party Stop – the one-stop destination for summer value and fun. The free Inner Circle rewards program is your ticket to the party – join by downloading the Circle K app and creating an account.
Rewards members can enjoy any size Polar Pop for just 25 cents on July 1 at participating locations. Fans can also grab limited-edition merchandise like hats and shirts to show off their love for the iconic drink. From July 1-Sept. 1, anyone can play the new Scratch & Win game daily in the app for instant prizes with members unlocking exclusive eligibility for weekly cash prizes.
The fun extends beyond the store, too. Throughout July, you can support the American Red Cross by rounding up in-store purchases to help disaster relief efforts and first responders across the U.S.
Download the app, join the free rewards program and find more ways to celebrate America’s birthday by visiting CircleK.com/America-250.
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