Muppet Babies

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Jim Henson's Muppet Babies, which aired Saturday mornings on CBS from 1984 to 1991 and for years in syndicated reruns afterward, was one of the few well-received Spinoff Babies conversions, partially because it was one of the first. Spinning off from The Muppet Show, the show's premise was a takeoff from a sequence in The Muppets Take Manhattan involving baby-versions of the characters, itself later referred to in an amusing callback (and later confirmed as canon in A Muppet Family Christmas albeit contradicted in later works such as Muppets Mayhem, at least regarding Baby Animal). In true Muppet fashion, it also naturally spawned a side franchise of children's books and tons of other merch.

Conceived from Jim Henson's concerns that children's education de-emphasized creativity and imagination, the show featured most of the big Muppet celebrities (Scooter's hitherto unknown sister notwithstanding) discovering quite mundane things and approaching them in a precocious, childlike way — before completely blowing them out of proportion with their overactive imaginations. The one adult presence on the show was the original, and otherwise unseen Nanny character, voiced by Barbara Billingsley. The Once an Episode random song (all co-written by '70s pop star Alan "Undercover Angel" O'Day) and trademark gimmick of spliced Live Action Stock Footage (one of the main factors that has prevented it from getting an official DVD release) gave it a rather surreal quality, too. And despite being a Saturday morning spinoff, it managed to contain all the wit and intelligence of its predecessor. Some fans even prefer it to the original Muppet Show. Little wonder it became such an enormous hit; it won its time slot and rated second only to Pee Wee's Playhouse on CBS' Saturday morning lineup, and spawned a short-lived craze of animated shows featuring junior versions of popular characters (see The Flintstone Kids, A Pup Named Scooby Doo, and even Roseanne's Lil Rosey), none of which proved as popular or as acclaimed as Muppet Babies. It would also be the last hit TV series Henson produced during his lifetime, as it managed to outlive its spinoff Little Muppet Monsters and the animated Fraggle Rock as well as several puppet-based Muppet works.

Later seasons would feature guest appearances from other Muppet characters, including fan favorites Statler and Waldorf. The Babies also had a memorable appearance in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue.

The franchise was rebooted in 2018 with a new CGI-animated series on Disney Junior, which ran for 71 episodes through 2022. The reboot introduced a new character (Summer Penguin) and brought back most of the original cast (the new Nanny is actually the daughter of the original and also has a male counterpart, Mr. Manny). Meanwhile, the original series remains tied up in red-tape hell, so fans should Keep Circulating the Tapes.

Tropes used in Muppet Babies include:

• Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female On Male: Piggy on Gonzo.
• Adapted Out: Major Muppet Show characters not appearing in this series include The Swedish Chef, Sweetums, Floyd and Zoot, to name a few. Dr. Teeth (the puppet version) made a cameo in the episode "Muppets Not Included." Janice is the only other Electric Mayhem member with a speaking role besides Animal, and she appears in only one episode. Baby versions of Swedish Chef and Sweetums would appear in the 2018 reboot, as did an adult Dr. Teeth.
• Affirmative Action Girl: Skeeter, as they needed a tomboyish girl character to balance Baby Piggy's girly-girl (and Janice, the other major female character on The Muppet Show, didn't fit the bill).
• All Love Is Unrequited: See Mad Love below.
• Alpha Bitch: Skeeter's role in "Pigarella".
• Animesque: Early seasons were animated in Japan by Toei Animation and there are some very anime-like touches in the character designs, especially Miss Piggy. Toei also did all the animated segments of Little Muppet Monsters (which features an even more Animesque Piggy).
• Ascended Extra: Rowlf, Scooter and Animal. They were hardly nobodies on The Muppet Show or in the first three movies, but for many, it was this show that firmly put them into core character territory with Kermit, Piggy, Fozzie and Gonzo.
• Artistic License Biology: Shouldn't Baby Kermit be, er, a tadpole?
  • Not necessarily. There are species of frogs in which the tadpoles develop in the eggs and emerge as little froglets.
    • Besides, we do see Kermit's even younger nephew Robin in a few episodes, who IS still a tadpole.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: "Don't wish for elephants unless you own a zoo/ 'cause wishes have a way of coming true!"
• Big Eater: Piggy.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: From the episode "Good Clean Fun":

Animal: Go bye bye! Piggy: No, Animal, the show's not over yet! Animal: Sorry. Piggy: It's ok.

• Burping Contest: Animal holds this with rocks and some others in "Journey To The Center Of The Nursery".
• Butt Monkey: Gonzo's fates in many of the go bye-bye skits are shockingly cruel.
• Canon Foreigner: Skeeter, though an adult version of her has recently made appearances in The Muppet Show Comic Book, so (depending on how much you're willing to take the comics as canon), she may be verging into Canon Immigrant territory.
• Cat Fight: Piggy and Skeeter at least 3 times. For someone so young, Piggy sure can be vicious...
• Chekhov's Gun: In the beginning of the episode "Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dark?," the kids play with Scooter’s computer pen with a glowing tip. By the end of the episode, it is used by Beaker to ward off and defeat a slime monster (a representation of his fear of the dark).
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Piggy for Kermit.
• Continuity Snarl: Only if you consider the Fridge Logic: when is this show taking place anyway?
  • Let's not even get started on the later season that introduced Baby Bean Bunny, or the presence of Robin (albeit as a tadpole); they're young kids in the normal Muppets!
  • Animal's newly crafted back story in the 2023 Muppet series Muppets Mayhem complicates this even further: in that series, Animal was abandoned as an infant and raised by Floyd Pepper - who doesn't appear at all in Muppet Babies, although other Electric Mayhem members do. Yet in this series, he clearly lives at the nursery, which seems to raise other questions...
• Cosmetically Advanced Prequel: While The Muppet Show was set in the 1970s (the time it was airing) this show has baby Scooter with a personal computer.
• Couch Gag: Animal's "Go bye-bye!" occurs in different settings and styles, based on the theme of the episode.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Rowlf, Gonzo and Skeeter. Oddly, this is one of the very few times where this isn't the case for Piggy. Averted in the reboot, in which Rowlf and Gonzo were both voiced by male actors and Skeeter by a female (Cree Summer).
• Cute Bruiser: Piggy. "HI-YAH!"
• Different As Night and Day with a Half-Identical Twins chaser: Scooter and Skeeter.
• Disney Acid Sequence: Once an Episode
• Do Not Pass Go: In the Valentine's Day episode, Scooter has his computer generate a Valentine's Day poem, but it's not what he was expecting:

Roses are red Pickles are blue Have a nice banana You live at the zoo. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200 (over an image of a banana behind jail bars)

• Every Episode Ending: "Go bye-bye!"
• Extreme Omnivore: Animal.
• The Faceless: Nanny.
  • And all non-Muppet adults in the babies' fantasy sequences.
• Father, I Want to Marry My Brother: Scooter and Skeeter play a married king and queen in two different Sleeping Beauty sequences.
• Fiery Redhead: Skeeter.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Piggy: Oh Kirmy! Take me! I'm yours!
  • Not to mention Gonzo's nose fetish and his line when Piggy takes him into the closet, "Be gentle with me."
• Hidden Depths: Piggy always cast herself as the Distressed Damsel Princess Classic in their make-believe adventures, only to usually end up saying something like, "Gimme that stupid sword!"
• Hot and Cold: Piggy is a mix between this and Psychotic Lover.
• Hypocritical Humor:

Piggy: I'm not playing any wicked queen! Why... I haven't got a DROP of wicked in me!!!

• "I Am" Song in the full version of the Opening Theme:

Kermit: I like adventure! Piggy: I like romance! Fozzie: I love great jokes! Animal: Animal dance! Scooter: I've got my computer! Skeeter: I jump through the air! Rowlf: I play the piano! Gonzo: And I've got blue hair! Ha! Bunsen: Me, I invent things! Beaker: ME-MEEP MEEP MEEP MEEEEEEEEEP!!! Nanny: Is everything all right in here? All: Yes, Nanny.

• I Just Want to Be Special: One episode dealt with Scooter feeling like his computer abilities were nothing compared to the other kids' areas of expertise. Oh, if only he'd been born later...
  • In one episode, the babies try to figure out how to relate with Gonzo better by finding ways where they are really weird too. It worked too well, and Gonzo wound up coming to the conclusion that he wasn't really weird and if he wasn't a 'weirdo', then he wasn't anything at all. Of course, for the Muppet Babies version of Gonzo, being labeled "weird" was always a point of pride.
• "I Want" Song: "The Biggest Little Pig In Hollywood" in the episode "This Little Piggy Went To Hollywood"
• Informed Judaism: In the 2018 reboot, Miss Nanny (the original Nanny's daughter) is Jewish, and teaches the kids about Hanukkah.
• Irony: In "The Muppet Museum of Art", Skeeter slips on Gonzo's roller skate and twists her ankle, forcing Nanny to cancel a trip to an art museum to take care of her, and Gonzo has a guilt trip over ruining the trip they were all waiting for. The (dramatic) irony is we see Skeeter slipping on one of Piggy's roller skates, and she swapped it with one of Gonzo's to pass the blame to him. The rest of the episode has the other babies making their own art museum for Skeeter, while Gonzo makes various works of art featuring Piggy, subconsciously sneaking a roller skate in; Piggy reacts negatively to each one as it reminds her that Skeeter's accident was her fault.
  • Additionally, Skeeter gets to stay in the living room with Nanny, watching TV and drinking soda-pop while Nanny pampers her. Not a bad deal at all.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Could somebody please speak to congress and get them to make U.S. copyright laws less restricted like they are in Europe so we can get this on DVD? We'll settle for Clumsy Copyright Censorship!
• Mad Love Triangle: Piggy's crush on Kermit, Gonzo's crush on Piggy.
• May the Farce Be with You
• Narrative Shapeshifting: Baby Beaker, while explaining his fear of the monster under his bed to the other babies (since, like Adult Beaker, all he can say is "Meep!").
• No Export for You: There are no plans announced of any DVD releases of the show, due to copyright issues.
• Not Quite Starring: A weird example: none of the original puppeteers reprised their roles as their respective characters.
  • Didn't happen with the Fraggle Rock Animated Adaptation either.
• Off-Model: It is a Marvel animation production (see also My Little Pony) with the early episodes co-produced by Toei Animation. But then AKOM took over...
• The Other Darrin: Frank Welker replaced Howie Mandell as Skeeter's voice midway through the show's run.
  • Dave Coulier also replaced Howie as Animal and Bunsen.
  • All of the characters got new voice actors for the 2018 reboot.
• Pirate Girl: In one episode, the kids pretended to be treasure hunters and encountered a trio of female pirates.
• Produce Pelting:

Fozzie: "Something tells me I oughta give up comedy and go into the tomato sauce business."

• Reality Warper: Well, not officially, but it would explain a lot.
• Remember the New Guy?: Skeeter. As of the first episode, she was just plain always there.
• The Renaissance Age of Animation
• Running Gag: What will they find in the closet this time?
• Shorttank: Skeeter.
• Shout-Out: How many movie references did they have? A Star Wars one (just like the original Muppet Show) where Kermit was Luke, Miss Piggy was Leia, and Animal was Vader. (Now, that is impossible, Luke.) They also did Indiana Jones.
  • Muppet Babies runneth over with Star Wars references, in fact. Thanks to how close Henson Productions and Lucasarts were at the time, Lucas basically gave the Henson crew free rein to make as many references as they liked without fear of lawyers, a privilege they used as much as they could.
    • The target audience being relatively familiar with the works due to their fame helped matters a lot, too.
  • Another episode had Scooter and Piggy re-enacting Nanny's favorite movie, The African Queen.
  • "Nice to Have Gnome You" is based around shout outs to Labyrinth and the film adaptation of The Witches.
  • There's a part when Animal comes out of a toy chest dressed in medieval garb while clicking a pair of coconuts together.
  • This troper's favorite episode to this day is still, "It's Only Pretendo".
• Spinoff Babies: The Trope Codifier
• Straight Man: Rowlf.
• Talking to Himself: For the first two seasons, Howie Mandel voiced Skeeter, Animal and Bunsen. Frank Welker voiced Kermit, Beaker, Skeeter (taking over for Howie respectively) and various other voices. Dave Coulier also took over for Howie respectively, voicing Animal and Bunsen, as well as voicing Bean Bunny, Janice, Statler and Waldorf. Greg Berg voiced Scooter and Fozzie. Russi Taylor voiced Gonzo and Robin.
• Theme Tune Roll Call
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Piggy and Skeeter respectively (No, we did not get that mixed up — Piggy dresses in pink, bows, and lace and karate chops anyone when they set off her Hair-Trigger Temper, whereas Skeeter is a Tomboy but much more mellow.)
• Tough Room: Fozzie getting pelted by tomatoes for telling bad jokes.
• Writer's Block: Shows up once, and solved in the most zany fashion possible - writer's termites.