For those of you new to CryptoZooey, this blog post may seem like it’s coming out of nowhere — but bear with me. In addition to being a cartoonist, I’m also a puppeteer and puppet builder on the side. Puppetry has been a staple of my cartooning and convention experiences ever since I started drawing professionally in the early ’90s. 

Probably my biggest influence puppetry-wise has been Jim Henson’s Muppets. One of the things that has plagued the Muppet line over the years is that none of their puppets actually look like the characters — this is especially the case with Kermit the Frog. Other than being green, none of them have more than a passing resemblance to Kermit the Frog.

I’ve had several of these puppets over the years — the Fisher Price one from 1978 was probably the best — but it’s made for small children and becomes unusable once your hand grows too big to fit inside his head. The next best — though far from perfect — was the Eden Toys Kermit produced in 1993. There also was one made in 1994 or 95 by Applause which is similar in design.

My goal was to fix my Eden Toys Kermit puppet to more closely resemble the real Kermit puppet — in about four hours of work and using no more that $20 in materials.

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