Smithsonian celebrates 50 years of the Muppets. One to visit and cherish.

[Faygo Kid]

My daughter will be 30 this fall; watching "The Muppet Show" on Friday nights when she was tiny and called them the "Muppts" is one of my favorite memories. My avatar demonstrates my respect. By yumpin' yiminy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/18/AR2006051802303_pf.html

Miss Piggy should've been there.

Washington has no shortage of events featuring dignitaries, pomp and worshipful speeches, but few such events could rival the heartfelt adoration on display yesterday at the kickoff of an exhibit honoring the 50th anniversary of the Muppets at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Museum Director Brent D. Glass donned a Kermit the Frog tie with his classic Washington suit. Jane Henson, widow of Muppets creator Jim
Henson and a longtime puppeteer herself, was awed by the admiration of so many. The polished choir from Northwestern High in Hyattsville (where Henson went to school) hushed the room with its harmonies. And Willard Scott, an early Henson friend and collaborator, gave a raucous speech and kissed everybody in sight. Repeatedly.

"They had such character and such warmth," Scott said of Henson's earliest puppet creations for "Sam and Friends." That live, five-minute comedy segment was created by Henson when he was just 18 and a student at the University of Maryland. It aired on Washington's WRC right before the Huntley-Brinkley evening news and "The Tonight Show," from 1955 to 1961.

Now, all these decades later, Henson's 10 characters from "Sam and Friends" are on the third floor of the American History Museum through Labor Day. These Henson originals are behind glass, but even in their static positions, they exude the personality you'd expect with these names: Mushmellon, Harry the Hipster, Mouldy Hay and Chicken Liver.