Chris Harris: A Year's Worth of Muppet Shirts!

Today we have a very special guest column by our friend Chris Harris who recently collected his 365th Muppet shirt.

That's right, he now has enough Muppet shirts for every day of the year. Below Chris shares his story about how he got into collecting Muppet shirts and the special milestones along the way.

A Year's Worth of Muppet Shirts

By Chris Harris

I have been collecting t-shirts related to the creations of Jim Henson and the Jim Henson Company for years. The vast majority feature The Muppet Show family of characters, but they run the gamut from Wilkins and Wontkins to “Sesame Street” to Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas to Fraggle Rock to Labyrinth to The Dark Crystal to even Dinosaurs and Bear in the Big Blue House for good measure. Nearly all of them are unique designs except for a couple I own in different colors. I also have three different versions of artist Jamie Carroll’s fantastic “Muppetational Mosaic” design. 

Jamie Carroll’s “Muppetational Mosaic” 

As a lifelong Muppet fan, my collection started innocently enough with a bunch of shirts I purchased over the years from local retailers or while on vacation at a Disney park. 

In March 2013, I was diagnosed with a form of lymphoma. I was required to have a daily radiation treatment for twenty days. I wore a Kermit the Frog shirt to my first treatment. It prompted such positive vibes and comments that I decided to wear Muppet shirts to all of my treatments. I had (and continue to have) a wonderful support system, but taking the Muppets with me everyday was another means to stay optimistic. Choosing which shirt to wear also gave me a fun thing to look forward to each morning. Everything went smoothly and we celebrated completion of my treatments by taking my niece to Heather Henson’s “The Muppet Movie” sing-along at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta. 

Muppet shirts had kind of become my thing by this point, so I continued adding to my collection. I had a recurrence of lymphoma the following year. I once again wore Muppet t-shirts while taking treatments. I had accumulated so many shirts by this point that I was able to wear Muppet shirts daily from my first radiation appointment until the follow-up appointment with my hematologist several weeks after the treatments had ended. This was a total of 51 shirts! At that point I had 45 Muppet Show character shirts, 3 Fraggle Rock shirts, 2 Sesame Street shirts, and 1 Labyrinth shirt. 

I have been doing well. Nonetheless, the t-shirt collection has continued to grow. I obtained my 100th shirt in July 2015 as a prize during the MuppetCast’s Great Muppet Haiku Contest. In September 2017, I obtained my 200th shirt as a souvenir at The Muppets Take the Bowl in Hollywood.

I hit my 300th shirt in June 2020. For that one, I teamed up with my amazingly talented friend Kenny Durkin on a custom shirt featuring a Jim Henson caricature with Jim performing finger puppets of 10 of his characters. 

As I approached having a shirt for every day of the year, I knew I had to do something special. For my 365th shirt, I once again tapped Kenny Durkin for a custom “time” themed design. 

The Jim Henson timepiece print he created is nothing short of brilliant.

Kenny’s designs are available at both Redbubble and TeePublic.