Sad news as Muppet Show guest Loretta Swit has died.
Swit guest starred in the fifth season were she replaced Miss Piggy during a Pigs in Space sketch and sang a love song with Thog. She was best known for playing Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan on the TV show M*A*S*H. She won two Emmys for the role and was nominated 10 times, every year the show was on except the first.
Swit's film work includes Freebie and the Bean, Race With the Devil, BoardHeads, and Blake Edwards Hollywood satire, S.O.B., and the women’s lib film Stand Up and Be Counted.
She many guest appearances on TV shows such as Mission: Impossible, Mannix, Gunsmoke and Hawaii Five-Oand was regular on the game-shows Match Game, The Hollywood Squares and The $10,000 Pyramid.
Swit was an active supporter of animal welfare, serving on the boards of Actors and Others for Animals and The Wildlife Waystation and was a spokesperson for the Humane Society. She founded SwitHeart Animal Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to ending animal cruelty. She used proceeds from her original artwork to raise funds, and was named Woman of the Year by the Animal Protection Institute and the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Swit died just after midnight Friday of suspected natural causes at her home in New York City.
Massachusetts-based Muppet fan Emily Engel was so angry that President Donald Trump is trying to defund public television that she ran a sewing campaign to help PBS, raising over $10K in the process.
Photo: Staasi Heropoulos, The Republican
Engel uses her skills as a fabric artist using tools like fabric, needle and thread to create not just art art, but replica dolls of characters from Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.
She found her niche rejecting replicating main characters like Kermit, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, Oscar the Grouch, for less produced secondary, fan-favorite, characters.
When interviewed about her accomplishment by The Republican, Emily said, “People have that one character they connected with. Sometimes it is a main character, but other times it’s one in the background. People might also feel they were in the background."
Though The Muppets have been appearing on Sesame Street for decades, many people fear
Trump's plan to defund PBS will have dire consequences for the non-profit network.
“What ‘Sesame Street’ represents is so important, because it was created for inner city children who did not have great schools or access to proper materials and books. They could watch educational programming for free and learn stuff they were not getting in their own school system,” said Engel.
Photo: Staasi Heropoulos, The Republican
Engel reached out to her social media followers, telling them if they each donated $10 to PBS, she will give them a 25% discount on their next purchase of her dolls.
Each donor also was eligible to win a $400 doll of their choice from a group of nine that she selected..
The fundraiser ended Sunday and raised $11,000. What struck her is who wants to help the American TV network with entries from 47 states, all over Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, and Ireland.
Though she's been a seamstress for years, Engel made her first plush (non-Muppet) replica in 2010 for a friend with no patterns or training.
“I got some materials and did it from sight ... and it just came together beautifully. That’s how I discovered my ability to replicate visually, with just needles, thread and fabric,” she said.
Photo: Staasi Heropoulos, The Republican
While the characters are owned by Sesame Workshop and Disney, Engel said she has never had a run-in with their lawyers.
“There’s a ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ situation going on. I don’t make $44 billion a year off of this. I’m not competition with Disney. I’m not picking from their pocket. We coexist peacefully. They know about me. I’m hiding in plain sight. Jim Henson’s daughter even has one of my dolls,” she said.
Photo: Staasi Heropoulos, The Republican
Over the years, Engel has used her dolls to raise thousands of dollars for charities and nonprofit groups, including $6,500 for the Indian Orchard Food Bank, $10,000 for the presidential campaigns of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and $800 for the Trevor Project, which counsels LGBTQ+ youth.
As we reported back in March, last night Kermit delivered the University of Maryland's 2025 Commencement Address.
Photo by Stephanie S. Cordle/University of Maryland
As expected, the speech was full of wisdom and encouragement for the class of 2025. He even mentioned his right hand man Jim Henson, who graduated from University of Maryland. in 1969.
Photo by Stephanie Riley Sims/ University of Maryland
You can see images and a video of the entire speech below provided to us by the University of Maryland.
Photo by Stephanie Riley Sims/ University of Maryland
Photo by Stephanie S. Cordle/University of Maryland
Photo by Stephanie S. Cordle/University of Maryland
Photo by Stephanie S. Cordle/University of Maryland
Kermit was interviewed by NBC News earlier in the week about the speech.
Photo by Stephanie S. Cordle/University of Maryland
Our friend Lucas Ross was also there to lend his banjo skills for a speech ending "Rainbow Connection" sing-a-long.
Although Kermit does appear from time to time during the 3 hour commencement, his keynote speech starts at 2 hour mark below.
It's great to see how many students and guests brough along Kermit items to celebrate his return to College Park.
Photo by Stephanie John Consoli/University of Maryland
Congrats to the University of Maryland's class of 2025.
More sad news as longtime Henson/ Muppet producer David Lazer has died.
David Lazer started his career with Henson in 1965 after being an executive at IBM where he helped develop the Muppet Meeting films. A Muppet likeness of him appeared in many of these films and in The Muppet Movie finale.
Lazer served as executive producer for The Muppet Show where he also acted as a liaison for the show's guest stars. He would show the guest star how to walk on the elevated sets, how to speak to a Muppet (as opposed to the performer), and would make sure the star was comfortable with the very different production atmosphere.
His death, which had not been widely reported, was confirmed by Doyle Newberry, a manager of Mr. Lazer’s estate. He did not cite a cause.
Lazer also produced the films The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, The Dark Crystal, The Muppets Take Manhattan and Labyrinth, and the 1979 TV special, The Muppets Go Hollywood.
He can be made a cameo in The Muppets Take Manhattan escorting Liza Minnelli into Sardi's before she found that her caricature on a wall has been replaced by Kermit the Frog’s.
After the death of Jim Henson in 1990 Lazer was instrumental in keeping the Henson Company going.
From May to December of 1990, Lazer came out of semi-retirement to serve as acting CEO of Henson Associates.
Brain Henson said said of him: "David sort-of came and lived with us for a while there just to help figure it all out. I'd say that David Lazer was probably the biggest influence, through that period, to help figure out how we were going to go forward."
“During that period he was very much like a father figure to me,” Brian Henson said. “My father was my mentor in puppetry, animatronics and directing puppets, but David was my mentor in terms of running the business.”
After Brian Henson was named president in early 1991, Mr. Lazer became vice chairman, a post he held until his retirement in 1994.
Lazer died on April 10 at his home in Vero Beach, Fla. He was 89.
In 1989, Went appeared the Miss Piggy's Hollywood special of The Jim Henson Hour where Piggy corners him in the men's dressing room at a Gucci store.
Perhaps best known for his role as barfly Norm Peterson on the long running NBC sitcom Cheers, Wendt appeared alongside the Cheers cast (in character) in 1990's The Earth Day Special and Disneyland's 35th Anniversary Celebration which also included separate segments by the Muppets.
In 1999. he played Tweedledee in the Creature Shop TV movie Alice in Wonderland.
Wendt appeared in many TV series like Seinfeld, M*A*S*H, Tales From The Crypt, and Columbo and played Chicago sports Superfan Bob Swerski in periodic sketches on Saturday Night Live, as well as feature films Fletch, The Little Rascals, and Spice World.
According to various sources, Diamond Select Toys was reportedly shut down over the weekend.
The company was going through through a bankruptcy process that eventually lead to Ad Populum buying Diamond Select Toys Diamond Comics, and their related assets.
Ad Populum, owns NECA, Kidrobot, WizKids, Chia Pet, Rubies, Smiffys, Enesco, and Graceland. They might be interested in transferring licenses to their other divisions, but no word yet.
While their website is still up, all Diamond Select Toys staff were laid off as part of the new owner's immediate restructuring measures and we don't yet know how this will effect the release of their Uncle Deadly and Pepe, Sweetums and Robin, and Lips and Lew Zealand figures.
Our contact at Diamond Zach Oat, the marketing supervisor at DST, was on of those laid off and posted the following:
I’m sure by now everyone has heard about the layoffs at Diamond Comics/Diamond Select Toys. Well, I was one of them. 14 years as Marketing Supervisor for DST, on the nose. I’m now open to work, and while I’d love to stay in the toy industry, preferably in a marketing role, I am also an experienced web editor (TV Without Pity), magazine editor (ToyFare) and copy editor (since I was 16). I also dabble in photography. More on that later…
The shutdown of Diamond Select Toys might also include Gentle Giant,a separate brand at Diamond, who sculpted may of their products, but wasn't mentioned.
