We’ve well-documented how the Muppets are just dominating the end of 2009. However, will it continue in 2010? Well, that remains to be seen, but they’ve already made it so your 2010 will be a little better.
A few months ago Disney announced their “give a day, get a day” promotion, whereby if you volunteer for a day at a participating organization you’ll then receive a free one day ticket to a Disney park (I’m sure there are some annoying restrictions, but I’m not going to do all the work for you), and soon followed up with a series of commercials starring the Muppets touting the promotion. Interesting that they’re using the Muppets and not Mickey and the gang (Disney first made the announcement by having their characters volunteer in five cities, sending Mickey & Co to four of the cities, and assigning Kermit and Miss Piggy to LA, the biggest media market of the five), but when you think about it, it does make sense. Mickey, and the other full body suit characters, can’t talk, can’t emote, and has no expressions beyond hand gestures and head nods. The Muppets, on the other hand, feel living and breathing. You sometimes forget they are not real animate creatures, instead a hand surrounded felt and rubber and glue-on eyes. But while Kermit can speak genuinely and effectively about the importance of Habitat for Humanity, if Goofy attempted to do the same thing it would seem, well, exactly that. Goofy.
Below you can see the Swedish Chef wreaking his usual brand of havoc with Iron Chef Cat Cora, and then check out the additional spots with (ABC stars) Taye Diggs (maybe the only man with the power to make Miss Piggy forget about Kermit), Teri Hatcher, James Denton and Sara Ramirez.
The promotion starts January 1st, 2010. So while we expect big things from the Muppets next year, they’ve already gone ahead and made an impact on the next decade. Hopefully this also means that if you give a day, you get a day with the Muppets. A larger presence at the Disney parks is far overdue, and, as Disney has implicitly admitted, Kermit can do more good than Mickey could ever imagine (and, in case you didn’t know, Mickey’s imagination is ridiculous).
Jumped The Snark 