The Great Muppet Caper – DarylCagle.com

Muppet Mob Scene

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date April 24, 2019

Randy Enos’ stories inspired me to tell an old story from my own New York cartooning days.

I only draw Muppets occasionally in political cartoons now. I drew this one when it was revealed that the brokers at Goldman Sachs referred to their clients as “Muppets” meaning they were dumb puppets who would do whatever the greedy brokers wanted.

When I was a young cartoon illustrator in New York City my biggest client was Henson Associates, the Muppets, who kept me busy drawing pigs and frogs all the time.

I think it is 1981 and I’m 25 years old in the photo below. The Muppets were hugely popular in 1981 and I had already drawn them so many times that the Muppets all lived in my head; I knew all the names and I didn’t need to look at photos to draw them all.

The Muppets had taken over a large part of the Macy’s Herald Square department store with Muppet licensed merchandise and they did a promotion where I would sit in the middle of the Muppet products and draw Muppets at the request of customers. I hadn’t done anything like this before, but it sounded like it would be fun. They hired me to sit and draw for three hours.

Here I am, looking young in 1981, just starting to draw Muppets at the Herald Square Macy’s before the crowd thickened.

Some people from the Muppets and Macy’s set me up with a table and made an announcement over the PA system to come to the Muppet section of the store to get a free, live drawing from an official Muppet artist –and then they left. The photo shows me just as they left. The calm before the storm.

I asked people to request a Muppet, and asked them what they wanted the Muppet to be doing, and I drew pretty fast. Most of the requests were for Kermit, Piggy, Gonzo and Animal. I signed them with a Muppet signature, like “Kissy, Kissy, Miss Piggy.”

I couldn’t see beyond the edges of my table where people were standing, pressed up against me. What I didn’t know is that the line of people waiting for their free drawing snaked all through the floor at Macy’s, doubling back and forth with hundreds of people waiting for their free drawing. There was no one managing the line –the Muppets and Macy’s people had walked away when I first sat down and they didn’t come back.

I drew this Muppet political cartoon when the Muppets withdrew from a licensing campaign in protest because of Chick-fil-A’s apparent opposition to gay marriage. Good for the Muppets!

After about two and a half hours I yelled out, “I’m only here for another half hour!” The people only pressed in harder. At the three hour mark, I stood up to gather my materials and the people turned surly. Some guys yelled, “I’ve been waiting for my drawing for THREE HOURS!” I learned that my drawings weren’t really free –the people had been paying for them with the time they spent waiting in line and they wanted what they paid for!

Women held up their kids and whined, “Just one more for little Doofus?” The men were angry. They mulled around me, making their demands as I tried to sulk away through an endless mass of people that seemed like a crowd crushed into a subway car at rush hour.

I see how lines like this are supposed to be managed at the San Diego Comic Con, where volunteers keep the line single file, estimate the time remaining and hang a sign on someone that says, “Last in Line.”

At Macy’s I was chum thrown to the sharks!

When I was 25 in 1981, the Muppets were promoting their movie The Great Muppet Caper, and I was doing lots of art projects tied into the movie. Here are a couple memorable ones from my garage.

Tags 1981, Henson Associates, macy's, mcdonalds, milton bradley, muppets, New York City, The Great Muppet Caper

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Garage 8: More!

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date July 8, 2018

Here’s a magazine cover from 1988 that shows younger me and my daughter, Susie Cagle. There are some things I’ve posted here on this cover, the Keds snow boot in the lower right; the Enesco Piggy Cleopatra mug in my hand; the Hasbro Classic Kermit plush box in the lower left, and the animal library poster, which was brand new at the time, behind my head. I was so young!

Here’s a catalogue cover for the toy/gift company “Hog Wild” that I did a lot of art for, back in the day. They had a little, black, wire/magnet character that was pretty cute.

Here’s a better pic of that Milton Bradley box cover.

This is the cross-sell on the back of a blister card.

I used to do a weekly sports comic strip that ran in USA Today for a time. These were ads for Sega Sports. Sorry they are so wide – so they may be hard to read. Open these images in a new window to see bigger, more readable versions.

Here’s more of those skeleton soldiers. I think these are for cards.

This magazine cover is from way back in 1984.

This old magazine cover for Scholastic is from 1980.

This Scholastic magazine cover oldie is from 1979, soon after I moved to Manhattan to be an illustrator, right out of college.

This one was somehow for Pepsi’s ad agency, but I don’t remember how it was used.

Here’s the line art for my Muppet Babies Mattel See ‘n Say.

Here’s the line art for the Zoo Keeper Mattel See ‘n Say. I have the product in my garage somewhere.

Tags Amelia Bloomer, Electronic Games Magazine, Hog Wild Toys, Invent Magazine, Mattel See 'n Say, milton bradley, Muppet Babies, Pepsi, Scholastic Search, Sega Sports, Sequoya, Susie Cagle, teddy roosevelt, The Great Muppet Caper, USA Today, Zookeeper

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My Muppet Cartoons

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date August 3, 2012

I just drew another Muppet themed editorial cartoon, about Chick-Fil-A, below. I worked for the Muppets from the 1970’s into the 1990’s; the Jim Henson organization made my career as a cartoonist so whenever the Muppets make the news I feel nostalgic.

I drew this one when Congress was cutting funding to PBS.

I remember when Stephen Colbert testified before Congress, in character, and Republicans complained that they might as well have Elmo testify before Congress, another good occasion for a Muppet cartoon.

1622-ElmoColbertCong — Sesame Street Muppets, Stephen Colbert, Congress, Elmo

This one was when the evil Goldman-Sachs traders derisively called their customers “Muppets,” for them, synonymous with “suckers.”

The Children’s Television Workshop folks announced that Cookie Monster would no longer eat unhealthful cookies.

I drew this one when I was a local cartoonist in Hawaii, and Hawaii was running up to a vote to legalize gay marriage (which failed). A conservative Christian group was outraged by the cartoon and organized a noisy protest outside my newspaper, the Midweek, demanding that the cartoonist “come out!” (I wasn’t really inside, I was at home in California, pretending to be a local Hawaii cartoonist.)