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Muppet Mob Scene

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.

 

 

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Garage 8: More!

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.

 

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Still More Daryl’s Garage!

Here’s another installment from my garage. This wizard was a gouache illustration for a German book publisher. Considering how carefully I reproduced the “Fun & Fancy” logo, I’m guessing that was their name.

This odd map of how to get to the Mortgage Bankers Association convention in Atlantic City was a strange journey. The ad agency had hired cartoon legend Mort Drucker to do it, and Mort quit after doing the sketch. The job paid pretty well, and Mort’s sketch was nice, and I had met Mort through the National Cartoonists Society, so I gave him a call and asked, “What’s up with this job?” I paraphrase from my 30 year old memory – Mort told me this was a job from hell, and the art directors had so many changes he couldn’t stand it any more.” I asked if he minded that I take the job and work from his sketch, and Mort was fine with that, as long as he never had to hear from those art directors. So I rendered this from Mort’s sketch. And the art directors from hell didn’t give me any trouble – I guess Mort had taken all the flak before I stepped in.

If I was an art director, I would never think of asking Mort Drucker to make changes. Twenty years later, mortgage bankers would destroy the economy – oh! The irony!

This gouache painting, without my usual black linework, was three sides of a package for Hasbro’s “Classic Kermit” Plush. The dark area was a die cut window showing the plush inside. I came up with the Greek theme because Hasbro had previously done a plush Kermit wearing reporter clothes, and they wanted to do a naked Kermit to cut costs and raise the price, so make Kermit “Classic” and raise the price! There’s also a top and bottom to this box somewhere in the garage.

I did lots of book covers, for Ballantine, Random House, Berkley Books, Warner Books, Little Brown, Doubleday – lots. Here’s a spot for a Berkley Books paperback cover.

For a time, I did a regular spot in Sports Illustrated for Kids magazine with a caricature of a sports figure of their choosing – here are two examples. I forget who the hockey player was.

Hey, remember that Baby Piggy shampoo bottle art for Avon that I posted a couple days ago? Here’s the shampoo bottle, still full of 30 year old shampoo.

This 1981 game for Hasbro’s Milton Bradley was a big project, as big as a children’s book. There was the cover, a board with background scenes from the movie, and a whole deck of illustrated cards. I liked this cover – an executive from the Muppets took it so I didn’t get the original painting back. I later heard from a guy in England who bought it and has it framed and hanging on his wall. This pic is from ebay, on sale for $8.99 – be sure they have all the cards before you buy!

These two are a little nasty. I used to draw the changing puzzles and games on the backs of boxes of the Swedish Chef’s “POST Croonchy Stars” cereal – for kids to read while they eat their sugar breakfast. I didn’t do the art on the front of the box, just the changing backs. I still have a couple of these boxes, still full of 30 year old cereal, and they look just as fresh and crispy as they day I bought them –through the miracle of corporate chemistry. A thousand years from now, when future archeologists dig up my garage, I’ll bet they take a bite and the Croonchy Stars will be as sugary/croonchy good as they were on day one.
 
I did lots of Muppet and Muppet Baby preschool puzzles, many for Playskool and Hasbro. Here’s one.

I did a big line of Muppet shoes for Keds, including a nice POP display that got crunched in my garage. 

Here I found one Keds kids snow boot, which had a wrap around painting of the Muppets having a snowball fight. Now I need to find a kid with one peg leg, who loves Muppets and lives in a snowy state.

I did a big line of these “Dri Mark” Muppets coloring posters that were packaged with markers. It looks like my kids found the markers in this package – this is front and back coloring posters, about 14″x17″, part of a line of many, each with two posters and a batch of markers.