“Never heavy-handed, but with a light and zany touch, the show delved into crucial themes, such as the importance of friendship, kindness, and self-esteem. Blending animation, live-action, and puppetry, Muppet Babies served up heaps of joy with a touch of adult humor.”

So said authors Joe Garner and Michael Ashley of Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies in their book, It’s Saturday Morning: Celebrating the Golden Era of Cartoons, 1960s-1990s.

Debuting forty years ago this fall, Muppet Babies introduced the brilliance of Jim Henson and his characters to a new generation in a different way, with an animated series that remains beloved to this day.

The show was inspired by a scene in 1984’s live-action film, The Muppets Take Manhattan. Miss Piggy imagines what it would have been like if she and Kermit had met when they were little. This gives way to a dream sequence and musical number (“I’m Gonna Always Love You”) with the Muppets as babies in a nursery.

Network executives approached Jim Henson about an animated Saturday morning show with the Muppet Babies featured in the scene.

In his book Jim Henson: The Works, author Christopher Finch wrote, “The more Jim thought about the idea, the more he liked it. The concept that evolved during a series of meetings and informal discussions was a cartoon series based on toddler versions of some of the most popular Muppet Show characters, Kermit, Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie, Animal, Ralph, and Scooter (Scooter’s twin sister, Skeeter, was created for the show in order to provide it with another strong female character).”

Each episode of Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies was set in their nursery, where a Nanny (voiced by Barbara Billingsley of Leave it to Beaver), who we only see from the shoulders down, watches over them.

Here in the nursery, the Muppet Babies pretend and play games, and through their imagination, these adventures come to life.

In the episode “I Want My Muppet TV,” the Muppet Babies’ TV breaks, and they each have to make up their own shows to entertain each other. Bunsen and Beaker wind up in a scene from Ghostbusters, the whole gang winds up as the crew on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise from Star Trek, and Miss Piggy appears with Johnny Carson as a guest on The Tonight Show (each brought to life by combining live-action and animation).

“Comic Capers” has the Muppet Babies reading comic strips and then pretending to be in the comics in an episode that’s a dizzying kaleidoscope of different genres and styles, as well as appearances by Charlie Brown and Spider-Man.

Episodes like these from Muppet Babies were much different from Saturday morning TV at the time, as authors Garner and Ashley noted in their book: “Though these Muppets were babies, or more appropriately toddlers, the show never talked down to kids. If anything, it possessed a knowing sensibility encouraging curiosity.”

In addition to Billingsley, Muppet Babies featured a talented voice cast, including Frank Welker as Kermit, Laurie O’Brien as Piggy, Howie Mandel as Animal (Dave Coulier voiced the character in later seasons), Greg Berg as Fozzie, Russi Taylor as Gonzo, and Katie Leigh as Rowlf. Skeeter (Mandel), along with Bunsen Honeydew (Coulier) and Beeker (Welker), joined in later seasons.

The series’ success also attracted some big-name guest stars, including Whoopi Goldberg, Tom Selleck and Stan Lee.

Bringing the Muppets to life in animation was a natural transition, as author Finch notes in his book, “From childhood, Jim Henson was always fascinated by animation. When he bought a Bolex movie camera from his Sam and Friends earnings, practically the first thing he did was to acquire a secondhand stand for it so that he could use it as an animation camera.

He loved to explore a kind of freehand animation, in which paintings seemed to come to life, and later, he adapted many of the techniques he had taught himself in order to provide little animated segments for Sesame Street.”

Finch also notes that the animation in Muppet Babies displayed Henson’s expansive imagination and interest in trying something new. “The approach to animation reflects his penchant for mixing genres and generally ignoring hard and fast rules.”

Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies (a co-production of Henson Associates and Marvel Productions) debuted on CBS on September 15, 1984, and ran until November 2, 1991. The show’s tremendous success not only spawned a wave of merchandise but also went on to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program in 1987 and 1988.

In 2018, a reboot of the series, created with computer animation, was produced for Disney Junior.

The immense popularity of Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies and its continued admiration forty years later is a direct reflection of Henson’s genius, as the show’s voice director, story editor, and head writer Hank Saroyan stated to authors Garner and Ashley: “He wanted children to believe that anything is possible. That’s the only thing that’s going to save this planet – the power of imagination.”