Kermit the Ford

It’s tough nowadays to turn your television on and find a Muppet. It’s even tougher to find these elusive creatures at your local movie theater. One may ask one’s self, “One, where can I find the Muppets in this time of economic crisis?” Well, you’ve probably got that Frog Prince Laserdisk collecting dust on your shelf. But I don't think that wasn’t what you were asking.

As the world’s television-watchers are congregating at YouTube, the former YMCA patrons are pow-wowing at MySpace, and the future leaders of tomorrow spend their days at the ToughPigs forum, it seems that anything worth seeing is showing up on the internet. And if there’s anyone who can feel at home amidst the chaos that is the Information Superhighway, it’s Kermit the Frog.

Kermit has been selected as Ford’s spokesfrog for their new Ford Escape Hybrid car. He’s since been seen in a commercial, as well as several faux-commercials on American Idol. But I guess none of that was good enough for the American people. No, it’s not enough to want to save the environment; we need more Frog to get us to buy a Hybrid. So Ford’s plan was to slap Kermit onto their webpage, thus securing car sales from hipsters, old people, and robots. Oh, and probably my dad.

I for one was quite impressed with the Kermit content on the Ford website. The first image we’re treated to is Kermit dressed in his newsman getup, which is already enough to get me to squeal like a 1950s housewife who just saw a cartoon mouse run across the kitchen floor. Kermit then tells us that he is “on location in the internet,” which made me wonder how they crammed a puppet into my laptop. After breaking it apart to see how the internet works, I went back to the website to hear Kermit’s sales pitch.

But first, a history lesson. This isn’t the first time Kermit has appeared in the internet. Back in historic 1999, the MuppeToons were a short series of computer-animated Muppet skits on the now defunct MuppetWorld.com. Each of the cartoons poked fun at the fact that the Muppets were actually in the internet. One in particular featured Kermit singing “The Kermambo,” which he had to perform live every time someone clicked on the link due to a server error. You can’t make this stuff up! Well, you can, but that would be copyright infringement.

The Muppets were also stuck in your computer once before in the Muppets Inside CD-ROM game, but that’s a computer, not the internet. So it’s hardly relevant. I don’t even know why I brought it up.

What was I talking about? Dang, I hate when that happens. You go off on one little tangent and… oh yeah! The Ford website. Right. So Kermit gives his little spiel about the car and waits for you to click around. Just like the real Kermit, you can tickle him (with your mouse, which is most definitely not how you tickle the real Kermit). Unfortunately, he learns quick and develops an immunity to tickling. I also suggest doing nothing for a while. I know, I say that a lot, but in this case you’ll hear Kermit plead with you to click something. He’s got a few different comments, so be sure to listen to them all.

Then, there are four icons on the bottom of the page. Each of these has another Kermit with another thrilling tale of debauchery and deception and… a car. On one, he is wearing an adorable lab coat. In all four, it’s the full-bodied Kermit puppet, which helps me to forget that there’s some dude named Steve standing underneath him. And like the first page, these Kermits can be tickled and they will make a few comments when you don’t click around for a while.

I very much enjoyed Kermit’s jokes. They were all in character (read: no more “It really is easy being green” jokes) and reasonably witty. He jokes about his lack of eyelids and he tries to eat a virtual mosquito. My only problem was that they reused some of the jokes on different pages. There are different punch lines for a couple, but some of them are word-for-word. Still, I’m happy to have at least 4 or 5 Kermit lines per page. That’s more new Kermit content than we’ve gotten in a long time.

All in all, I’m happy with seeing all the Kermit love (note: not Kermit Love) on the Ford website. Some of my fellow Muppet fans may see this as the Muppets selling out, but remember, Jim Henson got his start doing commercials for Wilkins back in the 1950s. And even still, if Disney refuses to put more Muppets on TVs and on movie screens, the internet is happy to pick up the leftovers. And that’s really what the internet is all about, isn’t it?

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