The McDonald's Muppets?

I have no idea from where this image was pulled, but it was found on a Pinterest page that's owned by a "Betsy". If you don't recognize the two plush Sharks fans, those are Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show. For a short time, there were two fans in San Jose who showed up to Sharks games dressed as two balcony commentators from The Muppet Show, and it seems that Disney and Jim Henson Productions went ahead and made some sort of promotion with the actual Statler and Waldorf - the puppets - sometime after seeing the flesh-and-blood Statler and Waldorf in the stands.

This wasn't the first time the NHL had its brush with Jim Henson's famous puppet characters, though, as a few were featured as a McDonald's promotion in 1994-95 after the shortened season began.
I'm not one to hammer away on commercials, but that ad has more cheese than a double cheeseburger from McDonald's. Nonetheless, the offer of the four Muppet characters at McDonald's happened as the NHL and Jim Henson came together to help each other promote their brands to kids and and their corresponding adult guardians.

The story of the Muppet NHL All-Stars isn't as glamourous or fun as the NHL goalie masks, but there is a story. Before we get into that story, the four Muppet NHL All-Stars included:

• Kermit the Frog - a plush skater representing the Muppet Conference in the NHL's Eastern Conference's teal. He wore his name, not "Frog", on the back.
• Miss Piggy - a plush skater with a rubber head wearing Western Conference colours. She had "Miss Piggy" on the back.
• Fozzie Bear - a plush goalie wearing Western Conference colours. Like Kermit, he just had "Fozzie" on the back.
• Animal - a plush skater with rubber head wearing an unseen red Muppet Conference jersey. He wore "Animal" on the back.

At $3.49 per character, it seems the cost might be a little high for these promotional items when compared to other offerings by McDonald's, but I assume the branding costs for The Muppets may have factored into the price point. These four characters would be the only plush dolls offered by McDonald's at any point in this set, but it wouldn't be the last time The Muppets would be at McDonald's.

The following season saw the NHL and The Muppets partner on a new promotion that appears to be a spin-off of another popular promotion run every year - the McDonald's Monopoly contest! Take a look!

It seems that McDonald's enlisted the help of TSN's Jim Van Horne to push the promotion via this commercial, but goal of this promotion was similar to the Monopoly contest as participants were required to obtain specific stickers with Muppet-themed NHL logos on them in order to win prizes like a Ford Taurus or Mercury Sable.

Game boards were available at every McDonald's location whereas game pieces were obtained off beverage and french fry containers. The stickers were assigned randomly on each container, and each container featured two stickers that could be applied to the game board in its appropriate location as shown below. The key, though, is that each sticker featured an NHL logo that had a Muppets character incorporated into the logo. Click the image to see it enlarged.

Pretty simple contest, right? Collect the six or seven logos for the necessary prize, and win said prize. But this is where we pump the breaks because those Muppet-ized logos didn't just come along for this contest. They were an actual collectible thing back in 1993!

I worked at a sports store during the late-1990s, and they had an entire room devoted to NHL collectible pins. At the time, there were only 21 NHL teams, but each team had a pin where the logo had been modified to feature one of Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, or Animal. Made by InGlasCo (yes, the same company that made hockey pucks), it seems the NHL saw these as collectible pieces that fans would want. Some of these logo pins were very well done as seen to the right, but other logos simply had one of the characters thrown into the logo in order to meet the requirements. For example, the Anaheim Mighty Ducks pin that was created in 1994 to add to the collection is nothing more than Gonzo in some crude hockey equipment riding what appears to be some sort of vehicle with the Mighty Ducks logo on it. You can see a full list of the pins here, but there was a display made for the pins as shown below!

It's pretty easy to see where the logos in the 1996 McDonald's Muppetmania contest came from once we see these pins. I'll admit that pin collecting in the 1990s wasn't something a lot of kids were doing, so I have no idea how the sales of these pins went for InGlasCo. What I do know is that the room at the store where I worked was filled with all sorts of NHL pins including the Muppets ones, so either they overproduced them or they weren't as popular during that era as the NHL and InGlasCo may have thought.

One thing that was popular in the early-1990s for kids to collect is something that seems just as popular today: hockey cards! The NHL and the The Jim Henson Company joined forces with Cardz Distribution in 1994 to release a set of hockey cards that featured all of Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, and Animal on various subsets of cards within the overall set. There were equipment cards that displayed the important equipment being used in hockey, rules cards that explained various rules and situations, NHL team facts where interesting facts about each team were published, and NHL team history cards that gave a brief hsitorical description of each of the NHL teams. It's this historical subset where the Muppet NHL logos were featured once again as the pin designs were transferred to card stock with each of the 26 teams featured. You can see a full list of all the cards here in the "Jim Henson's Muppets Take the Ice" set.

If you dig into the link for the cards above and look at the "Positions" subset, you'll notice something that ties back into the Muppets All-Star plush dolls that McDonald's offered in 1995, and that's each of the Muppets featured in that four-doll set is playing the exact same position they're shown as representing in the McDonald's Muppets All-Stars! Not only that, but you'll notice that Animal is wearing both the red jersey he wears for the McDonald's promotion and his skates are tied to his feet as opposed to wearing proper skates just as they are in the McDonald's promotion! In short, the McDonald's Muppets All-Stars were literally based off the NHL Muppets hockey cards!

So let's review quickly:

• In 1993, the NHL and Jim Henson Company partnered with InGlasCo to make Muppets-themed NHL logo collectible pins.
• In 1994, the NHL and Jim Henson Company teamed up with Cardz Distribution to make Muppets-themed NHL hockey cards.
• In 1995, the NHL and Jim Henson Company partnered with McDonald's to produce Muppets All-Star plush hockey dolls based off the characters featured in the 1994 hockey card set.
• In 1996, the NHL and Jim Henson Company teamed up with McDonald's to make the Muppetmania sticker game featuring the Muppets-themed NHL logos from the InGlasCo pin set.

It's almost like McDonald's allowed the NHL and the Jim Henson Company to run a few market tests for promotional items before they jumped in with their ideas for their own promotional items. Pin collecting in the 1990s wasn't a very popular thing, and the option for Muppets-themed hockey cards would take McDonald's out of that market since they had already partnered with Upper Deck for their own NHL hockey card sets since 1991-92. They clearly saw value, though, so McDonald's came through with two NHL promotions that intertwined with the products that had already been introduced to thw world through the NHL-Jim Henson Company partnership.

There's no denying McDonald's reach as a restaurant when it comes to their promotions, and it seems the NHL-Jim Henson Company partnership recognized McDonald's market share when it came to marketing their products. Because the NHL-Jim Henson Company partnership owned the rights to the logos, characters, and images used for the pins and hockey cards, transferring those rights to McDonald's for them to produce promotional products would be easy.

Let me asterisk the above by saying that I have zero proof that the NHL-Jim Henson Company partnership identified McDonald's as a delivery method for their brands to the public, but it makes sense logically that they'd go to a bigger distributor and far better promotor after they had some success with InGlasCo and Cardz Distribution. Based on how many Muppets All-Star plush dolls are on the market, it seemed they sold well. As for the Muppetmania game, I can't speak to how well that promotion helped to sell product, but it appears that using the McDonald's Monopoly blueprint for the Muppetmania game was an easy way to adapt a promotional idea for the public.

McDonald's doesn't do 2-for-1 deals, but HBIC is happy to offer that when talking about McDonald's promotions as we saw the Muppets All-Stars plush dolls and the Muppetmania promotions evolve from two other products the NHL and the Jim Henson Company offered. There was likely varying success of all of these products seen above, but there's no denying the effectiveness of the McDonald's marketing machine.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!