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With all the hullaballoo over the new Muppets movie, it’s an excellent time to take a look back to the origins of the world’s favorite frog, Kermit.

Though many of us think back fondly to the days of the Muppet Show, which aired from 1976 to 1981, Kermit first met television audiences on Jim Henson’s first foray into television, “Sam and Friends.” When Henson was a freshman at the University of Maryland, he and his future wife performed five-minute sketches of the show on WRC-TV in Washington, DC, often having Kermit lip-sync popular songs of the time.

Despite getting top billing, the star of “Sam and Friends” was not jug-eared Sam, whose round nose and bald head suggested Popeye. No, the show’s heart was an olive-drab, lizard-like creature named Kermit, who was sewn from one of Henson’s mother’s cast-off wool coats (that’s him, Sam, and a few other Friends at the top of this article, with Henson circa 1956 or 1957). The original Kermit had rounded feet instead of flippers, lacked Kermit’s classic crenellated collar, and viewed the world through a ping-pong ball that had been sliced in half and painted. Henson lined his creation with denim from an old pair of jeans.

Though Muppet popularity appeared to have waned in the post-Jim Henson era, Smithsonian curator Dwight Blocker Bowers (or “Mr. Muppet” as he’s often called) says the Muppets display has remained consistently popular with patrons through the years.

Full story at Collector’s Weekly via Neatorama.

Before they were stars.