The Muppet Mindset: Muppet Fan's Muppet Collection Chronicle: JD Hansel

JD Hansel - A few months before I was born, my mother started collecting Sesame Street stuff. As an infant, I had some Sesame blankets, a Sesame chair, and a Sesame music box.. My mother also had Sesame Street Unpaved (the book). This was the start. I am now sixteen years old, and I've been spending most of my money on Muppet stuff all my life. I now have a pretty nice collection (for a sixteen year old). I had to pack it all up the other day, but not before I took pictures.

Let’s start with some of the bedding I have.

The blanket with Disney's Muppets is something a friend made for me with fabric he found in a store, and the Kermit pillow is something I found in an antique shop in Ohio. I don't know if it was official merchandise or just homemade. The three Sesame Street blankets are from my childhood and have marks on them. Sadly, the Sesame pillow that I've had all my life is currently missing.

As for books, I have a good variety, though I'm certainly lacking in comics and in anything Fraggle Rock.

I have the second book in the Labyrinth series, but not the first. I’ll have to fix that. One book that accidentally was left out of the photo was The Muppet Show Book, which is pretty cool.

You probably noticed the pins in the picture of the books.

I started collecting the Hidden Mickey Pins, but I guess I didn’t get very far.

Now I’ll move on to the food/drink/cooking/eating/drinking section.

I will never use that napkin. The thing with the dogs on it is a hot-dog-holder that I made myself.

Here are some Christmas ornaments.

My plush toy collection is weird. This is because a lot of it was gifts that were bought for me without my consent, but I happily accepted. I have an army of Ernies, but only one (tiny) Bert. I ought to buy Fozzie, Piggy, Gonzo, Big Bird, anything Richard Hunt, and many others. I have a Kermit head with no body. Disney actually sells that. The sleepy Ernie never shuts up. I have both a TMX Elmo, and a TMX Elmo Special Edition. I don’t know what the difference is.

I have some puppets too. This does not include my non-Muppet-related puppets. That Kermit that looks dead was not originally a puppet. Mwahahaha! (The Elmo is not a puppet, I just couldn’t crop it out without cropping out puppets.)

My sets of action figures and things of the like are very incomplete, but that’s eBay for ya! I have some Muppet Babies, some things from the Playskool 1-2-3 Sesame Street Playset (which I thought was made in 1983, but the Wiki disagrees), some bath toys, some Sesame Caravan Playset toys, some random Applause Sesame Street PVC figures, some Fraggles, the Muppet Star Wars set, a Kermit Nutcracker, the Link Hogthrob Palisades figure (it’s a start, right?), Mega Gonzo, Jareth and Hoggle, and a bunch of Muppet figures that I dare you to find on the Wiki. I used to have a Swedish Chef figure, but he went missing. I lost Jareth’s crystal ball when there was a tornado watch and I carried the figures down to the basement really quickly. #MuppetFanProblems.

I have a lot of Muppet clothes too. See that one with the signature on it? It’s a shirt from X•tink•shun, a program that the Henson Company did with the Philadelphia Zoo. The puppets in this program were trained by Noel MacNeal, who kindly signed the shirt.

And to dress the walls, I have posters. The “Closer than you think” poster is from O.P.I.

It’s time to play the music! One album that did not make it into the photo was John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together. This album means a lot to me because it introduced me to “Kermit’s other friends,” which how I saw the non-Sesame Muppets as a little kid.

And then there’s videos and DVDs. You may have noticed that I don’t have the first season of the Muppet Show on DVD. This is because: I’m low on cash, that’s the weird season, I have friends who own it, I have a library card, YouTube was invented, I’m more focused on scheming to get the fourth season. If anyone wishes to join an angry mob with me, contact me at jd11pc@gmail.com

Now, the miscellaneous section. The artwork is my own, I’ve had the school bus music box since my first birthday, I’ve got two banks, two Muppet Monopolies, a Big Bird cut-out, and a whole bunch of other stuff. A few things stand out.

This lampshade from Japan is... strange, but it has a nice picture of the Hypnotized Blue Monkey. That’s eBay for ya!

Here’s the big one. This is the paper I got signed at Jim Henson’s Musical World. At the top of the paper is the logo of my podcast, Eleven Point Collar, which is available in iTunes and at boobersblog.com.

I guess that’s about everything. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to buy myself a Walter plush doll.