Recommended music: Stevie Wonder – Sir Duke
It’s #SomethingElseSunday, and we’re still celebrating 70 years of the Muppets. Today, let’s take a good look at the Palisades Toys Lips!
When the fifth and final season of The Muppet Show kicked off in 1981, not only were viewers treated to some fun skits with reluctant guest star Gene Kelly, but also to a re-worked opening theme. The Muppet Orchestra’s Trumpet Girl from the first four seasons had moved on to trombone, with a new trumpet player making his debut, and getting a short solo during the closing sequence. Performed by Steve Whitmire, Lips not only appeared with the Orchestra, but also became the trumpet player for the Electric Mayhem band.
While other Electric Mayhem members were often seen backstage or in different skits, Lips mostly appeared just as a musician during his nine episodes on The Muppet Show, apart from the opening and closing numbers. He showed up in The Great Muppet Caper and a few other Muppet projects into the 1990s, but then disappeared for almost 20 years before returning to the orchestra in the 2011 film The Muppets.
In 2023, the Muppets Mayhem series gave Lips a bigger role. He got more lines, including some mumbling dialogue, and even gives a TED talk in the series finale. The Lips puppet is special because it has mechanisms that move its eyelids when it plays the trumpet, and its fingers can actually press the trumpet valves.
Even though Lips was seen less often than other Electric Mayhem members for 25 years after The Muppet Show, he was still part of the ninth and final wave of the Palisades Toys Muppet figures. The regular version featured Lips in a white shirt with a bold design and comes with lots of accessories, like a base, two Java Muppets, a lava lamp, a lunch box, a record in a sleeve, and his signature trumpet.
Besides the regular figure, there was also a repainted version with a tan shirt and brighter colors. The silver shirt variant, which I’m showing here, had a new head sculpt along with the repainted body and trumpet. For this review, I opened my carded figure to show off the brilliant sculpt and accessories, as all three releases featured different lava lamps, record albums, and lunchboxes.
I know the 70th anniversary of The Muppets has already passed, but I still have a few more characters to feature on the blog. Also, if you missed The Muppet Show’s 50th-anniversary special, it’s now streaming on Disney+, and it’s a lot of fun… even with just a brief appearance from Lips.
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Dale's Toys 