Trivia / Fraggle Rock

• Acting for Two:
  • All of the five principal Fraggle performers acted for two - or in some cases, for three or four - at various times. Steve Whitmire and Dave Goelz in fact did it in almost every episode, as they were the performers of Sprocket and Traveling Matt, respectively, in addition to their Fraggle Five roles, plus the additional minor/supporting characters they performed (such as Whitmire's Marlon Fraggle and Murray the Minstrel, or Goelz's Philo, World's Oldest Fraggle and Large Marvin). Jerry Nelson did this most often in season one, before the Trash Heap and Pa Gorg began to appear less often (likewise Richard Hunt), but still did it regularly throughout the series run. Kathryn Mullen and Karen Prell had relatively fewer episodes in which they played multiple roles, but they did do it on occasion - for instance, in episodes featuring both Mokey and Cotterpin, or Red and Fluffinella.
  • This carries over into the 2022 reboot as well. For example, John Tartaglia now performs Gobo, Sprocket, Architect Doozer, and Gunge; Dave Goelz still voices Boober, Traveling Matt and World's Oldest Fraggle although the puppetry is now handled by others (two more of Goelz's characters, Philo and Large Marvin Fraggle, are recast to Dan Garza and Frank Meschkuleit, respectively); and so on. Karen Prell (still performing as Red) actually adds a few new characters as well, notably Icy Joe.
  • A handful of voice actors in the 2021 Japanese redub handle multiple roles. For example, Riki Kitazawa dubs both of Dave Goelz's major characters (Boober and Uncle Matt), and Cantus and Convincing John (both Jim Henson characters) were dubbed by Youhei Tadano.
• Adored by the Network:
  • Very much so with HBO, at least early on. At the time Fraggle Rock premiered, HBO had just recently expanded to a 24-hour schedule and needed programming to fill the extra time, especially kids' shows, and a new Muppet series seemed like a surefire winner. The channel promoted the show heavily and scheduled first-run episodes in their early-evening "family viewing" block, rather than in early mornings where they tended to bury children's programming. This paid off in creating a Periphery Demographic of adults in addition to the impressive ratings with kids.^note Fraggle on HBO posted early Nielsen ratings of 13.2%, more than six times the average for the channel's kids' shows, and even more impressive considering HBO is a pay channel as opposed to broadcast or basic cable. According to Jerry Nelson, however, HBO ended up giving the show the axe, despite its popularity, due to budgetary concerns.
    • Also, its status as HBO's first original series tends to get glossed over given the channel's modern-day fame for edgy grown-up shows like Game of Thrones and The Sopranos.
  • Interestingly enough, when The Hub was first starting up, Fraggle Rock was one of the shows the network was giving a big push in marketing, probably because it was the most recognizable program on their original schedule. They even had Karen Prell film new footage as Red for bumpers between shows (along with John Tartaglia as Gobo, taking over that role from the late Jerry Nelson). Little did they know that My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic was about to steal every Hub show's thunder. The network stopped airing Fraggle Rock in June of 2012 (barring a 3-hour marathon on April 21, 2013 to celebrate the show's 30th anniversary). Reruns resumed on a regular basis on June 4, 2013 until the network became Discovery Family in October 2014.
  • In Canada, CBC initially scheduled Fraggle Rock at 5:30pm (Eastern time) on Sundays, then moved it to 7pm, where it did even better. This scheduling paid off with ratings as high as 20%.
  • When TNT began syndication following cancelation, they ran it twice a day, as HBO had done at the show's peak of popularity.
• Billing Displacement: While it's officially labeled Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock, it was actually the first Muppet project in which Henson wasn't directly involved with day-to-day production, limiting himself to just a few episodes of work a season. This was by design: as the Muppet organization branched out, Henson had to start focusing a lot more on the business end of the company, so for Fraggle Rock he assembled a production team he trusted and let them run things.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: The theme song, in the UK. A remix of the version from the 1983 Fraggle Rock LP reached the UK Top 40 in the spring of 1984, giving Jerry Nelson a second hit there following "Halfway Down the Stairs" seven years earlier.
• Character Outlives Actor: Doc's counterpart "The Captain" in the UK adaptation was only featured in the first two seasons of the show because of Fulton MacKay's untimely death. The Captain's nephew P.K. ("Principal Keeper") took over the lighthouse in season 3. However, the Captain is only said to have "returned to the sea".
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: The character B.J. has often been referred to as the Captain's son, even on this very wiki. In fact, he's the son of Mr. Bertwhistle, the owner of the lighthouse — "B. J." stands for "Bertwhistle Jr."
• Creator's Favorite Episode:
  • Dave Goelz has cited "Boober's Quiet Day" (a Sidebottom episode) as one of his favorite episodes, since he enjoyed the challenge of playing two different versions of the same character.
  • Richard Hunt cited Fraggle Rock as his single favorite Muppet project to work on, saying that "It holds up better than anything else we've ever done."
• Cross-Dressing Voices:
  • Marjory the Trash Heap, said to be female (although she apparently switches genders when she is moved), was performed by a man (Jerry Nelson). So was Storyteller Fraggle (Richard Hunt in her first episode, and Terry Angus subsequently). Terry Angus also played Brio, the only female member of the Minstrels. Tim Gosley played the female Cave's Oldest Fraggle in "Fraggle Wars."
  • Interestingly, Aymee Garcia performs the Trash Heap and Donna Kimball performs Storyteller in 2022's Back to the Rock, marking the first time those characters, although females, were performed by women.
• The Danza: Phil Fraggle is voiced by songwriter Phil Balsam. (He was puppeteered by Steve Whitmire.)
• Died During Production: Fulton MacKay, who played the Captain in the UK adaptation, died of stomach cancer in 1987.
• Directed by Cast Member: Richard Hunt directed "The Honk of Honks", the second-to-last episode of the series.
• Doing It for the Art: Just as with its predecessor, The Muppet Show, Jim Henson felt it would be best to end Fraggle Rock on a high note rather than continue with a lower budget (after HBO pulled its funding) and sacrifice quality. Most of the cast and crew were ready to move on by that point anyway.
• Early-Bird Cameo: In the first season episode "The Great Radish Famine", Cotterpin Doozer is first seen as an unnamed baby.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Tulsa, Oklahoma-born Jerry Nelson affects a Canadian accent as Gobo, and a Russian accent as Marjory the Trash Heap.^note Per interviews, he did not intend for Marjory to sound Jewish, but modeled the voice after a Russian actress he admired.
  • Both Philo and Gunge talked in a New Jersey accent, which was Bronx-born, New Jersey-raised Richard Hunt's idea. Dave Goelz is from California.
• He Also Did: While most of the principal performers had roles in other Muppet productions, both of Sprocket's owners also acted in productions that were, shall we say, markedly different.
  • Fulton MacKay, who played the UK owner of Sprocket, was best known for starring in Porridge as Officer Mackay.
  • In 1969, Gerry Parkes (Doc) had appeared in a controversial CBC-TV presentation of Harold Pinter's The Basement. The producers were nearly prosecuted for obscenity over a scene in which Parkes' costar, Belinda Montgomery (who had worked with Jim Henson on The Cube and Hey Cinderella!) seemingly appeared nude. Then there was that Wham Episode of Today's Special where Parkes played an alcoholic who becomes verbally abusive when he drinks.
  • A staff example: Bill Prady, who would go on to create The Big Bang Theory, was a script writer for the animated series. He'd also written for You Can't Do That on Television.
  • Karen Prell (Red) is also an illustrator and animator, who has done illustrations for several Muppet publications (under her full name, Karen Leigh Prell). She also did animations for several Valve games, most notably Portal 2, where she was the lead animator for Wheatley.
  • Sprocket's Japanese voice actor in the first dubbed version, Yu Shimaka, also voiced the Muppets' most famous canine character - Rowlf - in the Japanese release of The Muppets Take Manhattan.
• In Memoriam: The show's final episode was dedicated to Don Sahlin (who had created many of the original Muppet designs for Sesame Street and The Muppet Show), who died five years prior to the first episode.
• International Coproduction: The show is a coproduction with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the original segments in the UK, European French^note The French-Canadian version was simply a redub of the US/English-Canadian original and German versions were produced with broadcasters/producers in those respective territories, such as Britain's Television South. While the show was promoted as an HBO original, HBO did not participate in the actual production of the series outside of providing the money to make it.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The original 1986 Japanese dub has never been released on DVD or officially online, because the dubbed masters are lost forever. Back then, it was common practice for NHK, the show's Japanese broadcaster, to do editing and post-production on VHS and then wipe the tapes clean afterward to be reused. NHK did release four Season One episodes ("Beginnings", "The Challenge", "Marooned", and "Capture the Moon") on VHS, and those are the only four episodes from the original Japanese dub known to exist today. All are available for watching on YouTube. Meanwhile, Apple TV+ has re-released the show in English with Japanese subtitles and is also releasing a new dub as of 2021.
  • Likewise the French-Canadian dub aired on Radio-Canada - in fact, bilingual Canadian DVD releases feature episodes from the localized European French co-production, rather than the Quebec dub. A few French-Canadian clips are available for viewing on YouTube, while only one complete episode from the French-Canadian dub has been uploaded to Vimeo.
  • For the European French co-production (despite being more well-known than the Quebec dubbed version), only 26 episodes (including all but three episodes of season 1, three episodes from season 2, and two from season 3) of the three seasons localized have been released to DVD in France in five individual volumes, and later as one set, erroneously billed as a "complete series". 8 additional episodes from this localization were later released on four DVDs in Canada (alongside previously-released episodes from the aforementioned France DVDs). Another season 1 episode, "The Thirty-Minute Work Week" was released on the third volume of a short-lived VHS collection by Proserpine in 1989, which is now out-of-print and extremely hard to find. For that episode, a brief clip from the French European version can be seen in the "Down at Fraggle Rock: Behind the Scenes" documentary" during the multi-language reel of the song "Workin'".
  • The first Latin Spanish dub is also extremely hard to find. Select episodes were given brief official releases on YouTube and iTunes, but were since removed.
• Kids' Meal Toy: McDonald's released a set of four vegetable race cars in 1988, presumably to tie in to the animated series. These consisted of Gobo in a carrot, Red in a radish, Mokey in an eggplant, and Wembley and Boober in a pickle together. These toys are so rare that they are ostensibly worth $300.
• The Merch: As one would expect with a Muppet series, there was plenty, although a relatively light load compared to Sesame Street, The Muppet Show or Muppet Babies (1984): children's books (some of which were written by actual writers for the show), coloring books, stuffed toys, stickers, several records (one of which earned a Grammy nomination), even a board game. A trickle of it continues to this day, with the success of the 2020s reboots and the original show still finding new fans.
• Missing Episode:
  • The British localization of Fraggle Rock suffered this fate, when the master tapes were junked. An effort led by fan Alex Taylor on the Missing Episodes Forum has confirmed that of the 96 episodes made, 29 still have official copies, 58 only have off-air recordings, eight were recovered from the personal collection of producer Vic Pemberton after his death in 2017, and one ("Gobo's School for Exploring") only partially survives. This, coupled with the rights problems surrounding the Television South catalogue (which has changed hands several times, and the paperwork confirming who owns what has been lost in the shuffle), is why there's never been a complete DVD release of the UK version.^note A best-of collection compiling 12 surviving episodes of the UK version was released by Sony in the UK in 2004, however. As a result, reruns of the show in that area would typically use the original US version, and when CITV had a day celebrating their anniversary with all the classic Children's ITV shows of the eighties, Fraggle Rock was represented by a US episode.
  • Two episodes ("Sprocket's Big Adventure" and "The River of Life") were skipped in the original Japanese broadcast.
    • Today, all but five episodes of that original dub are missing due to NHK deleting the original masters (four of the extant episodes were released on home video by NHK, while the fifth can be found on Dailymotion). Fortunately for Japanese fans, Apple+ has made the whole show available in subtitled format and is also redubbing the series.
• Only So Many Canadian Actors: Some of the people who worked on this show also appeared in other Canadian works. Most notably, Gerard Parkes and Frank Meschkuleit would later work together on The Noddy Shop. Cheryl Wagner (the second Ma Gorg) and Rob Mills (performed the bodily movements for Junior Gorg and puppeteered several minor characters) also worked together on The Big Comfy Couch.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Ma Gorg was voiced by Myra Fried in the first season, with Cheryl Wagner taking over the role in the second season.
  • Junior Gorg's in-suit performer changed from Rob Mills to Frank Meschkuleit in the final season of the original series, because Mills was asthmatic and was having trouble breathing inside the costume.
  • The Storyteller Fraggle was performed by Richard Hunt in her first appearance, with Terry Angus taking over afterward.
  • Murray the minstrel was performed by Steve Whitmire in the first two seasons, but when he returned in the fifth season Gord Robertson took over the role — though the snippet of "Let Me Be Your Song" still features Whitmire's vocals.
  • After Jerry Nelson's death, John Tartaglia took on the role of Gobo for all subsequent appearances of the character, starting with The Hub's 30th anniversary marathon in April 2013, and an appearance at the Museum of the Moving Image the next month.^note Tartaglia's actual first filmed appearance as Gobo might have actually been a promo video commissioned by Nerdist and featuring NASA's Bobak Ferdowsi, but the video never got uploaded.
  • With the masters for the original Japanese-dubbed version lost, the 2021 re-release of season 1 to Apple TV+ features an all-new voice cast. For example, Gobo, voiced in the original dub by Akira Kamiya, is now played by Takuma Sasaki. For what it's worth, a number of the original voice actors who worked on the first dub in 1985 have since passed away, including Kiyoshi Kawakubo (Doc), Yu Shimaka (Sprocket), Junpei Takiguchi (Traveling Matt), Kazue Takahashi (Trash Heap) and Miyoko Aso (Ma Gorg).
  • The 2021 re-release featured a new Latin Spanish voice cast. It was recorded at Sysdub since the studio that did the first dub, SISSA - Oruga, closed down in 1989. For example, Gobo, voiced in the original dub by Carlos de Pavía, is now voiced by Manuel David.
  • For Rock On!, Frankie Cordero replaces Whitmire (who was fired from the Muppets in 2016) as Wembley, and Donna Kimball replaces Mullen as Mokey. Boober and Traveling Matt are still voiced by Goelz, but now puppeteered by Tartaglia.
    • Cordero was unable to participate in Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock due to his involvement with Donkey Hodie, so the role of Wembley for the 2022 mini-series was offered to Jordan Lockhart, who had previously auditioned for Rock On! but was not cast (he also performs Murray the Troubadour, also originated by Steve Whitmire). Tartaglia, Kimball, Prell and Goelz reprise their roles once more, although Boober and Traveling Matt are now puppeteered by Frank Meschkuleit, another veteran of the original show (except in some episodes where Muppet veteran Kevin Clash puppeteers Matt). More characters from the original show also returned, including Doc, Sprocket, Marjory and her attendants, the Gorgs, and several of the Doozers, all with new performers; a complete list can be found on the Muppet Wiki.
  • Everyone in the animated version; Dave Goelz, who reprised the role of Traveling Matt in the live-action interstitials, was the only cast member to perform in the animated version, although Kathryn Mullen (Mokey) wrote for the series. Accounts differ as to why the characters were recast: Townsend Coleman (animated Gobo) claimed the original performers were offered voice roles in the animated version and declined, but Prell (original Red) has said she was never asked at all. Prell remembered that Richard Hunt in particular really wanted to work on the animated version and was disappointed that he didn't get the chance. According to Jerry Nelson, Hunt also hated Michael Laskin's Junior Gorg in the animated version; whereas most of the voice cast at least tried to sound like their puppet counterparts (and Nelson was complimentary of Coleman's Gobo), Hunt felt Laskin made no effort at all.
  • The French dub of the animated series (titled Fraggle Rock... and Roll) also featured a different voice cast from the original series.
• Out of Order: "The Thirty-Minute Work Week" (S01E05) was actually the first filmed episode, shot in March 1982. The pilot "Beginnings" was not produced until June 1982, and was the tenth episode filmed. The reason was simple: Henson wanted the puppeteers to be comfortable with their characters before doing the Origin Story. You can also see that some of the characters look slightly off in "The Thirty-Minute Work Week" (most notably Sprocket, the Trash Heap, and to some extent Gobo), because several puppets underwent slight design changes after the episode was filmed.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • Believe it or not, despite the animated series doing well for NBC, Margaret Loesch said that the show wasn't renewed for a second season because the daughter of the network's head of programming at the time didn't like it, and he decided to can the show in response.
  • Jerry Nelson recalled that HBO's decision to cancel the show at 96 episodes (instead of the planned 120) was a budgetary move and had nothing to do with ratings as the show was still very popular. However, an internal memo from Jerry Juhl included in 2021's Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock The Ultimate Visual History suggests that HBO in fact wanted to continue with the show (as did CBC). The book also mentions that most of the creative staff, including Jim Henson himself, were ready to move on, since the long hours needed to produce the show were keeping them away from their families and other commitments (for example, Henson was developing Labyrinth at that time), and in favor of ending the series on a high note while it was still at a creative and commercial apex.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Fraggles were supposed to be called "woozles". This was changed when the production team realized the woozles moniker was already used in Winnie the Pooh.
  • Jerry Nelson initially was drawn to the character of Boober, and Karen Prell had Mokey in mind, as she felt she and Red had nothing in common. Jim Henson had different ideas (for which Prell actually commended Henson, appreciating that he saw something in her as Red that she didn't see in herself).
    • The Season One DVD release features rare footage of the main cast trying out each other's puppets and characters. It gives the viewer an idea of how Nelson would have approached Wembley and how Whitmire would have played Gobo, plus Prell as Mokey and Mullen as Red.
  • Henson reportedly wanted to give Uncle Traveling Matt his own series, which would have involved the introduction of two new original Fraggles to accompany him on his global journeys. Henson and Jerry Juhl had also discussed a story about the founding of Fraggle Rock which would have aired as part of The Jim Henson Hour; however the series was canceled due to poor ratings, and the idea was never revisited.
  • The iconic theme song went through several revisions before the final version was recorded. One demo version of the opening can be seen on the Season One DVD release; compared to the final version, it's slower in tempo, has a folk/country feel, and includes an opening verse which was cut from the final version as well as solo lines for the Fraggles and even the Gorgs. (The extended version of the theme song released on the official records features a bridge in which Gobo and Wembley scatted to the melody of the cut verse.)
  • Karen Prell revealed in interviews that the week that the episode "Playing Till It Hurts" was shot, an episode featuring Wembley was scheduled for production instead, but Steve Whitmire had broken a bone in his hand. Jerry Juhl then asked Prell if she had any ideas for a storyline, hence that episode.
  • One storyline that was considered but never scripted involved Mokey and Red feuding over a love interest. Karen Prell talked the producers out of it, pointing out that Mokey and Red were strong enough characters without having to resort to stereotypical girly-girl behavior like catfights.
  • Henson was against the finale arc - "The Gorg Who Would Be King", "The Honk of Honks" and "Change of Address" - when it was decided to end the show. He knew the show would live on in reruns through syndication and on home video; he feared showing the final episodes might confuse child viewers or even make them lose interest. In the end, the final episodes were produced.
• Working Title: An early title for the show was Fraggle Hill but was renamed Fraggle Rock, which sounded more dynamic (and less British), Although given the early name for the fraggles were woozles the show would have most likely been named Woozle Hill.

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