Evolution of Big Bird Muppet - DIStory Ep. 69

While some may feel that Elmo is the Muppet face of Sesame Street, for me that'll always be the one and only Big Bird.

I bought a bootleg Big Bird costume online and I’m currently trying to convert it into a functioning puppet that has the same mechanics as the real muppet!!! This video is definitely going to help me with the construction aspects of Big B!

Caroll Spinney was such an incredible performer. When you watch him you always immediately forget it's a puppet. It's just Big Bird!

As someone whose first word was literally Big Bird, I absolutely loved this!

I am here for Baby Dan and Baby Big Bird lore, them being childhood friends

Fun Fact: around 1985 NASA was talking with Sesame Street about sending Big Bird up on a space shuttle. It ultimately fell through due to Big Bird’s size, and they ended up sending a school teacher instead, and then the shuttle exploded… so in an alternate timeline Big Bird was on the Challenger when it blew up. Thank you Sam O’Nella for the surprisingly dark fun fact

Man that segment on different "cousins" of Big Bird all around the world makes me curious what you think about the different Muppets in the many different versions of Sesame Street.

It might be fun to do an episode with "mini" evolutions of some of the other Sesame Street characters. Like Telly originally had an antenna on his head and Oscar the Grouch was originally orange. Thanks for the episode! My son loves Sesame Street, so it's very dear to my heart.

Big Bird definitely needed some help when he was first introduced lol. I’m glad we have modern adorable Big Bird. I just recently went to the Jim Henson exhibit at The Museum of the Moving Image and the size seriously is impressive

As someone who was friends with Big Bird, the reverse broom stick is how the theme park ones are done too

The ultimate thing of big bird was when he was on Saturday Night Live and the applause the people exploded when they realized it was a real big bird! That was so great! I was watching SNL and even screamed that it was really Carol Spinney the real big bird!

You should really do an episode on Elmo! How his voices, characterizations, and popularity evolved is fascinating!

It just tickles me to see you covering another costumed evolution of a Jim Henson character! (I would say a muppet, as technically all Jim Henson muppets are muppets, but Big Bird is not part of The Muppets.) I'm a big Henson fan, so it puts a smile on my face watching someone who is equally, if not moreso, a fan of the company gushing about the characters, the performers, and Jim! That "I'm So Blue" song Big Bird sings in Follow That Bird is one of my earliest childhood memories of something making me bawl like a baby! 🤣 Even to this day if I'm watching/listening to songs from Jim Henson movies and I have YouTube on "Autoplay" and "I'm So Blue" comes on, I still tear up and get all snorty trying not to blubber! 🤣 The "I Am Big Bird" documentary made me cry as well, and gave me such an appreciation of Carroll Spinney! He seemed like such a lovely man, it's truly a shame he's gone now. I will say of the "I Am Big Bird" documentary though, I did not expect to discover Frank Oz shading Kevin Clash and Elmo going in, but that's what I got! (It's towards the end of the film and Frank Oz is talking about the important impact Big Bird left on children, and he makes a sly comment about how Elmo might be the "more popular" character, but Big Bird is more important to the legacy of Sesame Street or something. It's wild!) I also learned from the documentary that apparently Jim was going to have Frank puppeteer Big Bird, but Frank put the kibosh on it because he did the puppeteer work for the LaChoy Dragon in old commercials for LaChoy chow mein from the early 1970s, and he hated working those enormous "full-bodied" puppets! It may have also been around the time of filming "The Great Santa Claus Switch" and he puppeteered the green full-bodied muppet Thig (opposite Jerry Nelson's blue Thog), and Frank hated that experience too! But it was shortly after that, that he made his feelings known to Jim and, as far as I know, Frank never had to work a full-bodied puppet again expect for maybe the rare occasion Jim asked him to because Jim needed him. I really hope you do another Costume Evolution of another muppet character soon Dan! I would love to see some about Frank Oz's characters (Bert, Fozzie, Grover, Cookie Monster, Sam the Eagle), as well as Jerry Nelson characters (Emmett Otter, Gobo Fraggle, Harry Monster, Count von Count, Floyd Pepper), some Marty Robinson characters (Telly Monster, "Snuffy" Snuffleupagus), some Kevin Clash characters (Elmo of course, Hoots the Owl, Clifford from Muppets Tonight) and definitely more Dave Goelz and Jim Henson characters too! It would also be fun to see some of the female characters created by the lady puppeteers like Prarie Dawn, Zoey, Rosie, Red and Mokie Fraggle, Kira from Dark Crystal!

Brilliant episode, Oscar would be a fun sesame sequel to do

i grew up with abelardo!! he was always my favorite, and absolute sweetheart lol

Tiny, Noah-Jedi Dan is my favorite part of this video. Adorable.

Wait, if big bird is 6 years old and 8 feet tall, then how big will he be when he’s an adult!?

As a muppet enthusiast I LOVE when creators make muppet/Fraggle/Sesame Street, etc. make videos about it :) Tysm

Your right I couldn’t hold my arm up for that long😂

The transition from Spinney to Vogel was a bit jarring at first tbh, but honestly Vogel does an amazing job of capturing a younger big bird, his performance reminds me a lot of the 80s and early 90s Spinney performances. Besides I find it really cool that two of the most iconic muppets now share the same performer! Also my favorite with the Vogel/Spinney dynamic (if I remember correctly) was that Vogel started as an understudy/body double for big bird while Spinney performed Oscar.