30 years ago, Muppet Treasure Island redefined how we think about The Muppets

At the risk of sounding like that guy from The Onion who appreciates the Muppets on a much deeper level than you, the Muppet movie prompt is strange because the Muppets re-enacting a classic work of literature on the big screen — or any story that’s not at least a nominal original — is almost entirely confined to the 1990s. The main exception is a small-screen variation on this formula, with the Muppets performing The Wizard of Oz for a 2005 network broadcast that featured Ashanti as Dorothy. Combined with the lack of an ongoing Muppet Show equivalent, those two theatrical releases and one TV movie seem to have propagated the misconception that the Muppets’ main job was essentially putting on school plays.