Whoever said grown-ups can’t indulge in puppetry, now and then? Google’s latest doodle on Saturday allowed netizens - belonging to all age groups -to not only hang out with adorable muppets but also dabble in digital puppetry every time they clicked on the homepage.
The interactive doodle was a tribute to muppet creator, director and producer, the late Jim Henson, and has been put together by the Google team and The Jim Henson Company, the creators of original characters from Sesame Street.
The doodle features six colourful muppets, each representing an alphabet and fusing somewhat with the Google logo. The animated muppets are placed over a bar with buttons. Clicking individual buttons brings these characters to life, one at a time, and allows the selected muppet to follow the movement of the hovering cursor.
Not only do these muppets seem to move their lips, with slight jugglery of the cursor and an evil bent of mind, you could even make the muppet at the end of the line gobble-up the one before him.
Henson, who pioneered the use of puppets in television and films would have turned 75, September 24, 2011 and Google’s latest doodle celebrates his creative legacy.
“He loved gadgets and technology. Following his lead, The Jim Henson Company continues to develop cutting-edge technology for animatronics and digital animation, like this cool Google doodle...Jim was clearly a great visionary,” says Chairman of Jim Henson Company, Mr Brian Henson about his father in a guest post on the official Google blog.
In the past, other memorable doodles have been tributes to Charlie Chaplin, Martha Graham and John Lennon (on his 70th birthday). But the biggest hit to date was one that marked 30 years of Pac-Man. That day office-goers turned into ardent gamers - it reportedly generated more than five million playing-hours on the doodle alone. Another eye-ball grabber was the recent playable doodle on Google's homepage, in honour of legendary electric-guitar inventor Les Paul that allowed users to strum an online guitar, and even record and replay the notes.