I haven’t been a Muppet fan for a long while – I guess since the mid-80s. And truthfully I’ve not followed them at all but with age comes nostalgia. Since listening to the Nerdist’s Podcast where they discuss upcoming projects and such, I’ve never knew that they had updated the voices and added a couple new characters. I suspected they had to when Jim Henson passed and Frank Oz went off and tried his hand at *snicker* directing movies. But I wasn’t hip to the new addition of Pepe, the King Prawn, ok?

The last time we were at Disney Hollywood Studios, we were watching the Muppet 3D Vision ride when they flashed Pepe, onscreen for a brief moment and I turned to SharkBoy and said “What the hell is that thing? Seriously! What is it?” He literally freaked me out. I thought he was the AIDS virus come to life. I had totally missed his introduction into the Muppet universe.

As I said, listening to that podcast, they gave Pepe a much longer moment at the mike and he’s a dirty little fucker. As “dirty” as a Disney owned hand puppet character can be.

Here he is on the Bonnie Hunt show, thinking EXACTLY what I was thinking when she first came into view: