Jim Henson's Vintage Frozen Food Commercial Featured An Early Muppet

Before finding fame on "Sesame Street," Jim Henson's Muppets were making commercials for a variety of food products. From coffee and milk, to bread and meats, early Muppets that you may not recognize were featured in late 1950s and early 1960s ads, adding a loveable, humorous flair to grocery items. One particularly endearing Henson puppet was named Onky, a blue, humanoid Muppet that promoted On-Cor Frozen Foods.

Onky was one of the first "live-hands" puppets Henson used, featuring glove-like hands for the puppeteer to insert their own hands into, instead of the hand and rod puppets Henson typically made. For instance, Cookie Monster, whose cookies aren't what you think (they're painted rice cakes), is a live-hand puppet. Onky's appearance was simple — a fuzzy, floppy body with short, flipper-like hands, a large nose, and a small, round patch of hair. His wide mouth and happy grin gave him the distinct, charming quality of Henson's Muppets. 

Henson created Onky for a series of On-Cor commercials that aired in 1962. One commercial features Onky driving a shopping cart (complete with a steering wheel), pointing to a package of On-Cor beef and gravy while saying, "On-Cor, you'll want more. On-Cor frozen foods." In another simple, short ad, the Muppet pops out of the frozen foods section to give a shopper an On-Cor frozen meal, stating the same slogan. On-Cor is still around today, producing convenient, microwavable frozen chicken, beef, and pasta entrées. In Mashed's ranking of store-bought chicken burgers, On-Cor stood in the middle of the pack.

Henson's earliest Muppet commercials were for Wilkins Coffee, a longtime D.C.-area coffee brand. This commercial series, airing from 1957 to 1961, became quite popular due to the outlandish behavior of the unique Muppet duo, Wilkins and Wontkins. Despite his humanoid Kermit-like appearance, Wilkins was not a cute, cuddly Muppet like Onky, but was actually outright murderous, executing Wontkins in a variety of ways when he expressed no desire to drink Wilkins coffee (Wontkins was shot in the head, run over by a train, drowned, and burned alive)!

While Onky was a fairly simple live-hand puppet, he inspired the more impressively designed and better-known Muppet, Rowlf the Dog. Rowlf got his start in a Canadian Purina Dog Chow commercial with another dog Muppet, Baskerville. The piano-playing, shaggy brown dog's fame grew when he was featured as a sidekick on the Jimmy Dean Show from 1963 to 1966, and he eventually became a regular cast member in various Muppet productions. Country music icon Jimmy Dean ended up selling sausages after his show went off the air. 

In the mid to late 1960s, another Muppet named Mack, who had a distinct Onky-like appearance, made his debut in television ads for Claussen's Bread. He appeared alongside the famous Kermit the Frog, who had been around since the early days of Henson's 1955 show, "Sam and Friends." The duo had a physically aggressive relationship similar to Wilkins and Wontkins in the commercials, albeit a tad less life-threatening.