Guess who’s back? Back again? It’s me! Well, let’s look back on the past year. Once again all I’ve written one fairly fun Halloween Movie post for this site. Seriously go watch Tucker & Dale vs Evil. It’s a great time all year round. That is exactly the same amount and category of posts as I did last year. Is it progress? No. But is it back-sliding? Also no! Will I be better in 2026? Who knows! I knew we were on the same page! Anyway…once again…
And here – ladies, dudes, and everyone in-between – we go again! Somehow, unbelievably, we are back for our 11th year doing these brackets. I started this as a goof a little over a decade ago and it makes me so happy to do this every year. Thank you for coming along! In our 10th year I had just a fantastic time running this thing as we all picked our favorite SNL Sketch where Celebrity Jeopardy took the crown by 1 vote in the final! The 9th season of our bracket together found our favorite Fictional Band’s Song, which came down to the wire with “Scotty Doesn’t Know” from Eurotrip getting the win by 3 votes! This beaut got into the Clumsy Optimist Hall of Champions along side our 8th year favorite commercial jingle of all time with the Toys ‘R’ Us jingle “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” which came out victorious, joining 7th year bracket which found our favorite Disney song with Aladdin‘s “Friend Like Me” winning their championship by one vote! These winners are welcomed to our group of champions with 6th year Champ – our favorite holiday movie Elf. 5th year Champion of our favorite fast-food joint was one of our closer finals matchups as Whataburger was crowned. Our fourth-year winner of favorite TV theme song was won in a rout by The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. This joins our third-year winner for favorite breakfast food: Breakfast Tacos and Burritos. Our second-year bracket crowned The Sandlot as our champions of the Best Sports Movie Bracket. Our first champion was in the music bracket where The Beatles reigned victorious. It’s my pleasure to announce our topic this year in honor of the 50th Anniversary of The Muppet Show: Muppets!!!
Before we get started I wanted to do something I still honestly feel a little awkward about but here it goes again. We’ve done this thing for over a full decade now and the cost of the hosting sites keeps going up like crazy. If you enjoy what we do here and feel so inclined to throw a couple dollarbucks my way to help pay for the sites and whatnot, feel free to Venmo me @ josh-sorensen-5 or PayPal @ JoshSorensen5 (apparently there are 4 other Josh Sorensens on both apps that beat me to the punch lol). The tip jar is out! I truly do appreciate all you people and have loved doing this for all these years. Please don’t think I’m doing anything here but begging haha. Anyway, back to the stuff that we all care about!
So, this topic has been on my mind for a few years and timed out with the new Seth Rogen passion project special of The Muppet Show coming out in February. For this particular bracket, we will have all the main types of muppets from The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, and Sesame Street.
After some research, I had made a spreadsheet (there’s a spreadsheet for everything!) which had ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FIVE Sesame Street characters. We had to combine Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock characters together on one side of the bracket because there are less characters in those shows (52 from The Muppet Show and 27 from Fraggle Rock – and one of those is a human so Doc didn’t count). I also had to individually list each member of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem to fill the left side of the bracket. But also, there’s time honored debate of who reigns supreme in the band. Who is the best? Which goofy muppet/monster/fraggle will reign over all? That is for all of you to decide.
A few notes on how we decided what would qualify. Starting with 235 and having to get to 68 was damn near impossible and there are some all-time best characters left of the cutting room floor. I am seriously bummed about some of these that didn’t quite make the final list. Fifty-nine cuts was the record last year and we pushed that to 167. LOL. I am pretty bummed we had to cut Baa Baa Walters and Meryl Sheep though. This was, on the other hand, one of the easier times we have had formulating our four 16-spot brackets in years.
I tried to get the best pictures of each muppet I could but some of them are a little off kilter. I hope they are all visible. Almost all of these (with the exception of the Fraggles – I don’t know if everyone loved them as much as I did) should be fairly well known though.
Like previous years, “scores” will be posted as the percentages from the polls.
I’ll set up polls in each round. To keep from completely swamping everyone’s Facebook and Twitter timelines, I’ll post the polls here and put a link up at the start of each new round on my Facebook , Threads, and Twitter accounts. *Shameless plug* Give me a follow! You can also click the little Subscribe button down at the bottom of these posts and get updated in your inbox whenever I post some super sweet goodness.
Most of the time I have a hard time filling in all 68 spots. Not this year baby! Usually we end up cutting 20ish spots to get to the final regions and feel like we cut some biggies but in at least one of our 4 regions, we are stretching thin to make it to 16. This year we made almost 170 cuts. Absolutely bonkers.
As always I’m sure there are going to be quite a few issues taken with how I ended up seeding some of these, but I think where we landed was as good as it was going to get. We try to limit our personal biases around these parts, but that’s impossible with something like these classic characters.
Typically we have tried to make our regions have something in common or specifically relating to the topic at hand and this year we were able to really get things grouped in a way that makes sense and avoid the dreaded “Miscellaneous” Region and I think we nailed it this time.
This year, we pay homage to the humans that inhabit the worlds where our Muppets, Fraggles, and Sesame Street muppets live. Our regions will be named in honor of Gary and Mary (Jason Segel and Amy Adams from the 2011 movie The Muppets), Scrooge (Michael Caine in the role of a lifetime in The Muppets Christmas Carol), Mr. Hooper from Sesame Street royalty, and the ever silly Mr. Noodle. Again, we combined Fraggle Rock and Muppet Show characters on one side and it’s all Sesame Street on the other side. Once again, seeding is almost entirely based on my biases so if you don’t like it, take it up with management. Oh, btw, I’m also management.
The first round of voting will start today Thursday, March 19 and voting will close Sunday, March 22 at 5pm. The second round will begin on Monday, March 23. I will do my best to get the new write-ups and brackets posted as soon as possible but I make no promises. Especially early on, extra especially the Round of 32 post, these posts are hella long. New rounds will begin on Mondays and Thursdays. I will set the polls to only allow one vote but in case I miss that checkbox on a couple of these, please only vote once per match-up.
Note that this first round is massive but since we are not doing full YouTube videos in each poll I’m hoping the loading issues we have had the past few years will not be a problem. If these will not load for you please let me know and I’ll break each region out on a page by themselves. Let’s get to voting!
As we begin our journey together, here is what our bracket looks like to begin!
Gary and Mary Region
(1) Kermit the Frog vs (16) Uncle Traveling Matt
(2) Animal vs (15) Mahna Mahna
(3) The Swedish Chef vs (14) Zoot
(4) Beaker vs (13) Dr. Bunson Honeydew
(5) Scooter vs (12) Gobo Fraggle
(6) Rowlf vs (11) Walter
(7) Janice vs (10) Dr. Teeth
(8) Sam the Eagle vs (9) Robin
Scrooge Region
(1) Miss Piggy vs (16) Sprocket
(2) The Great Gonzo vs (15) Camilla the Chicken
(3) Fozzie Bear vs (14) The Newsman
(4) Statler & Waldorf vs (13) Sweetums
(5) Rizzo vs (12) Sgt. Floyd Pepper
(6) Boober Fraggle vs (11) Lips
(7) Pepe the King Prawn vs (10) Mokey Fraggle
(8) Red Fraggle vs (9) Marjory the Trash Heap
Mr. Hooper Region
(1) Elmo vs (16) Rocco
(2) Grover vs (15) Tango
(3) Abby Cadabby vs (14) Betty Lou
(4) Ernie vs (13) Two-Headed Monster
(5) Bert vs (12) Prairie Dawn
(6) Gonger vs (11) Tamir
(7) Zoe vs (10) Baby Bear
(8) Julia vs (9) Smartie
Mr. Noodle Region
(1) Big Bird vs (16) Gladys The Cow
(2) Cookie Monster vs (15) Mr. Johnson
(3) Oscar the Grouch vs (14) Hoots the Owl
(4) Count von Count vs (13) Martians (Yip-yips)
(5) Mr. Snuffleupagus vs (12) Louie (Elmo’s dad)
(6) Rosita vs (11) Ji-Young
(7) Rudy vs (10) Guy Smiley
(8) Telly Monster vs (9) Gabrielle
Well, there we have it! I have tons to say about these match-ups, but I don’t want to push the vote one way or another. I feel like I know how almost all of these lean, but y’all have surprised me on more than an occasion or two. Let’s get to voting and see who gets into the Round of 32!
The Clumsy Optimist 