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The Henson sitcom in full-body animatronic dinosaur suits — and quietly one of the darkest shows ABC ever aired. Baby Sinclair's "Not the mama!" and "I'm the baby, gotta love me!" were everywhere in the early 90s, right up until the finale ended the series with an actual ice-age extinction.
A puppet show on Nick Jr. where a sorceress-in-training and her band of bumbling friends lived inside a giant's wind-up music-box castle. Dragons tripped over their own tails, a bat crash-landed insisting he meant to do that, and every episode wrapped adventure in giggles. For most 90s kids the real memory is the reruns — a Nick Jr. staple that kept the castle alive well past its original run.
Jim Henson's underground puppet world of Fraggles, Doozers, and Gorgs — a whole ecosystem quietly built to teach peace and interdependence, wrapped in songs. If you were a 90s kid, you caught it in reruns, and "Dance your cares away" is still lodged somewhere in your head.
Shari Lewis's sock-puppet ewe was already thirty-five years old when 90s kids met her on PBS's Lamb Chop's Play-Along. The show gave the decade one of its permanent earworms: "The Song That Doesn't End," which is now playing in your head again. You're welcome.
The creaking door, the dolly shot down to the crypt, and then HIM: a rotting puppet sitting up with a shriek of laughter. "Hello, boils and ghouls!" The Cryptkeeper's puns were worse than the murders — and the murders were on HBO, so they were very, very murdery.
Nickelodeon's summer host was a popsicle stick with googly eyes and a jelly-bean nose. He wanted you to write to him, and he sang you the address to prove it — which is why a generation can still recite a PO box in Manhattan.