Frank Welker as Kermit

[Xerus]

A lot of people have been comparing Jim Henson's and Steve Whitmire's Kermit voice. But I'd like to point out that famous voice artist Frank Welker had voiced the cartoon Baby Kermit. And he got Kermit's personality pretty good too.

[lowercasegods]

Two points of interest: 1. Frank Welker also performed the adult Kermit's voice in the Muppet Babies spin-off "Little Muppet Monsters", which divided itself between puppet segments and animated segments featuring the adult Kermit and Piggy. 2. Frank has a history of lending his voice to puppets as well as cartoons: He voiced Stripe and Mohawk in Gremlins and Gremlins 2: The New Batch, he voiced several of the title creatures in Roger Corman's Gremlin's rip-off Munchies, and he voiced the evil Easter Bunny and twin characters of Station in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, to name a few.

[GelflingWaldo]

Originally Posted by lowercasegods

1. Frank Welker also performed the adult Kermit's voice in the Muppet Babies spin-off "Little Muppet Monsters", which divided itself between puppet segments and animated segments featuring the adult Kermit and Piggy.

Little Muppet Monsters did not use the vocal tallents of the Muppet Babies cast. Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Richard Hunt, Jerry Nelson, and Dave Goelz all did voices along with many other Muppeteers did the voices for Little Muppet Monsters (the puppets and the cartoon parts). That's one thing that made the show great. The proper people were doing the voices. Jim Henson was Kermit, Frank Oz was Fozzie and Piggy, Richard Hunt was Scooter, Dave Goelz was Gonzo. It was great that they did the voices for the cartoons! This is one reason the show was cancled so early; Jim felt that it was taking too much time away from the muppeteers main focus - puppeteering. Read this post for more details.

[Erine81981]

He's one good voice artiest I've ever wanted to meet. He's voiced the one and only "Fead Jones" (I don't have to mention whos that) and Now he voices "Scooby and Fred." He does alot of cartoon characters.

[lowercasegods]

Originally Posted by GelflingWaldo

Little Muppet Monsters did not use the vocal tallents of the Muppet Babies cast. Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Richard Hunt, Jerry Nelson, and Dave Goelz all did voices along with many other Muppeteers did the voices for Little Muppet Monsters (the puppets and the cartoon parts). That's one thing that made the show great. The proper people were doing the voices. Jim Henson was Kermit, Frank Oz was Fozzie and Piggy, Richard Hunt was Scooter, Dave Goelz was Gonzo. It was great that they did the voices for the cartoons! This is one reason the show was cancled so early; Jim felt that it was taking too much time away from the muppeteers main focus - puppeteering. Read this post for more details.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. True, the Muppet puppeteers performed the PUPPET segments of Little Muppet Monsters, which is probably why they felt the time crunch amidst their other projects and had to limit the show to two episodes. I'm not debating this. But the fact remains that Frank Welker voiced the ANIMATED adult Kermit, and other voice actors provided the voices of the animated adult Muppets as well. Neither Jim nor any of the other Muppet performers lent their voices to the animated segments of Little Muppet Monsters. It was the same situation with the animated version of Fraggle Rock which appeared not long after on NBC. None of the original performers lent their voices to that either, and new voice artists were brought in to voice the characters. It was also the case with Dog City, where the used Canadian voice artists to voice each of those characters. And to clarify, I never said the Muppet Babies cast voiced the adult animated versions of the Muppets. I only said that Frank Welker voiced Kermit, which he did. Though it wouldn't surprise me if they did use the other voice artists to create adult versions of their Muppet babies voices, since they were so close to the source already.

[Vic Romano]

Along with Gelfling Waldo, I was always under the belief that the original Muppeteers voiced their respective animated counter parts. IMDB.com also does not credit Mr. Welker for the Little Muppet Monsters.
On an a plus note for Mr. Welker; he has an amazing resume at imdb.com that you should check out here.

[lowercasegods]

I agree, Frank Welker is the greatest. I've been a huge fan of his for as long as I've adored the Muppets (which has been for the better part of thirty years). But I have seen the actual voice credits for Little Muppet Monsters. And believe me, I wanted it to have been Jim and his crew that voiced the animated adult Muppets so badly. But the sad fact is that they weren't. It was Frank Welker who voiced the adult animated Kermit and a host of other voice professionals who handled the rest of the cartoon Muppets. Of course, if anyone besides Jim were to voice Kermit (Steve Whitmire notwithstanding) I'd want it to be Frank Welker. So I have no complaints, other than that Little Muppet Monsters only ran a couple episodes. And as far as IMDB goes, it's a great site, but their facts are not always dead on. Frank Welker has voiced more characters than IMDB could ever hope to compile in a list. But they do the best with what they have. They just neglected to mention his role as the adult Kermit. One again, I stress that this is coming from the actual credits of the original TV show which I studied closely. I'm not out to insult anyone's knowledge of Muppet trivia, and I myself have been corrected before. But this is just how it is: Frank Welker voiced the adult animated Kermit, other voice artists did the other characters, and the Henson folk did not supply any cartoon voices on the show.

[Vic Romano]

How much did Jim contribute to projects like Muppet Babies and Little Muppet Monsters then? And did he play a role in casting Frank?

[lowercasegods]

Originally Posted by Vic Romano

How much did Jim contribute to projects like Muppet Babies and Little Muppet Monsters then? And did he play a role in casting Frank?

Jim didn't really have that active a role in the development of either show, other than his company having official producing credits, which doesn't necessarily require their active involvement in production of the show. It's more often than not essentially an honorary title, just to show ownership and authority. I'm sure he checked in to assure quality control from time to time, but the main (and essentially only) Muppet guy to have an actively creative hand in The Muppet Babies was Michael Frith, who provided countless character designs (see Jim Henson: The Works, pg. 207 for an example). Other than that, Jim pretty much trusted the animators and writers to do a good job. And with a few Emmys under their belt for their efforts, Jim obviously made the right choice.
Jim didn't even have that much to do with Little Muppet Monsters. Granted, actual Muppets were used for half of the show, but like Fraggle Rock, Jim allowed the program to be controlled by creative hands other than his own. His own people oversaw the production of the puppet segments, but not Jim. He just showed up occassionally to tape a segment with Kermit, just as the other performers made brief appearances with their own characters. But Jim was far too busy at the time with everything from labyrinth to The Jim Henson Hour to put very much of himself into Muppet Babies or Little Muppet Monsters.
I would imagine, however, that Jim and his crew did sit in on the casting of the voice actors of the adult animated characters. There could be no better judge of how well a voice artist were replicating a character's voice than the original performer. So to that degree, I imagine Jim had some say as to who ended up voicing which character, though I figure Frank Welker was a shoe in to voice the adult Kermit, since he'd already proved his mettle in voicing baby Kermit.

[Vic Romano]

The thread that GelflingWaldo attached to his post was a thread I started (as you'll plainly see) because albeit hazy, I remember a Muppet cartoon with them as adults and I think they did an Indiana Jones spoof and (Kermit and Fozzie) fly a plane, but in my mind it begins to meld with the Muppet Babies episode where they also fly a plane and the gas gauge goes to E and they make the gag: "Does "E" stand for empty or enough?"
So what were some of the stories that the adult Muppet cartoons did?
I guess it's hard for me to imagine anyone else other then the fab five voiced those cartoons, because from what little I do remember, they were dead on, I mean "Fool their own parents" dead on.

[lowercasegods]

The animated segments of Little Muppet Monsters were basically cartoon re-creations of old Muppet Show sketches, in theme, at least, if not directly borrowing plots and scripts. Pigs in Space, Muppets Labs and so on were seen in cartoon form, which was a novelty, but hardly original, and, as we've said, without the original Muppet performers doing the voices. The main deviation from this was the first episode where Kemit plays a Sam Spade-type of detective, and Piggy comes into his office as sort of a femme fatale. That was kind of a new idea, but still, the highlight of the show was the actual puppetry.
And it's understandable that you'd think the adult animated Muppets were voiced by the original performers. Frank Welker is a voice-acting genius who surpasses even Mel Blanc and is neck and neck with Jerry Nelson in talent comparisons. So he and the rest of the cast were extremely adept at recreating already famous voices. Frank Welker's impression of Jerry "Curly" Howard, for example (heard in the 1970's Hanna Barbera cartoon character Jabberjaw) is beyond belief and dead on.

[Mario]

Frank Welker is my favorite voice actor ever! I love what he has done, especially Abu! When I was watching a new commercial for the Pillysbury Dough Boy, I was thinking, "That voice sounds familiar." And, I finally realized that it sounded just like Baby Kermit from Muppet Babies. Can anyone verify that it is Frank Welker? Because if they can, my mom would owe me a huge apology,

[lowercasegods]

Frank doesn't do too many commercials these days (he used to be the voice of Grimace from McDonalds and one of the Snap, Crackle & Pop elves), but it's certainly a possibility that he's the new voice of The Pillsbury Dough Boy. I checked out a couple websites and couldn't find any listing for the commercial, but if I were you I'd try to find something on Google. I'm sure something will come up.

[Xerus]

Yes, Frank Welker is definitely one of the most talented voice actors since 1969 as is still going on strong.

And he can do any animal sound you can think of. Mainly, whenever a studio needs some animal noises, they hire Frank. He usually does the woofs for Santa's Little Helper on the Simpsons. And the alien, Nibbler, on Futurama. And I heard he did the growls of that vicious snake on Annaconda.

[lowercasegods]

He also voiced the "Nazi monkey" in Raiders of the Lost Ark. On a related note, if anyone's seen Disney's Lilo and Stitch, they may have originally believed that Frank was the voice of Stitch (I know I did at first). As it turns out, however, the voice was done by the film's director, who was sort of ripping off Frank's style. From what I read, Frank was none too pleased about it, either. Just thought you might find that interesting.