Dr. Bunsen Honeydew
Muppet scientist whose inventions often backfire on his assistant Beaker.
Dr. Bunsen Honeydew is a Muppet character from the sketch comedy television series The Muppet Show, created and performed by Dave Goelz. He is a bald, yellow-green skinned, bespectacled, lab-coated scientist who presented periodic science segments from Muppet Labs, where the future is being made today. His experiments usually cause great harm to his assistant Beaker.
Quick Facts
- Series
- The Muppets
- First
- The Muppet Show (episode 108)
- Creator
- Jim Henson
- Occupation
- Scientist, inventor
- Species
- Muppet
- Gender
- Male
- Nationality
- American
Facts from the source article.
Appearance
Dr. Bunsen Honeydew gets his name from the Bunsen burner and the fact that his head looks like a honeydew melon in both shape and color. There was a rumor that he was based on Lew Grade, whose company ITC Entertainment produced The Muppet Show. In an interview with Judy Harris, Jim Henson addressed this. Dave Goelz, who performs Bunsen, based the character's nearsighted work habits on coworkers he met while working at Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley. A charming detail is that Bunsen has no visible eyes, even though he always wears glasses. He often takes his glasses off to clean them or lifts them as if trying to see better, which is a running joke. His eyes have only appeared once, in a scene from The Great Muppet Caper. In Muppet Babies, the shadow of his glasses frames moves to show emotion, acting as a stand-in for eyes, but the character model itself has none. Bunsen had major roles in The Muppet Movie, The Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Treasure Island, Muppets from Space, It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, and The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, all alongside Beaker. He and Beaker had smaller supporting parts in The Great Muppet Caper and A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa. In The Muppets Take Manhattan, they only appeared as background characters in a wedding scene, and a scene with them was cut. On the Halloween 2011 episode of WWE Raw, Bunsen created a special energy drink that gives strength, agility, and fresher breath. He sent Beaker to deliver it to Santino Marella for his match against Jack Swagger. In the 2011 film The Muppets, the duo were shown working at CERN with the Large Hadron Collider after The Muppet Show ended, but that big CERN scene was deleted, along with a scene involving a bowling ball. They appeared in the sequel Muppets Most Wanted with a much larger role, including an invention called a big bomb-attracter vest. Bunsen and Beaker also appeared in the 2015 TV series The Muppets as heads of the props and special effects department, and in Muppets Now as hosts of Muppet Labs Field Test.
Fictional biography
Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, the founder of Muppet Labs, earned his degree from Carnegie Mellonhead University. He initially worked as an assistant to Dr. Pinhole Burns. Both Honeydew and his assistant Beaker later appeared in the animated series Muppet Babies, where Howie Mandel and Dave Coulier voiced Bunsen, while Frank Welker provided Beaker's distinctive squeaks. Bunsen also appeared in Little Muppet Monsters, voiced by Bob Bergen.
Popular culture
On the Family Guy episode "Jungle Love," Honeydew appeared with Peter Griffin filling in as his meeping assistant instead of Beaker. At the 2019 Game Awards, Honeydew and Beaker promoted the fictional Untitled Beaker Game, a spoof of House House's Untitled Goose Game.
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