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It's a classic tale. A celebrity takes a career break and fades from our collective consciousness. Then suddenly, he has a new movie coming out and we can't get away from him. Such is the premise of the marketing campaign for the upcoming film The Muppets which has put Kermit the Frog and his Muppet friends everywhere as they push their return to the screen. The gag, of course, is that these puppets are behaving and being treated exactly like human celebrities, and their media campaign has become a sort of delightful parody of the whole pre-release media blitz industry. (It's no wonder we wanted to draft them as Oscar hosts last week.) Critics are praising the Muppets brand for learning to market itself to adults again, so we'd like to highlight our three favorite press appearances and collaborations from the past week or so to investigate just why this Muppets campaign is working so well.
The Muppets Secret Santa: New York Magazine has a great feature this week where the Muppets participate in a Secret Santa gift exchange with some of the real life celebrities that will appear in the film with them. The feature is fun because, as great as the celebrities are at picking spot-on gifts for their assigned Muppet -- Amy Adams gives Miss Piggy some Tiffany sunglasses so she can "hide" from all her new press attention -- the muppets are just as good at picking gifts that poke fun at their co-stars. (Miss Piggy gifts Sarah Silverman a subscription to Match.com.)