Like a lot of nearly 50-year-old fixtures of the Sunday funnies, Brant Parker and Johnny Hart's syndicated The Wizard of Id comic strip has always resonated with me more as a snapshot of a cartooning era gone by than, say, an ambitious social commentary (I had to look up what a "fink" was when I was a kid). Back in 1969, the eager strip was still a buzzing commodity, though. It was hot enough, even, that a young Jim Henson and Don Sahlin (famed Muppet designer) worked on a short test pilot for the series featuring main characters The King, The Wizard and Spook.The Wizard of Id never make it onto television as a full-fledged puppet series, but that fact can hardly be blamed on Henson or Sahlin, who put in a performance worthy of almost any The Muppet Show segment (minus disco and campy celebrity singalongs).

In an alternate timeline, maybe The Wizard of Id did get picked up by a major network and missing characters like Sir Rodney got some screen time? We can take comfort in the fact that in our reality, however, Henson and company had ample time to work on Sesame Street and other beloved projects.

Check out Henson's 1969 take on The Wizard of Id below:

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