Heinz Ketchup Puppet Commercials

Lots of puppets are pitching ketchup in a contest for Heinz on YouTube.

Heinz is currently sponsoring a contest on YouTube that invites Americans to make the company's next ketchup commercial and compete to win a grand prize of $57,000. The deadline for submissions was this past Monday and there were over 2800 entries. Not surprisingly, a lot of them use some kind of puppetry technique. There's far too many to list (or watch) them all, but these are some of my favourites:

• Heinz Gone Wild - Ketchup bottles take their tops off on the beach.
• Heinz Commercial - Two puppets sing a commercial for Heinz ketchup.
• Heinz: Dream Big - A ketchup packet dreams of being a bottle in this simple, but very effective example of object manipulation.
• The Heinz is Mine - Two sock puppets do battle for ketchup.
• Heinz: It's Not Ketchup - Puppets go bonkers for Heinz, Bollywood style.
• Always Tomato-licious - Chef Heinz plays his trained ketchup bottles in a video inspired by the Muppets' Marvin Suggs.
• Heinz Dreams - What baby ketchup bottles dream about.
  

You can find all of the puppet-related entries in the Heinz "Top This" TV Challenge here. All of the 2,800+ submissions to the contest are currently being whittled down to 15 semi-finalists that you'll be able to vote for on YouTube beginning August 27th.

Statler and Waldorf Win A Webby

The Muppet web series From The Balcony starring Statler and Waldorf has won a Webby Award.

From the Balcony has won a Webby Award! The now defunct puppet podcast featuring the classic curmudgeonly Muppet duo of Statler and Waldorf riffing on Hollywood and the movies was voted "People's Choice" in the Webby's Best Comedy Long Form or Series category. This is great news not only because From The Balcony was a great little show, but also because I think that it's the first time a puppetry-related web site has ever been awarded a Webby.

Although the series was sometimes maligned by die-hard Muppet fans - especially after Muppeteers Steve Whitmire and Dave Goelz were replaced by Drew Massey and Victor Yerrid - From The Balcony was a landmark puppet podcast and pretty entertaining most of the time too. I was always impressed by the show's creativity and high production values despite an obviously limited budget. If you've never seen it before, an archive of all 34 episodes can be found at Movies.com.

Congratulations to everybody involved with the series on winning themselves a Webby!

Quick Friday Night Links

After a two weeks of uneven posting my inbox is stuffed with lots of puppet film and video stuff to wade through. Here's a quick look at some of it:

• Axtell Expressions is running a video contest called The Axtell Video Challenge. If you own an Axtell puppet you can enter by making a video with it. Over $5,000 in prizes are available and videos will be judged by a panel of well-known puppeteers and industry veterans.
  
  
• A Tale of a Woofy Dog is a music video on YouTube from Stephen Durrant that features Wrinkles puppets.
  
  
• Beauty Will Come is a prequel to Beauty And The Beast created with Toy Theatre (thanks to Mary for the link).
  
  
• Kermit the Frog is appearing on the web as a "spokesfrog" for the Ford Escape Hybrid (link via The Muppet Newsflash).
  

Watch & Vote in Titerenet's Online Puppet Film Festival

There is still time to watch and vote for puppet videos in Titerenet's online puppet film festival (see previous post). The contest and voting closes February 28th!

Viral Video Online Puppetry Festival

The excellent Spanish language puppetry site Titerenet is sponsoring their first ever Viral Video Online Puppetry Festival. The only rule is that to eligible for the contest your video must be made with a puppet. Awards will be given for the most watched video, the highest rated video, the most commented video and the most favourited video.

Prizes include:

• Annual registry of a domain name (.com .org .net)
• A professional annual subscription to the titerenet directory
  
• Four copies of Puck magazine translated into Spanish
• Engish language puppetry books

To submit a video to the contest simply upload it to YouTube and add it to the Titerenet group. The contest is open until February 28th, but obviously the sooner you enter the better chance you'll have in several of the categories.

Ustedes pueden leer la información en español aquí.

Yahoo! Talent Show

Yahoo is doing an online talent search to "find the next great Internet celebrity". You can upload a video highlighting your skills and talents and it will be judged by the general public and a celebrity panel that includes Tom Green and the Ninja from Ask A Ninja. First prize is $50,000 U.S. and deal with Yahoo for a show to be featured on their site. It sounds like a great opportunity!

It would be great to see some puppeteers submitting videos, so if you're interested hurry up because the deadline for entering is November 27th. The only catch is that the contest is unfortunately only open to residents of the United States. You can get all the details online at talentshow.yahoo.com.