Marty Krofft, the Brains Behind a Kids TV Empire, Dies at 86

Marty Krofft, the shrewd businessman who built an entertainment empire with his older brother Sid, fueled by mind-blowing children’s TV shows like The banana split adventure hour, HR Pufnstuf And Land of the lost, died on Saturday. He was 86.

Eight years younger than Sid, Marty Krofft died Saturday in Los Angeles of kidney failure, his family announced.

“There’s no one better on this planet,” Sid said from his brother in a 2000 interview for the Archive of American Television website. “I get a dream, and Marty makes it come true.”

The pair were already well-known theater puppeteers when they were recruited in 1968 to design the costumes for the live-action portion of NBC’s The banana split adventure hour.

Their four furry animal characters (Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky), members of a rock band, were an instant hit on the Saturday morning show, which ran from September 7, 1968 to September 5, 1970 (and in near-eternity in reruns since then).

The next year, NBC asked them to create their own Saturday morning children’s show, and the brothers came up with the idea HR Pufnstuf, about a castaway (Jimmy, played by Jack Wild) who lands on a magical island. The title character, Pufnstuf, was a retread of Luther, a friendly dragon the two had created for a show at the 1968 HemisFair in San Antonio.

NBC initially wanted a second season beyond the 17 episodes, but offered only a small rights fee increase, already well below what it cost the brothers to make the show, so they declined. Puffnstuff ended in 1970, but also lived on in reruns.

Puffnstuff‘s psychedelic sets and costumes were a big hit with students, and The Beatles requested a full set of episode tapes be sent to them in England. The appearance of the show led to many whispers that the brothers were using drugs (weed for sure, maybe LSD too?), something Marty denied.

“You can’t put on a show when you’re stoned,” he said The Hollywood Reporter in January 2016.

The Kroffts followed Puffnstuff of The Bugaloos (1970-72), the Claymation series Lidsville (1971-73), Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (1973-75) and Land of the lost (1974-76), which spawned an ill-fated Will Ferrell film adaptation released in 2009. These shows were also wildly popular in syndication.

“We ruined every kid’s mind,” Marty said THR. “There’s a Krofft look: the colors. There is an edge. Disney has no advantage.”

In fact, the Kroffts’ style was so popular that McDonald’s copied it to create Mayor McCheese and McDonaldland for an advertising campaign in the early ’70s. The Kroffts sued and won a seven-figure settlement in 1977.

A year earlier, the brothers opened The World of Sid & Marty Krofft theme park in the new Omni Complex in downtown Atlanta (now CNN headquarters). Spread over six levels, it was billed as the world’s first vertical amusement park. About 600,000 visitors came during the recession-ridden 1970s, but that wasn’t enough to cover costs and interest payments, and the park closed after just six months. (Much of the financing for the $20 million park came through loans from various banks and investments from Lamar Hunt, the Ford Foundation and others.)

Long after other smaller children’s producers like Hanna-Barbera sold out to conglomerates, the Kroffts were still developing shows as the last of the great independent producers of the 1960s. In 2015 they had a hit on Nickelodeon with Mutt & all (one episode even featured a guest appearance from Pufnstuf).

The Kroffts also developed numerous live-action variety shows, including The Brady Bunch Hour, The Donny & Marie show, the Bay City Rollers show And Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters.

They produced another children’s show hosted by Richard Pryor, based on his childhood, and their puppets toured with acts such as Judy Garland, Liberace, The Mills Brothers, Tony Martin & Cyd Charisse and Frank Sinatra.

Marty Krofft was born Moshopopoulos Yolas on April 9, 1937, in Montreal to Greek immigrant parents, and he and his family later lived in Maine, Rhode Island and the Bronx. For PR, the brothers liked to say that they came from a long line of puppeteers going back many generations. In reality, the story was made up. Their father was a clock seller who emigrated from Greece in the early 20th century.

“The Kroffts have been playing with dolls all their lives,” Marty joked about their family’s interest in puppetry. By the time he was 15, Sid was already working in clubs in New York, and would soon become a member of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

(They had two other brothers; Hy died fighting in World War II, and Harry worked briefly for their company before going into real estate.)

Marty joined his brother full-time in 1958 after Sid’s assistant left, and they opened Les Poupés de Parisa burlesque puppet show for adults that played to a sold-out crowd at a dinner theater in the San Fernando Valley.

“Les Poupes took us from an act, Sid’s act, to a company,” Marty said. Shirley MacLaine was there on opening night and Richard Nixon came during his bid for president.

Les Poupes went on the road and played at world fairs in Seattle in 1962, New York in 1964, and San Antonio in 1968. There were 240 dolls on display, mostly topless women, and Time magazine called it a “dirty charade.”

After that, it was so popular that “we couldn’t even get our own best friends in the theater,” Sid said. It attracted an estimated 9.5 million viewers in its first decade of performances.

This all led to shows at the Six Flags theme parks in the US (they employed over a hundred puppeteers at one point) and appearances on TV, including a regular appearance on The Dean Martin Show (a chorus line of attractive girl dolls they made for the varied program were replaced by real Golddiggers).

Marty is survived by his brothers Harry and Sid; daughters Deanna (and her husband, Randy), Kristina and Kendra (Lou); grandchildren Taylor, Karson, Griffin, Georgia and Drake; and great-grandchild Maddox. He married Christa Rogalski in 1965, and she executed him in 2013.

Donations in his name can be made at: Marley’s mutts.