Beaker (Muppet)

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Beaker up to his usual antics

Beaker is a Muppet from The Muppet Show, played by Richard Hunt. He is the shy long running assistant of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, and is likewise named for a piece of laboratory equipment. In the first season of The Muppet Show, Honeydew worked alone. In the second season and beyond, he was accompanied by Beaker. He has the usual googly eyes, a shock of red hair and a drawbridge mouth.

A magnet for misfortune, Beaker would be blown up, electrocuted, eaten by large monsters, or lose body parts. Beaker can only communicate in a nervous, high-pitched squeak that sounds like "Mee-mee-mee mee!" (In books and merchandise, the sound is spelled "Meep," and in The Muppet Movie, at the end of a scene, he appeared to say something other than "mee" or "meep", he "meeped" Honeydew's previous line "Sadly temporary".) His tone or expression helps to communicate his meaning. He rapidly became a favourite with audiences, who both sympathized with and enjoyed laughing at his humorous sufferings. Occasionally, Beaker was able to take revenge, particularly an episode in which he inadvertently made several copies of himself and spent the rest of the episode chasing Honeydew.

Beaker has also appeared as a musical performer, singing "Danny Boy" with the Swedish Chef and Animal, and "Feelings" by himself. The former performance was marked by the Chef's singing in his trademark gibberish and Animal's inability to remember anything but the first three words. For the latter, Animal had to shush the increasingly unruly crowd so Beaker could finish: "QUIET!!...Thank you."^[1]

The two scientists were later incorporated into the Muppet Babies animated series. Howie Mandel and Dave Coulier voiced Bunsen, and Frank Welker provided Beaker's squeaky meeps. Following Richard Hunt's death in 1992, the role of Beaker was taken over by Steve Whitmire. Beaker was voiced by Kevin Clash in The Muppet Show Live. Beaker was also voiced by Frank Welker when he appeared in the short lived Little Muppet Monsters series.

In a 2004 Internet poll sponsored by the BBC and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Beaker and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew were voted Britain's favourite cinematic scientists. They beat Mr. Spock, their closest rival, by a margin of 2 to 1 and won 33 percent of the 43,000 votes cast.