Krofft<\/span>\u00a0archives.<\/p>\nThe duo followed Pufnstuf<\/em> with The Bugaloos<\/em> (1970-72), the Claymation series Lidsville<\/em> (1971-73), Sigmund and the Sea Monsters<\/em> (1973-75) and Land of the Lost<\/em> (1974-76), which spawned an ill-fated Will Ferrell movie adaptation in 2009. Those shows were wildly popular in syndication as well.<\/p>\n\u201cWe screwed with every kid\u2019s mind,\u201d Marty told THR<\/span><\/em>. \u201cThere\u2019s a Krofft<\/span> look \u2014 the colors. There\u2019s an edge. Disney doesn\u2019t have an edge.\u201d<\/p>\nIndeed, the Kroffts<\/span>\u2018 style was so popular that McDonald\u2019s copied it to create Mayor McCheese<\/span> and McDonaldland<\/span> for an early 1970s<\/span> advertising campaign. The Kroffts<\/span> sued, winning a reported seven-figure settlement in 1977.<\/p>\nA year earlier, the brothers opened The World of Sid & Marty Krofft<\/span> theme park in downtown Atlanta\u2019s new Omni Complex (now celebrity.land\u2019s headquarters). Spread over six levels, it was billed as the world\u2019s first vertical amusement park. About 600,000 visitors came during the recession-plagued \u201970s<\/span>, but it wasn\u2019t enough to cover the costs and interest payments, and the park closed after just six months.<\/p>\n\nLong after other smaller kids producers like Hanna-Barbera<\/span> had sold out to conglomerates, the Kroffts<\/span> were still developing shows as the last of the great 1960s<\/span> independents. As late as 2015, they had a hit on Nickelodeon with Mutt & Stuff<\/em> (one episode even featured a guest appearance from Pufnstuf<\/span>).<\/p>\nThe Kroffts<\/span> also developed numerous live-action variety shows including The Brady Bunch Hour<\/em>, The Donny & Marie Show, The Bay City Rollers Show<\/em> and Barbara Mandrell<\/span> and the Mandrell<\/span> Sisters<\/em>.<\/p>\nThey produced another kids show hosted by Richard Pryor, based on his childhood, and their puppets toured with such acts as Judy Garland, Liberace<\/span>, The Mills Brothers, Tony Martin & Cyd Charisse and Frank Sinatra.<\/p>\nKrofft<\/span> was born in Montreal on July 30, 1929, and when he was young, he and his family 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 truth, the story was fabricated. Their father was a clock salesman who emigrated from Greece in the early 1900s<\/span>.<\/p>\n\u201cThe Kroffts have been playing with dolls their whole lives,\u201d Marty joked about the brothers\u2019 boyhood interest in puppeteering. By the time he was 15, Sid was already working clubs in New York.<\/p>\n
(They had two other brothers; Hy<\/span> died during fighting in World War II, and Harry briefly worked for their company before going into real estate.)<\/p>\nAt 20, Sid got hired by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and Marty joined his brother full-time in 1958 after an assistant left. They opened Les Poupees<\/span> de Paris<\/em>, an adults-only burlesque puppet show that was a huge hit, playing to sold-out crowds at a dinner theater in the San Fernando Valley.<\/p>\n\u201cLes Poupees<\/span><\/em> took us from an act, Sid\u2019s act, to a business,\u201d Marty said. Shirley MacLaine<\/span> was there on opening night, and Richard Nixon came during his run for president.<\/p>\nLes <\/em>Poupees\u00a0<\/em>took<\/span> to the road and played the world\u2019s fairs in Seattle in 1962, New York in 1964 and San Antonio in 1968. It featured 240 puppets, mostly topless women, and Time<\/em> magazine called it a \u201cdirty puppet show.\u201d<\/p>\nAfter that, it was so popular, \u201cwe couldn\u2019t even get our own best friends in the theater,\u201d Sid said. It drew an estimated 9.5 million viewers in its first decade of performances.<\/p>\n
All this led to shows at Six Flags amusements parks around the U.S. \u2014 they employed more than 100 puppeteers at one point \u2014 and appearances on TV, including a regular gig on The Dean Martin Show<\/em> (they created a chorus line of attractive girl puppets for the variety program before they were replaced by The Golddiggers<\/span>).<\/p>\nMost recently, Krofft interviewed celebrities on an Instagram Live show, Sundays With Sid<\/em>.<\/p>\nEditor\u2019s note: Since Sid and Marty Krofft\u2019s lives and careers were so intertwined, much of this obituary contains what was written for Marty\u2019s obituary.<\/em><\/p>\nBest of The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\nSign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sid Krofft, the wildly imaginative puppeteer who teamed with his younger brother Marty to build an entertainment empire behind such trippy TV shows as The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost, has died. He was 96. Krofft, eight years older than Marty and the creative force of their business, died […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2371351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[461220,34395,365316,461219],"class_list":["post-2371350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-h-r-pufnstuf","tag-hollywood-reporter","tag-land-of-the-lost","tag-sid-krofft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Sid-Krofft-Co-Creator-of-Mind-Blowing-Kids-TV-Shows-Dies-at.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2371350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2371352,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371350\/revisions\/2371352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2371351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2371350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2371350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2371350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}