MovieChat Forums > The Muppet Show (1977) Discussion > Anyone know why Sam the Eagle was blue?

Anyone know why Sam the Eagle was blue?

posted 14 years ago by yojimboy
7 replies | jump to latest

He's supposed to be a bald eagle, but the coloration is, of course, completely different. Just curious if there had ever been any statement by any of the people behind the show on this design choice.

[–] SteveM-1 14 years ago

I think they just wanted colorful characters.

Lots of Muppets designed after animals or people are not "Natural" colors. Scooter and Lew Zealand were Orange, Dr. Teeth was Green, Floyd Pepper was purple, etc.

If you kept every character to a natural color, you would just have a lot of tans, browns and beiges.

So why blue? Probably because brown & white would be boring and any other color would look too outlandish. Sam probably wouldn't look good if he were green, orange or red.

I don't think there's any statement behind it. Just people being Creative.

[–] crobbins1 11 years ago

Floyd wasn't purple, he was pink, as in Pink Floyd.

[–] stevenackerman69 13 years ago

Well, what color do you want him to be?

[–] yojimboy 13 years ago

the colors of a bald eagle, since the main joke of his character is that he's an American ultrapatriot

[–] stevenackerman69 13 years ago

Well, blue is one of the colors on the American flag.

[–] DearJohnny 11 years ago

Why was Sam blue? Well, if you were Sam, you'd be blue too...

[–] pioneergrrrl (2412) 3 years ago

Red was then the color many networks etc associated with the Democratic party and the Republicans were blue. Following the 2000 election the colors became standardized. The Democrats became blue and the Republicans became red. The rise of the digital campaign also helped with this.

Today Sam would be embarrassed to be 'blue' and demand to be red immediately.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states

The Muppet show was done for all ages--so adults of that era would have gotten the joke behind Sam's coloring.