The first episode of Dinosaurs, "The Mighty Megalosaurus," aired on ABC on April 26, 1991 -- 35 years ago today.
Jim Henson was working on this idea on and off for the last few years of his life, envisioning a standard sitcom about dinosaurs in a toxic society in decline. The show itself parodied not only current issues in US society, but the sitcom format itself.
Networks didn't show interest in the series pitch until The Simpsons became a major hit for the fledgling Fox network, and suddenly everyone wanted their own Simpsons type of show. ABC picked up Dinosaurs and ran it for four seasons.
Henson himself died the year before the series aired. The walk-around characters use the animatronic Henson Performance Control System that Brian Henson and the London Creature Shop developed for the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. (The system itself would be further refined and win a technical achievement Academy Award for Babe in 1995.) Many of the puppeteers and body performers on Dinosaurs also worked on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
