The Circles of Life

In the early 1980s we were in Toronto shooting “Fraggle Rock”.  Being an international co-production the series was seen all over the world, and as you may know, the segments with “Doc and Sprocket” were re-shot in each region where the show was seen using an actor as ‘Doc’ who spoke the language of that region. I shot the first season in Germany working with Hans-Helmut Dickow (1927–1989) as ‘Doc’.  That’s a story on its own for another time!

ZDF, Germany’s leading national public-service television broadcaster, had a contest in 1984.  The first prize was 10 days in Toronto with several visits to VTR Studios where we were shooting the show.  

A young 12 year old boy living in Germany named Arndt drew a Fraggle comic by Uncle Traveling Matt featuring stories about his adventures in the human world. He won the contest that included a short film shoot of the Fraggles’ opening sequence, in which he appeared with Sprocket which was broadcast in Germany.  

Arndt and his father, who is now 82, traveled to Toronto in 1984 and visited us on-set.  He recently reached out to me, saying:

“Mar 12, 2026

Hi Steve,

I hope this message finds you well! This probably comes as a total bolt from the blue, but I’ve been sorting through some old memories and just had to reach out.

In 1984, I was a 12-year-old kid from Germany who won a ZDF comic contest to visit the Fraggle Rock studios in Toronto. It feels like a lifetime ago, but I remember it vividly. You were the performer for Wembley (if I recall correctly), and we actually went out for dinner together with my dad.

My father took a Kodachrome slide of the two of us back then—you seemed like a giant to me! It was Halloween, everyone was dressed as Ghostbusters, and Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night” was playing everywhere… such a specific 80s vibe.

I don’t expect you to remember every kid you met, but that trip truly changed my life. I just wanted to say hello and thank you for being part of that incredible experience. I hope you’ve had a wonderful life since then—I certainly have!

All the best from Germany,

Arndt”

I responded with:

“Hello Arndt,

What a great story.  I am so happy for your fond memories of that timeframe. Fraggle Rock is my favorite project that I ever worked on.  There was something about that era that is very special to me.

Do you have the photo of us?  It’d be fun to see it…

Best to you!

-Steve“

Arndt wrote back a few days later saying:

“Hi Steve,

Thanks for the quick reply! Since the photo is in my father’s archive, I first have to contact him and have him look for it. He’s 82 now, so it might take a moment to dig through the boxes. 😉 As soon as I have the photo, I’ll email it to you.

I was wondering – do you have any rough memory of that “German Doc” shoot? It must have been quite weird for you to perform with a kid who didn’t speak a word of English, while you had to use phonetic German script. We filmed a short sequence for german tv, if you remember 😉

Anyway, I’ll be in touch once I have the Kodachrome scan!

Best, Arndt

PS: searching for photo could take time, cause age of my dad … (you maybe know 😉“

A few weeks have gone by, and then this:

“Hi Steve,

Good things come to those who wait… 😉

I contacted my dad, and he checked the attic and actually found all those slides and a Super 8 film. Then he mailed them to me. The package arrived yesterday—there were an incredible number of slides… I looked through a few at random and actually found “our” photo, the one I described to you.

I hope THAT really is you 😉 but I can tell you that I’m the one on the right *lol*

It’s been a long time: 1984! In the background, you can still see a mask from the Halloween decorations. The whole thing must have been on one of the upper floors of the Eaton Center…

Warm regards from the old days and Germany

Arndt

PS: Excuse for the lower photo quality but it’s a slide photo, of which I just took a pic with my cell phone. This would be the fastest way to send you something 😉 “

Arndt writes, “I was 12 at the time, and we didn’t really know about Halloween in Germany back then. Everything was new and big, and I was still VERY small *lol*. My dad was there with me back then; he turns 82 tomorrow. It would be great if we could meet again. But I think this is already a once-in-a-lifetime thing… but who knows….time flies, but I’m already 54 too 😉 probably almost 1.5 times as old as you in our photo.”

And speaking of the “photo”, here it is… 

If you pose the question to Google AI it answers that, selected randomly from the global population of over 8 billion, the odds of any two specific people meeting are extremely low, often considered nearly impossible, vanishingly small, estimated at roughly \(2 \times 10^{-20}\).

Evidently, those odds are significantly increased if you are Kevin Bacon… 

And yet, there have been so many people over so many years, so much goodwill mixed in with the ups and downs of life. I owe much of it to the influence of a man named Jim Henson… We touch each other in many ways that are sometimes (and too often) taken for granted in the moment, and it is only when we look back at the time that has passed, the time that no longer exists, that we get a sense of the meaning of it all.  Everyone we meet can teach us something.  It pays to keep that in mind no matter who is in front of you.

-S