Sid Krofft, the creative force behind a string of delirious children’s TV hits made with his brother Marty, died Friday at 96. He died in his sleep at the Los Angeles home of friend and business partner Kelly Killian.
Krofft and his younger brother built an entertainment empire around shows that blurred puppetry, fantasy and live action, including The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost. He was eight years older than Marty, who died in November 2023 at 86.
The brothers were already well-known theatrical puppeteers in 1968 when NBC recruited them to design costumes for the live-action portion of The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, which ran from 1968 to 1970 and lived on in reruns. A year later, NBC asked them to create a Saturday morning kids show, and they delivered H.R. Pufnstuf, about a shipwrecked boy named Jimmy, played by Jack Wild, who lands on a magical island.
The title character was a revamp of Luther, a friendly dragon the brothers had created for a show at the 1968 HemisFair in San Antonio. H.R. Pufnstuf lasted for a 17-episode first season, then was canceled in 1970 after NBC wanted a second season but the Kroffts said the rights fee increase was too small. It also survived in reruns, and the Beatles even asked for a full set of episode tapes to be sent to them in England.
The pair kept going. The Bugaloos ran from 1970 to 1972, Lidsville from 1971 to 1973, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters from 1973 to 1975 and Land of the Lost from 1974 to 1976. Land of the Lost later spawned a Will Ferrell movie adaptation in 2009, while the brothers were still finding an audience as late as 2015 with Mutt & Stuff on Nickelodeon.
The Kroffts also fought to protect their look. McDonald’s copied their style to create Mayor McCheese and McDonaldland for an early 1970s advertising campaign, prompting a lawsuit the brothers won in a reported seven-figure settlement in 1977. They even took their world off the screen in 1976, opening The World of Sid & Marty Krofft in downtown Atlanta’s new Omni Complex, a six-level attraction billed as the world’s first vertical amusement park. It drew about 600,000 visitors in the recession-plagued 1970s before closing after just six months.
Sid Krofft’s death closes the book on one of the last great independent kids’ TV partnerships of the 1960s. Their shows were remembered for psychedelic sets and costumes, and Marty Krofft once summed up their formula with a line that fit the era and the work: “I get a dream, and Marty gets it done.”
