CanTeen Causes Muppets to Sing "Bandanana!"

The work of CanTeen, a New Zealand charity that supports young people age 13 to 24 living with cancer, impressed Walt Disney executives so much they let the Muppet Show cast to be used in this year’s CanTeen television advertisement. The ad takes the classic song ‘Mahna Mahna’ and turns it into ‘Bandanana’ and shows the Muppets wearing CanTeen bandannas. This ad is being aired in New Zealand to promote CanTeen’s National Bandanna Week (October 10 - 16).

CanTeen spokesperson Leanne Ryburn says The Muppet Show is a perfect fit for Bandanna Week. “As well as the obvious adaptability of the ‘Mahna Mahna’ lyrics, the Muppets also really capture the essence of Bandanna Week and CanTeen.” “CanTeen is about providing support and celebrating life and the Muppets share the same feel-good values,” she says.

Landing the rights to use the song and the characters was a major coup for advertising company Foote Cone & Belding (FCB), which is just one of a number of media companies that have donated their time and advertising space to CanTeen’s cause. Representatives of FCB and film production company Curious went to Walt Disney in Los Angeles thinking they would get the rights to use three Muppets. The executive they met with loved the idea so much, they got the cast together the next day, got many others to donate their time and the ad was filmed a day later. CanTeen says it is absolutely incredible that it was pulled off, and in such a short space of time, because an ad of this calibre with the actual Muppeteers and voices could normally take a year to finalise.

For more information on CantTeen, visit their website at www.canteen.org.nz. You can also download and watch the wonderful Muppet commerical off their website's event page (the file is a 6.5 MB minute-long mpeg video).