Dr. Bunsen Honeydew
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Dr. Bunsen Honeydew is a character from The Muppet Show, performed by Dave Goelz. The muppet was a bald, bespectacled, lab-coated scientist who would do periodic science segments from "Muppet Labs...where the future is being made today". The face of the muppet had no eyes, only glasses, and his experiments always went awry, usually causing great harm to his long-suffering assistant Beaker (Richard Hunt), a nearly mute muppet with shocked red hair.
Beaker would end up blown up, electrocuted, eaten by large monsters, or having body parts fall off. Beaker only communicated by expressions of fear, typically "meep". He rapidly became one of the audience favourites who sympathized with his humourous sufferings. Occasionally, Beaker got his own back, especially when he inadvertently made several copies of himself and spent the rest of the episode chasing Honeydew in revenge.
The two scientists were later incorporated into the Muppet Babies animated series. Dave Coulier voiced Bunsen, and Frank Welker provided Beaker's squeaky meeps.
Following Richard Hunt's death in 1992, the role of Beaker was taken over by Steve Whitmire.
In a 2004, Internet poll sponsored by the BBC and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Beaker and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew were voted Britain's favourite cinematic scientists. They beat Mr. Spock, their closest rival, by a margin of 2 to 1 and won 33 percent of the 43,000 votes cast.
Dr. Bunsen Honeydew's name was derived from the traditional piece of lab equipment, the bunsen burner, plus the fact that his head was shaped like a honeydew melon.