Canadian Educational VHS Tape ft. Henson Company alumni

Robsidian89

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Hey guys, first time poster here! I figured you might be interested in checking out a rare (and unopened) VHS tape from 1992 that I came across at a pharmacy in Gore Bay, Ontario the other day. Entitled "The Adventures of Ruffus & Andy: Breathless", it's part of a series produced by a Mississauga, Ontario hopsital with funding from the Ronald McDonald House charities. It's a 22 minute short film about asthma awareness, designed to teach kids about asthma & it's symptoms, and how it can't prevent you from living normally or from playing hockey, with a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey game serving as the backdrop for the last half of the film.

The human actors are largely unknown (aside from cameos from Don Cherry and some Leafs players), but there's puppets portrayed by some familiar names from the crew of some Jim Henson productions, including Fraggle Rock, Follow That Bird, and Basil Hears A Noise. Ruffus the Dog (who was later spun off into his own solo TV series in 1998) & his owner Andy are portrayed by Rob Mills & Karen Valleau respectively, and the Toronto Maple Leafs' trainer Buck is portrayed by Frank Meschkuleit. Their puppetry and voice-over work is the best part of the production on "Breathless", with the human actors and script falling into a mixed-low quality, so there's unintentional humour on that end. Still, it's a sincere educational video that hopefully did it's job to educate about asthma!

I bought this for $3 based on the box description, and it's very rare from what I can tell. It cost $100 new as an educational tool, and though there's few informative online sources about the Ruffus & Andy series, the Ruffus the Dog solo series has been revived in an online format (more at http://www.ruffusthedog.net/.) If you're interested, I've embedded "Breathless" in two different videos below, so see what you think!


 
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