TechCrunch reports that the Loren Feldman / Shel Israel puppet video show has lined up a sponsor. I feel it’s totally deserved.

This week, I watched several. Repeatedly.

I find this one with Shel Israel puppet interviewing a frog about Facebook particularly funny. I laughed as hard I did while watching A Fish Called Wanda:

So do I think these videos harm Shel Israel’s reputation? Well, I never watched any of Shel’s videos at Fast Company TV until after I watched these parodies. So there is something to be said about negative publicity providing interest to the original. In particular I had to take a gander at the video where Shel drinks coffee and sticks a microphone in a subject’s mouth.

While the latter is more informative - the puppet parodies much more entertaining.

The Shel Israel puppet videos also passed the “spousal approval” test. My wife knows nothing about Shel Israel or Robert Scoble. She asked, “Why is the puppet naked?” I had to admit I didn’t know, but offered up that it had something to do with the book: Naked Conversations. And then there’s the photo…

She found the puppet nudity much more entertaining.

Yet the next day she asked, “Why don’t we watch more of those videos with puppets?”

And there it is - the puppets have mainstream appeal.

Then again, Mark Evans’ post on puppets had me reconsidering. The Flickr video launch was aided by puppets. Also notable is the Pets.com puppet that was super popular during the tail end of the .com boom. As I recall, the puppet proved more popular than the service it was advertising, as Pets.com went from IPO to liquidation in nine months. Not sure what the puppet is up to, now.

So it’s entirely possible that despite being hilarious - the puppets are harbingers of doom.

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