Bunsen Honeydew to Dr. Pinhole Burns. He is the founder of Muppet Labs. Both scientists were later incorporated into the "Muppet Babies" animated series. Howie Mandel and Dave Coulier voiced Bunsen, and Frank Welker provided Beaker's squeaky meeps. Bunsen made an appearance in "Little Muppet Monsters" voiced by Bob Bergen. 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,
The Muppets Studio under Senior Vice President and General Manager R. Russell Hampton, Jr. ABC, in October 2005, commissioned "America's Next Muppet", a script and five script outlines, but ABC was reluctant to green light "America's Next Muppet", and it never got out of the planning stage. Muppet Holding's new general manager instead licensed the Muppets out to TF1, a French television network, to produce "Muppet TV" in September 2006. In 2006, the Muppets Holding Company was transferred from the Disney Consumer Products unit to The Walt Disney Studios; with studio executives passing on oversight, the unit was placed in the special events