As GalaxyCon comes to Raleigh, a chat with the mind behind ‘Pufnstuf,’ ‘Land of the Lost’

Like any child of the 1970s, I woke at dawn every Saturday to eat Sugar Crisp cereal straight out of the box while cross-legged in front of the television, riveted by the campy, low-budget, joyfully preposterous creations of Sid and Marty Krofft .

The smorgasbord of insane TV usually began with “Dr. Shrinker,” a live-action show about a mad scientist in a remote island laboratory whose only evil experiment involved making people tiny — for reasons that are never explained.

But the Krofft binge always peaked with “Land of the Lost ,” their masterpiece, a show that subjected a family of explorers to a planet-cracking earthquake and sent them to a prehistoric past where dinosaurs, cave people and green, one-horned aliens all live together.

The Krofft shows represented a much-needed break from the spelling tests, subtraction worksheets and stand-up-straight weekday routine of a second-grader.

To hear Sid Kroft tell it five decades later, he stepped left when the world stepped right.

“I took a chance,” he said on a Google Meet call from California last week. “I didn’t want to put kids down. If they go to school five days a week — and not only that, they’re always given “Ring Around the Rosie” or “Three Little Pigs” or whatever — I just wanted to bring them into the adult world and see if they could handle it. Let’s go to ‘Land of the Lost.’”

I spoke to Krofft because he will travel to Raleigh this week at age 94, ready to meet, greet and tell his wild life story at GalaxyCon, a four-day pop culture feast at the Convention Center.

Fans there can also spot William Shatner of “Star Trek” fame, Ron Perlman from the “Hellboy” movies, Oscar winner Marisi Tomei and Linda Hamilton, star of the “Terminator” movies. Check the full list at https://galaxycon.com/pages/galaxycon-raleigh-guests#celebrities .

‘All these insane things’

Krofft makes a rare comic-con appearance only months after his younger brother Marty died at age 86, ending their lifetime of contentious partnership.

Where Sid Krofft imagined the “Land of the Lost” crew being chased by a T-Rex named Grumpy, Marty Krofft urged him to reel it in for the sake of their Saturday-morning budget.

“Marty was the business end, totally, and I’m the crazy guy that created all these insane things,” Krofft explained. “It all came from my background, traveling all over the world, performing.”

Middle-aged fans like myself know Krofft for his psychedelic puppets of the 1970s, but by the time he created the 7-foot, mushroom-headed dragon H.R. Pufnstuf in 1969, he had already turned 40 with an even zanier career behind him.

Saving money for a marionette

It began on the streets of New York, where he sold Christmas cards as a boy fresh out of the Great Depression, attracting crowds with a dancing puppet.

“I didn’t come from a theatrical family,” he told me. “They knew nothing of what I was doing until my dad caught on, and I was working as a street performer for 35 cents a day, saving for the marionette he refused to get me, which cost $3.98. He would say, ‘You’re a boy, and you want a dolly?’ That stuck with me my whole life.”

More immediately, it landed Krofft a job as a sideshow performer with the Ringling Brothers circus, which billed him as the world’s youngest puppeteer. His father especially liked the $50 a week, assuring his boy he would be a millionaire and tour the world’s most exotic places.

He found the experience to be a frightening routine.

But with a smile, Krofft recalled that it brought him to Raleigh on Nov. 8, 1947 — his last swing through the Oak City.

“Schools closed,” he remembered 77 years later. “The banks closed. It was like a big national holiday. I’ll never forget it.”

Nude Puppets

Suddenly curious, I scanned newspaper headlines for Krofft’s name in those early years and found him billed around the country as a “master manipulator of the marionette.”

He performed in vaudeville shows and burlesque theaters, taking his 3-foot wooden puppets to Broadway and Las Vegas. Long before “Land of the Lost,” Krofft would serve as the opening act for Judy Garland.

“She had her personal problems,” he said, “but I stood in the wings every performance after I did my act and watched this woman capture the world with her magic.”

I found, to my amazement, that in 1962 Krofft staged a nude puppet show featuring Liberace and Mae West with their wooden parts on full display — a performance that drew both celebrities and outraged picketers.

He would later tell the Associated Press, “We had to do something different. What else but nude dolls?”

The birth of Pufnstuf

The world would first come to know the Kroffts’ TV puppets through “H.R. Pufnstuf,” the dragon-mayor of a friendly island beset by a witch who rides a “Vroom Broom.”

(Insiders’ tip: Krofft told me Pufnstuf’s initials stand for “royal highness” spelled backward.)

But before he graced the Saturday airwaves, Pufnstuf came to life through Krofft’s partnership with theme parks around the country, in particular the show he created for the 1968 World’s Fair in San Antonio.

“I thought it would be hysterical to have a dragon with a cowboy hat and cowboy boots,” he said, “and I also gave him the name Luther because it was so religious in Texas. He became the symbol of the fair.”

Neither Krofft nor his brother knew anything about TV, and at the time, they considered Pufnstuf to be a make-or-break gamble. But in 1969, the world was more than ready for a psychedelic dragon and a golden talking flute.

To this day, Krofft insists neither Pufnstuf nor any of the shows that followed had anything to do with drugs. Not even “Lidsville,” a show about talking hats.

But in one nod to counterculture, Krofft told me that he insisted on British actors for “The Bugaloos,” which featured teen musicians wearing insect costumes. Unable to choose between the dozens who auditioned in London, the Kroffts finally brought in a celebrity judge to pick the cast:

Mick Jagger.

Yes, right around the time Mick Jagger wrote “Gimme Shelter,” he also cast “The Bugaloos.”

Flush with artistic freedom that success brings, the Kroffts spun out a decade of ridiculous fun: “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters,” “Wonderbug,” “Far Out Space Nuts,” “Electra Woman and Dyna Girl ...”

No disrespect to Mister Rogers, but nobody watched him on Saturday morning.

How did this happen?

At GalaxyCon this week, Krofft expects fans to approach him in tears, as often happens, or even to have him call their bed-ridden parents to offer blessings from a cherished past.

“How did this happen?” he asked me. “Who would know? You just don’t know where the hell your path is going to take you. Every single one of us wants to make some kind of an impact in our life.”

He suggests Raleigh fans dig through the attics to find a dusty old talking flute or a “Land of the Lost” action figure.

He’ll sign them, he promises, and make us all millionaires.

GalaxyCon in Raleigh

Who is attending: Sid Krofft, William Shatner, Marisa Tomei, Linda Hamilton, Jon Bernthal, Ron Perlman, actors from the “Scream” movies, actors from “What We Do In the Shadows,” actors from “The Last Airbender,” Walter Koeing, Wil Wheaton.

Also available: Exhibition Hall, Cosplay competitions and Cosplay Lounge, anime events, gaming.

Where: Raleigh Convention Center

When: Thursday through Sunday

Tickets: https://galaxycon.com/pages/galaxycon-raleigh-tickets

Free: Watch for the many costumed GalaxyCon attendees near City Plaza, the Marriott area of Fayetteville Street and around the Raleigh Convention Center.