Sid and Marty Krofft treated me very well during the years when I was a writer — often, head writer — on most of what they produced for television. I was also involved with a couple of live shows they were trying to sell — and I think that if the money had been the same, they'd rather have sold one of those than one of their TV ventures.
The company had started off doing live shows, including a scandalous "adult" puppet show called Les Poupées de Paris that toured for years and — I cut-and-pasted this out of Wikipedia — became a key attraction at the Seattle World's Fair in 1962, the New York World's Fair in 1964-1965, and the San Antonio HemisFair '68 in 1968.
Because of the years Sid Krofft has spent as an opening act for Liberace, Judy Garland and a few other stars of that magnitude, they were able to get those folks to record voice tracks to which puppets of Liberace, Judy Garland, et al, could mime. They also had puppets and the voices of Pearl Bailey, Milton Berle, Cyd Charisse, Gene Kelly, Edie Adams, Maurice Chevalier, Jayne Mansfield, Tony Martin, Phil Silvers, Loretta Young and others.
The show was always a work-in-progress with new puppets and new bits being inserted all the time. Sid told stories of how the "naughty" factor had to change depending on where it played. There were towns where they were actually threatened with arrest for displaying topless puppets and had to cover them up. I never got to see the show and when I asked, Sid said (sadly) that they really didn't have good films of the show but they had clips. Here's four-and-a half minutes of an ice skater introduced by a recording of Paul Frees, who did a lot of work with them. She's followed by the Frankenstein Monster who is obviously not a puppet but a very small person in a costume…
The success of that show put them on the map (as they say) and Sid and Marty were always trying to get something of the sort going again. They had only limited success in those efforts, some of which involved me. Fortunately, they had much better luck selling TV shows, some of which involved me. As I look back on my time working with them, my main regret was that very few of their proposed live shows ever happened. Some of those projects would have been a lot of fun. But most of the TV shows sure were.