One of my favorite television sitcoms during the 80s was the wildly popular show ALF (1986-1990). The series starred an Alien Life Form whose spaceship crash landed into the garage of the Tanner Family in Los Angeles. Due to the fact his spaceship could not be repaired he was stuck on Earth without any hope of returning to his homeplanet, Melmac.
The Tanner Family agreed to hide ALF from the alien task force and learns of his planet’s favorite meal; cats. Although the Tanner’s cat Lucky is considered a delicacy on Melmac, ALF tried his best to not eat him even though his attempted to several times during the series.
The show as mentioned amassed such popularity that it produced a fever of ALF merchandising including figurines, stuffed dolls, books, posters and even bed sheets (of which I owned I one time or another).
The history of ALF’s conception is a unique one. “The character ALF was originally created by Paul Fusco in 1984. He already offered his concept of a sitcom about an alien to the Disney Studios and to the Muppet-creator Jim Henson, but they rejected it, when finally he had a meeting with NBC’s Brandon Tartikoff.”
A popular misconception during the time was that ALF was performed by “90 cm (around 3 feet) tall Michu Mezaros. But he just portrayed ALF in the first season and part of the second season only when he needed to be seen walking. In normal scenes and in the third and fourth season the producers of the shows used other methods that did not require a costume.” (tvshows.de)
In other news . . .
An article on Yahoo News states that “the 7,385 signers of the “Bring Back ALF” online petition letter have finally gotten their wish.” ALF will return to the boob tube with his very own show entitled Alf’s Hit Talk Show, currently in development with Nickelodeon and creator Paul Fusco.
:)