Puppets can tour. With a van, a portable stage, some battery-powered amplifiers and a few humans along for the ride, they can travel even to those areas unreached by the mass media. In rugged rural places, puppets can journey strapped to the back of a donkey. This flexibility makes puppets ideal for working in the least developed countries, where innovative ways of reaching communities are desperately needed. Not only can they reach the communities, but they can also dress in the local style, adopt the local customs and be accepted as friends and neighbours rather than being viewed as outsiders.
Puppets are also natural television stars.
Sesame Street, produced by the Children's Television Workshop in the United States since 1968, established puppet figures as some of the all-time greats of the small screen. The Muppet characters devised by Jim Henson continue to this day to be international stars, combining their role of making people laugh with teaching letters and numbers to children as well as adults. The Muppets have been copied around the world, their eyes and large mobile mouths making them instantly recognizable. Other puppets work well on television too. The versatility of puppets seems almost limitless.