Fred Tichner's puppet "Muffin the Mule" and he first appeared on 4 August 1946. Hogarth wrote the scripts and Annette Mills created the songs. Every other Sunday the puppets had a fifteen-minute live broadcast in the "For the Children" programme. Muffin had his own mechanised products and Lesney is said to have made the first toy based on a TV programme when they licensed the right to sell a pressed steel version of Muffin as a children's toy. Muffin had another series recorded in 1952. Muffin ran until 1955. The act was soon put away, and the puppet was not taken out again until 1946, when Bussell and Hogarth were working with presenter Annette Mills. She named the puppet mule "Muffin", and it first appeared on television in an edition of For the Children broadcast on 20 October 1946. The character proved popular, and ran on BBC television until 1955. Typically, Muffin danced on top of a piano as Mills played it. Muffin the Mule was supported by a host of other puppets who were made by Stanley Maile. The characters included Crumpet the Clown, Grace the Giraffe, Hubert the Hippo, Katy the Kangaroo, Kirri the Kiwi, Louise the Lamb, Monty the Monkey, Maurice and Doris the Mice, Oswald the Ostrich, Sally the Sea-lion, Peter Pup the dog, Poppy the Parrot, Mr. Peregrine Esquire the penguin, and Prudence and Primrose Kitten. Willie the Worm and Zebbie the Zebra. A separate series of 15-minute episodes, "Muffin the Mule", was broadcast from 1952, with his signature tune "We want Muffin". Muffin became a television star, and a wide range of spin-off merchandise was made using the Muffin character, including books, records, games and toys. A die-cast movable puppet was produced by Lesney Products, "the first toy to be marketed under licence as a result of a successful TV appearances." The BBC decided to discontinue the show in 1955 after Annette Mills' death and Muffin quickly moved to the new ITV channel. He was only briefly on the ITV, but this did not stop either Muffin the Mule or the Hogarth Puppets which continued their fifty years of touring. They went to every European country as well as Europe. Their Kiwi character was created at the instigation of the Governor of New Zealand. The Hogarths welcomed other puppeteers to their home when they were not touring in Australia or Canada. The church halls