If there’s one thing that we love here at hecklerspray, it’s Gerry Anderson animation. You know? With the puppets and whatnot. All rickety, gadding about getting into highly ’60sified’ (it’s a word, look it up) shenanigans with their strings flapping about behind them.

Even if you’re not getting the picture, you’ll probably be familiar with Team America: World Police by those ‘geniuses’ behind South Park. Same principle. But not as good.

Another thing that’s the same principle as a Gerry Anderson animation but not nearly approaching being not quite as good as are the awful puppet bimbos in the latest incarnation of the Diet Coke adverts. Designed to prey on the mentality and mindset of those of us who have grown up watching Sex & The City and slick romantic comedies where a girl from a small town makes it big as the assistant to some megalomaniac tosser with a God-complex (watch out for hecklerspray: The Movie, in cinemas this summer). These adverts are designed to go right to the source. The girliness.

If you’re a girl, you like shoes, handbags and shagging an endless stream of anonymous men whose musty scent of Lynx and desperation lingers long after they do. Right? Come on girls! That’s what you love, isn’t it?

Of course it isn’t.

We hear your hilarious cries of “It’s a puppet!” but your hilarious if antiquated cultural references will win you no friends here. Not amongst these wooden facsimiles of womenkind. These ‘people’ who don’t appreciate the real amount of work that goes into a handbag. Purse… phone… make-up… diary… MP3 player (or a discman, depending on how old your bag is) & what about that packet of Polo Mints that have been rolling about in there since before you even got the thing? Who’s looking after them?

The answer is you. Diet Coke might be trying to pass off that their beverage, while hugely addictive, is the only thing that matters in the world but let’s be honest. Even heroin addicts need somewhere to keep their purse or are we seriously expected to believe that these junkie puppets who have quite flagrantly caused criminal damage to a very expensive Karl Lagerfeld bag don’t need money to pay for their next carbonated fix? Where do they keep it? Having pockets would ruin the cut of their (no doubt stolen) clothes.

Look at it this way, folks. If Coke-addicted (too easy) puppets with all the personality of a lobotomised Kim Cattrall are your thing then by all means, go out, scandalise a Frenchman (the more stereotypical the better), damage something expensive and do it while looking fabulous. Otherwise, you best just stick to the full strength Coca Cola, eh? You’re not woman enough for Diet.

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We’ve all, at one point or another, fantasised about stamping on Elmo’s throat just to stop him referring to himself in the third-person.

But that’s probably as far as Muppet murder has ever got. But that can all change now, because The Jim Henson Co has decided to make a movie about – and this isn’t a joke – an alcoholic, murder-solving puppet detective on the hunt for a killer in a world where puppets and humans coexist.

The movie – The Happytime Murders – is said to have dark adult themes and won’t be suitable for children. What’s more, it’s apparently based on the time that Big Bird got wrecked on crack and went mental with a hedge-trimmer up Mr Snuffleupagus‘ rectum. Ah, the 1980s.

There’s been a bit of a worrying trend happening lately, and we’re starting to get sick of it. Rule one of, well, of life states that puppets are for children. That’s why children learn their alphabet faster watching Sesame Street than they do with, say, season two of The Wire. It’s also why Punch & Judy is a funny show for kids. Cast it with human beings and you’ve essentially got the Jennifer Lopez movie Enough.

But lately certain people have decided to buck this trend. First came the pitch for Kanye West’s hip-hop puppet show – which we’re only going to acknowledge when it’s made into a full series – and now The Jim Henson Co has decided to get in on this ‘puppets for grown-ups’ scheme as well, with what might just be one of the weirdest movies ever – The Happytime Murders. Reuters reports:

“The Happytime Murders” is a film noir murder mystery… The story takes place in a world where humans and puppets co-exist, with the puppets viewed as second-class citizens. When the puppet cast of an ’80s children’s TV show called “The Happytime Gang” begins to get murdered one by one, a disgraced puppet LAPD detective turned private eye — with a drinking problem, no less — takes on the case.

You’re probably having trouble working out what The Happytime Murders will actually be like – either because you’ve never come across such an intriguing premise for a movie or because you’re stupid and haven’t realised that the ‘different species as second-class citizen’ allegory for racism thing has already been done to death in X-Men, Alien Nation, Star Trek, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Fraggle Rock – so here’s a list of easy one-line ways to describe The Happytime Murders to you

* CSI: Miami with a slightly more humanlike lead character.

Actually, come to think of it, that’s the only way we need to describe The Happytime Murders to you, because it’s so perfect. But if you still need a hand, The Henson Co has also said that the movie will have an absurdist comedy edge, along the lines of the musical Avenue Q.

Oh, so it’ll be shit. Why didn’t they just say that?