Walmart Gives The Muppet Christmas Carol a Modern Twist With Pepe, Shopping Bags and a Fresh 'Bah Humbug'

A Disney holiday favorite has turned up in an unexpected place this season. Walmart has released a new Christmas ad built around The Muppet Christmas Carol, blending familiar moments from the 1992 film with updated shopping gags and a few extra faces.

For Disney and Muppet fans, the change is simple: there is now a newly released Walmart holiday spot that reworks The Muppet Christmas Carol for this Christmas season. In the clip below, the ad drops viewers straight into the movie's "Scrooge" sequence and brings back Gonzo as Charles Dickens and Rizzo as himself.

The timing also fits a broader burst of attention for the film. Last year, Disney released a The Muppet Christmas Carol 12-Day Countdown Calendar. This year, several plush based on characters from the movie are being sold on DisneyStore.com, though Tiny Tim is not part of that release. Old Navy has also put out a family pajama line tied to the film. Against that backdrop, Walmart is the latest company to give the movie a new seasonal spotlight.

What Walmart changed in this version

The ad keeps recognizable Muppet faces in place, including Miss Piggy, Kermit the Frog and Fozzy, but adds modern touches that were not part of the original movie. One of the first jokes calls that out directly, when Rizzo notes that a townswoman carrying a Walmart shopping bag was not in the film.

The commercial also brings in Pepe, who points out that he was not in the original either, before saying it is about giving people what they want. He is shown carrying multiple Walmart bags, and the gifts in this version are deliberately current. One example is a lava lamp that Pepe gives to Rizzo, setting up a callback to the movie line, "Light the lamp, not the rat, light the lamp, not the rat."

The biggest switch comes at the "Bah Humbug" moment. In the film's "Scrooge" number, that line lands before Scrooge goes inside. Here, the ad saves it for an upstairs window appearance by Walton Goggins, who is also featured in Walmart's current "Who Knew, Who Knew" commercials.

For fans, the practical takeaway is that The Muppet Christmas Carol has a new, modernized holiday ad in circulation right now, and it joins this year's growing wave of merchandise and seasonal nods to the movie.