My favorite Nike puppet

If you've been watching any playoff basketball this season, I'm sure you've noticed the Nike ads featuring the "Most Valuable Puppet" avatars of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. If you haven't, here and here.

What I like most about this ad campaign is how the puppets' personalities truly reflect their human counterparts. Lil' Kobe's projects a mellow arrogance, flaunting his extensive playoff and championship experience. Lil' Lebron cannot contain his enthusiasm for the post-season, Ohio, and Chinese food.

I'm assuming these commercials will run through the end of the post-season. Over the course of the next week, we'll see if the real LeBron and Kobe can outlast their marionette mini-me's by meeting in the Finals.

The focus of this article, however, is my favorite Nike puppet - puppeT, singular. It's not about Kobe and LeBron. Flash back about 13 years, and you may recall a loud-mouthed, smack-talkin' figurine by the name of Lil' Penny!

In my mind, the Lil' Penny ad campaign represent some of my greatest memories of the '90s: Anfernee Hardaway's potential, Chris Rock one-liners, Tyra Banks, Gheorghe Muresan, and the most comfortable pair of shoes I've ever owned, the Nike Air Penny 2 (photo below). If all that doesn't give you a warm fuzzy feeling, I feel sorry for you.

Unfortunately for Penny, we remember little else from his career besides an eastern conference championship and the emotional scars from Shaquille O'Neal's departure for Hollywood and a series of less-than-mediocre comebacks after injury. At least we can still watch the commercials.

Hats off to Nike for creating a series of new (and likely more successful) puppets, but I'll never forget Lil' Penny and the puppet empire that could have been. "If the Academy don't recognize this, we got a problem."