This month, the Muppets Studio posted its latest song-based video on YouTube. Last weekend, the official video, “Beaker’s Ballad,” crossed the platinum standard of viral-video popularity with 1 million views.

We recently caught up with Kirk Thatcher, the L.A.-based creative talent who directed “Beaker’s Ballad.”

Thatcher did more than learn about Muppets at the fuzzy, felted hand of Jim Henson himself. He observed a way of leading a warm and fuzzy life.

“Jim was as nice a person as I’ve found in real life,” said Thatcher, who now is the hand that rules Muppet videos. “He was always buying dinner and springing for dessert. He was warm and fuzzy. He was genuinely above and beyond what you would consider ‘nice.’”

Thatcher, then an effects supervisor, first met Henson in 1987 — after finishing “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” he recalls — and by the next year was working full-time for the Father of the Muppets. (Henson died in 1990.) Now, decades later, it is the 40-something Thatcher who helps bring such warmth to Kermit and Miss Piggy. And in doing so, he is directing the Muppets to fuzzy viral-video success.

Thatcher and his fellow puppeteers just released “Beaker’s Ballad,” which features the “meeping” scientist Beaker — he of the bulging eyes and shock of Day-Glo orange hair — straining to strum the ’70s Kansas chestnut “Dust in the Wind” before being barraged by labels signaling his “epic fail.”

With recent videos, “The Muppets are capturing people’s attention again. … We do Muppet TV-movies, but they don’t ignite around the world like the videos,” said Thatcher, who won an Emmy in 1998 for the children’s program “Muppets Tonight.”

Last Thanksgiving, director and crew had their most popular video yet, with the Muppets — including Gonzo, and the frantic Animal at the drum kit — parodying Queen’s classic “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The official video on the studio’s YouTube channel has been viewed more than 13 million times.

Nostalgia “is definitely part of it,” Thatcher says of the videos’ virulence as they tap into ’70s pop culture. “We had a list of 50, 60 songs — ‘American Pie,’ big ballads that everyone sings along to — but ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ rose to the top. It lent itself well to filming 60 to 70 characters.”

So what nostalgic song or film scene might the Muppets tackle next?

Thatcher says he and in-house Muppets writer Jim Lewis joked to themselves about spoofing Quentin Tarantino with Kermit-esque characters. The title, naturally:

“Reservoir Frogs.”