Baird also created the expandable nose Peter Noone wore as Pinocchio in the 1968 musical adaptation of the Carlo Collodi story that aired on NBC as a Hallmark Hall of Fame special.

[5] The show featured numerous characters who were previously created by Baird, including "Snarky Parker", the lion "Charlemane", "Flannel Mouse", "Slugger Ryan", a piano-playing rod puppet, along with new characters "Fluffy" and "Nolan", the Villain "Ronald Rodent", the slightly befuddled "Birdie", the seductive "Cuda Bara", the schoolteacher and Snarky's love interest "Butterbelle", and her father "Paw".

[citation needed] In 1951, Baird's Marionettes performed some of the roles in the Broadway musical Flahooley, a fantasy about a mass-produced laughing doll who unintentionally threatens the American industrial system.

Then, in 1956, Baird's puppets "Gargle" and "Snarky" appeared in Adventures in Numbers and Space, a nine-part series by Westinghouse Broadcasting designed to interest children in mathematics.

For this show, Baird created three new hand puppets named "Patapouf", "Lady Graybangs" and "Cliquot", who provided lessons to children while accompanied by Anne Slack, the hostess of the program.

[8] It is performed still, and features "a beautiful princess and her faithful dog, a wicked magician and his magic onion, a handsome prince, a hungry dragon, and a castle in an enchanted blue forest.

[10] They toured Russia, India, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Turkey, appeared in "The Lonely Goatherd" sequence in the film The Sound of Music (1965),[11] as well as in the ABC-TV 1958 television special Art Carney Meets Peter and the Wolf and Art Carney Meets the Sorcerer's Apprentice,[12] graced many World's Fairs, created commercials for Remington Razors, Wildroot Cream-Oil, Wheaties cereal, Borden Dairy, Bonomo Taffy, United Cerebral Palsy, and Young & Rubicam and were part of five Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parades.

Those performance artists included Martin P. Robinson, who later portrayed "Telly Monster" and "Mr. Snuffleupagus" on Sesame Street;[15] Randy Carfagno, who later created the costumes of the Racing Presidents for the Major League Baseball Team, The Washington Nationals;[16] Jonathan Freeman, who voiced the villain "Jafar" in Disney's 1992 animated feature film Aladdin; and Craig Marin, who after marrying another Baird puppeteer named Olga Felgemacher, formed the company Flexitoon.

[17] After Once Upon a Dragon ended, Baird continued his puppetry work and helped create several characters for commercials such as the "Flavor Fiend" for Bubble Yum, a family of puppets for an ad for the now-defunct Greenwich Savings Bank,[18] a family of dogs and a Goldilocks character for Hartz Flea Tags, a Maid for Drano, Stop-Motion animated Bottles for Desitin Skin Care Lotion and a puppet version of the mascot of RSO Records.

The play Pinocchio, from the book by Jerome Coopersmith, was produced by Arthur Cantor, and performed by puppeteers Peter B. Baird, Pady Blackwood, Randy Carfagno, Larry Engler, William Tost and Richard Stephen Weber.