Sunday, March 21, 2010

Puppet Fun

Smokey the Foetus says "Don't grow up and be a corporate puppet who destroys all fun."I love this puppet design concept. A nice sculpted full color 3 dimensional head coupled with a drawing of the body printed in 3 colors on a cloth rag.The head is made by a different artist than whoever drew the body. These Terrytoons bodies look like they were drawn in Hong Kong while the heads are sculpted on the homefront. It's a great contrast and really makes the characters come to lifeMan. do I wish I had a Farmer Alfalfa puppet! The greatest cartoon character in history!Rocky and Bullwinkle made for great toys. Rocky has been eating well lately. Bullwinkle looks a little shakey. And flesh-colored!

HANNA BARBERA PUPPETS
For some reason Hanna Barbera sold more toys than any characters in history.
These bodies look like Ed Benedict's actual model sheet drawings. That's kind of cheating because they actually look well designed on purpose. The heads are on-model too, which is also against classic toy design laws.

MushMouse's proportions here are a natural wonder.
They go well with Betty's below.
"Archie, take me!!"


LESS FUN BUT STILL AMUSING
I was never too much into "realistic" characters as toys, but when they do weird things to them like this they're still kinda fun.
The giant heads make them more fun than the cartoons themselves.
Encasing them claustrophobic body bags helps.
PUPPET DEVOLUTION
Like everything else, puppets suffered the devasting mass devolution of the 1970s. Climate change caused all fun design to go extinct.

NOT A PUPPET BUT MODERN TOY NO FUN ANYMOREThis isn't a puppet but it's a good example of what happened to toy design after the 70s. Everything became bland, lumpy and wrinkly.