Before you order a puppet, you need to know the purpose you have in mind for a specific feature. What we are trying to do is keep you from spending a lot of money and not getting the full benefit from your dollar.
If a particular mechanical function is not really needed to achieve the look and functionality you want, then why do it? It’s ok to spend money on a good puppet, however to spend money on mechanics that do not have a real purpose for just does not make good sense for your expenditure.
Case in point. We have one good friend who ordered a puppet that requires a lot of head movement to portray the antics he is most noted for. Our friend (we will just call him “Sam”) was great with the puppet.
We have seen him in action and he is hilarious – a real crowd pleaser. When we first came out with Figmy’s (headstick models), Sam was right there in line. He wanted
a duplicate of his puppet with a headstick, blinkers, L/R moving eyes, eyebrows etc.
We built him what he wanted (as we are prone to do if you want something). The puppet was built and shipped. Sam excitedly got the new puppet, and suddenly we got several phone calls from him that he was not happy with his ability to make the puppet function. Please note that Sam was not unhappy with us – we had given him just what he asked for.
Where Sam could previously make the puppets head move in just about any direction, limited only by the movement of his wrist, now he could only get the movement that he could get with his ability to turn or rotate the head stick. He just lost 60% of what made his audience love the puppet.
Sam was able to make some use of the blinkers. That was good, however we can stick blinkers in a puppet without a headstick. Sam was able to use the L/R moving eyes in the
new puppet, but by his own admission he could previously have used the movement of the head to make the puppet “look” anywhere he wanted him to look.
In the final analysis, Sam’s new Figmy is now gathering dust on a shelf somewhere and Sam is still to the pleasure of his audiences using the standard soft puppet he started with.
All we are really trying to say is, don’t get carried away ordering lots of expensive bells and whistles if they are not going to put money in your pocket and smiles on the faces of your audiences.
That’s all for now folks,
Steve and JET