Make your own crappy Muppet knockoff
As a kid I had a few career aspirations. I knew I wanted to work in an artistic field, and I wanted to work for a supremely creative company who inspired me. As a lover of all things Henson, my attention gravitated toward the Creature Shop. I dreamt of sculpting Froud-ian goblin puppets for pay and possibly getting to meet David Bowie. In my Labyrinth-addled child-mind this was a logical connection.
Muppets are easy to make. They consist of carved styrofoam covered in fabric with additional eyes, feathers, buttons and so forth. For the lazy, you could always go to FAO Schwartz's Muppet Whatnot Workshop, a sort of Build-a-Bear Workshop for your own Henson inspired creation. This seems rife with possibility - ideally a Mii or Avatar-style process where you could create whatever character you want in Muppet form. An ideal holiday gift, even! That is until you realize the wasted potential of this tool. Whatnots are the Henson company's building blocks for creating new Muppets. Their offices have drawers and drawers filled with Muppet bits like eyes, fur, noses and the like. Going through the abysmal customization options on the site, you'd think that they just ran out of supplies. You see three body types of set color. 12 sets of eyes, 12 sets of noses, 13 hair styles (with no bald option) and 14 outfits (with no nude option). Your resulting Muppet comes out looking like a clumsy Chinese knockoff brand and here's the kicker: they cost $90 and delivery time is 3-4 weeks.
My 10 year self would be incredibly disappointed to receive one of these soulless creations as a gift. The wasted potential here is staggering to me. Imagine a Muppet creation shop with a library of parts pulled from the entire Muppet line. You could mash up Bert's uni brow with Ernie's football-shaped head and Cookie Monster's fur. You could give Kermit the Frog Miss Piggy's nose and pretend it's a freak frog-pig baby.
Wait, I have a better idea! Go to a fabric store. Buy the materials you need and make a Muppet yourself. Not only will you save money, but you'll be able to achieve something way more creative than FAO Schwartz's sorry tool could ever dream of putting together.
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