Face your fear

So I went into Galactic Circus today, Melbourne's big arcade venue. My day started innocuously enough, and the above photo right there is a shot of the prizes. Looks normal, yes?

...Tragically, looks can be deceiving. Potentially even deadly.

Do you see it yet? LOOK CLOSER, LENNY.

ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck!!!! Is this the end of the year? ...Or the end of the world?

#0060: The Talented Mr. Cluck

Yet another puppet, eh?? At this point, you might start pondering exactly how many of the suckers I've got lying around the joint (both the finger variety and those for the mighty fist), but I swear, it's not that many. I could almost promise this as being the last. Almost, but not quite, because there are probably more I've forgotten about. A veritable puppet potpourri!

Tonight, at 11.30, alone in my room, I attempt to analyse the Talented Mr. Cluck. Not his given name, I assure you, but such is the fun of shirty finger puppets (typed shitty, but iPhone suggested otherwise. On closer inspection, I suppose he is rather shirty): you can name them whatever you please. Today, he's 'the Talented Mr. Cluck', tomorrow, he's 'Commodore Buttons', next week, he's 'Dom DeLuise'.

To put it kindly, he's not exactly easy on the eyes. His plastic yellow head looks like a leftover skull from a toy factory shut down in the 1940s, Frankensteined onto a most displeasing orange fabric. Slap on some vaguely hand-like white bits, and a green flower design as the piece de resistance, and voila! We have nobody's favorite finger puppet.

His only purpose in this life is to boogie on up and down, and sing whatever tune his finger master chooses. He's kind of like the flowers in the windowsill of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, except not really at all and good lord that comparison was hard to make.

In closing, it's a really, really good thing I'm not getting paid for this blog, because when my yearly review came up, it's posts like this that would draw the boss' ire. Not often failure correlates directly with finger puppets. In an attempt to salvage some semblance of credibility, I leave you now with the greatest video known to man, woman, or finger puppet.

#0050: Ripster Puppet

Welcome, minions, to a momentous day in the echelons of INAKA. We’ve seen some cool toys, we’ve seen some shit toys, and we’ve seen some toys that defy imagination. And today, we hit the big five zero. In actuality, I don’t really see 50 as being a particularly special number; it’s really just riding on the coattails of 100, being halfway and all. 25 and 75 don’t quite go about gloating over their relation to the century mark, but the Napoleon complex 50, it’s all about it.

As such, we’ll appease it for now. Just don’t expect the same kind of treatment for 150, at which point I simply won’t care anymore.

So I went with the assumption today that bigger is better; and as such, I needed to up the ante from the previous size benchmark set by Krang’s Android Body and the cocaine snake. Today, I introduce to you a toy of mass destruction. Have you ever seen what happens when puppets go bad?

It’s pure and utter chaos! Even Vincent Price falls victim to their fury.

Today, we salute the efforts of a plush so obscure, I can’t even seem to locate it on Google. Effectively, this could make it my most valuable possession (worth more than my 3DS, my house and my soul), but in honour of thou, the loyal toy-loving brethren, I will sally forth. Puppets are good. Street Sharks are better. So the enormous Ripster puppet must surely be the grandest of them all!

It’s incredible how much swag they were able to push out through the small window of Street Sharks’ popularity. In 1995, they were the hot ticket, and toy manufacturers would capitalize like keen strategists. Keen strategists with sharks. By the end of the year however, they were old news. Suddenly, it was all about Space Jam toys. At least, that’s how it was in my little community, and I assume that, as the epicenter of everything, what I deemed haute couture was accepted as the norm.

The paraphernalia came in all shapes and sizes, and this isn’t even the only Sharks foray into puppets. The more commonly seen variety were much more conservative hand puppets, appropriate for roleplay and post-modern attempts at Punch & Judy. However, I have looked high and low, and cannot find anyone else in all of society who owns this particular majestic menace.


And frankly, that’s really weird to me. I’ve pumped out some toys that I never expected to be recognized, but in this case, it’s a part of a big fad franchise that isn’t even twenty years old. Why is it so damned hard to find anyone else who is willing to discuss their Ripster puppet?

Is it one of a kind? Was it a prototype from a cancelled brand extension? Did I make it myself?

Who knows. Alls I know is that this enormous sucker has been lurking about my closet for years, warding off intruders, and eating stray socks that came his way. I also assume that, within a week, someone will have successfully located another site where people have already discussed the Ripster puppet. There’s probably even a fan club dedicated to it, with weekly meetups and secret shark handshakes.

But enough about his shady origins, let’s observe with keen interest the toy itself. For starters, wow, he’s really, really big. He’s like the size of a small toddler, but he’s much buffer and has rows of jagged plastic teeth, which makes him better than a small toddler.

He’s pretty finely crafted (as is the norm with Mattel), and even has nice little details like stitching tactfully placed to resemble abs. He lives up to his puppet status through use of an opening in his back, where you can pop your hand into to make his mouth stretch open widely.


As you can see, this makes him capable of biting, singing, and saying ‘ahh’ for the dentist. He’s even got Velcro hands, though amusingly, he’s far too unwieldy and muscular to successfully stick them together. You can hold them in place for a moment, but as soon as you let go, he’ll yank those suckers back to neutral. I don’t know what exactly the intention was of providing Velcro hands on a toy that can’t hold them together, but it’s still a fun addition. For one thing, when you hold them there, it looks like he’s praying. It’s like the cover of a hip-hop album. With sharks.

He’s got some minor wear on his teeth, but they’re shark teeth man, they’re meant to be rugged. Besides, if this truly is the only Ripster puppet in existence, then there still ain’t a better conditioned one in town.

I can’t help but note, in case you were wondering, that yes, he is excellent for cuddling. He’s soft and he doesn’t judge. This might sound wussy at first, but I will justify this by pointing out that I am cuddling a shark. Much more badass.

He’s also got some soulful eyes, hasn’t he? Like he’s about to pelt out a few bars of Ol’ Man River, criticize the lack of progress in the civil rights movement in the United States, and endure the pressure of McCarthyism. Yes, I effectively cast Ripster as the lead role of a Paul Robeson biography. That would be fucking epic, in my opinion. And yes, I did base the terminology of that biography on the first paragraph from Robeson’s Wikipedia page. As all true historians do, no doubt.

Right. I think I’ve said enough. Because truly, this manimal speaks for himself. He is a powerful fish. He believes himself to be ‘jawesome’. And he hungers for flesh. Or Snickers bars. Whichever is more readily available.

#0038: Goo the Boxing Kangaroo

Another day, another customer who tumbles out of my closet, begging to be relieved from his duties as though it was slavery.

I really wanted to do a horribly ugly plush I had acquired from MGM Las Vegas in 1993, but somehow, the very notion that I held in my position a nineteen-year-old plush from MGM makes it hard for me to part with. Funnily enough, I keep nearly accidently forgetting a decade, and I had almost claimed it was nine years old. If that were the case, I would be thirteen. Ha. Funny.

So I copped out and went with a much safer option. A silly little puppet I bought while visiting an Australian souvenir store. I don’t know why, exactly, I saw fit to purchase him, and he really hasn’t had much use in this life. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when Goo the boxing kangaroo requested reprieve.


The name Goo is a moniker I gave him, because like most toys I believe to be unlicensed, he didn’t exactly come with a robust profile. Officially speaking, he’s really just ‘kangaroo with boxing gloves’.

He doesn’t particularly inspire me to type anything of pertinence as he sits here in my lap, staring at me with those big, glassy eyes. He’s fun to wiggle around and reshape, but I quickly grow tired of that.

As I mentioned previously, my fiancé is a grade 2 teacher this year, so I’m hoping in earnest that she can find a way to integrate him into the classroom. In grade 2, we were taught lessons by a parrot named Zazoop. We wanted to call him Zazu, but the teacher had this weird vendetta against infringing copyright.

Zazoop taught us not to talk to strangers, or get into cars with people we didn’t know. As near as I recall, these things were all illustrated by some really sinister-looking pictures. They were monochrome and depressing… The expressions told nothing… The world they portrayed was blotchy, inky and empty. This was either the world of pedophilia, or rejects from the easel of Stephen Gammell.


Mild exaggeration, although I certainly wouldn’t get in a car with that man. At the very least, I doubt he’s a cautious driver.

Our buddy Goo here, however, will regale students with tales about how to be a better friend, and how to conduct oneself in the classroom. Because this is much more fun, and doesn’t throw my childhood askew as badly as the last paragraph does. Though if I may make a creative suggestion, I would cast Goo in the crucial role of mischievous foil. The little devil on the shoulder who tries to lead us astray, but fails due to our commitment to morals.

Because, for crying out loud, he’s a boxing kangaroo. He embodies the miserable world of illegal animal fighting rings, and he’s probably drunk all the time. We’ll omit that last detail from the classroom, however.

Goo only holds one secret, and it’s obviously a very well hidden secret, because until literally right after I had finished that last sentence, I had never noticed it. This secret is, of course, that Goo’s head is filled with tye-dyed fabric, and frankly, this could mean anything.


Was he once a pillow of some sort? Did he murder a hippie during an inebriated stupor, and hide the evidence within his very noggin? It’s hard to say. In fact, it’s impossible to say, and if you could possibly defy this notion, then… please don’t. I don’t care enough to argue your factual evidence with my theories of cushions and dead flower people.

…Stephen Gammell imagery resurfacing… Oh dear god…

#0028: The Face of Evil

Look, I have no way of beating around the bush. What I have here is simply the most horrifying thing I have ever owned, excluding perhaps the crawling army man doll that scared the bejeezus out of me as a toddler. I see no reason for this to be in the possession of any man, woman or child, and I apologise for my selfishness in unleashing its curse upon whomsoever is its unfortunate recipient.

After all, for the briefest of moments as I was shifting through my toy chest, when I first laid eyes on this, I thought that somebody had ripped Wario’s face off. And that’s never a good sign for a child’s toy, now is it?

This is the destroyer of worlds. The gobbler of souls. The buyer of Roseanne DVDs. Observe, if you dare, the face of evil.


AAAAAAUUUUGGGGHHH!!!

Why in god’s name does this heaven-forsaken thing exist? If you were unaware due to nervous distraction (or possible premature fatality), this thing is actually a finger puppet. You stick your fingers in the four holes in its back, and wiggle them around to make its hideous maw flex and contort. Whether or not you actually get your fingers back afterwards, is anybody’s guess.

Evil faces are always scary, of course, but this guy here really takes the cake. He should have been the major villain in all of my playtime adventures; the wicked puppet master pulling the strings for the lesser nemeses. Jeez, if Andross looked like this, I would have simply torn out of the room in terror, leaving Fox McCloud unguided and causing the downfall of the Lylat system.

I suppose it was for a lack of functionality, predominantly. Whereas enemy numero uno (Beetlejuice) could kick and fly and jettison his head for nefarious reasons, this finger puppet fiend really only comes with the ability to bite. Unless you count looking really frightening as a capability, in which case he had that in spades.

Actually, I’m seriously considering sending it to somebody in the mail. That would be a really excellent way to freak people out, wouldn’t it? Is it a death threat? A foreboding warning? A voodoo hex? It truly has the capability of making you assume the worst. If I ever received a package with this inside, I’d call all of my friends and family to make sure they’re okay. Then I’d tell them to lock all doors and windows, and call the police.


I wonder how I ended up with this thing? I can’t see my parents gazing upon its visage and deciding, ‘yes, our son will adore this delightful new friend’. Has it been in my family for generations, like some dark, sinister family secret? I suppose that would be the more interesting possible origin, though it makes me worry that when I do try to dispose of it, it’ll end up right back on my pillow the very next morning.

Fortunately for me though, I have a wide arsenal of heroes to lay waste to this beast. I don’t know about other kids, but my good guy to bad guy toy ratio was about 20:1. You needed to have the protagonist and all of his plethora of friends ready to save the day, and you only rarely nabbed a villain or two for plot reasons, or with the sole purpose in life of being brutally thrashed.

When I have kids, I should arm them with no more than Shredder and Dr. Robotnik, forcing them to play with them to day’s end, only occasionally introducing auxiliary characters in an effort to increase the children’s bond with these misunderstood foes. What a terrible, tyrannical father I shall be.

But I digress (heavily). Let’s see if my stable of light can best this wicked evil-doer?


Poor Garfield scarcely put up a fight. His green kneepads and effeminate flowery shirt might have seemed like suitable protection against the dastardly puppet, but in the end, they’re little more than mere chew toys.


Streex came in with a lot of confidence and a collection of broken street signs to do battle with, but a simple stare-down with his opponent led him to shriek in horror, tearing down the street as fast as his rollerblades would take him.


PIDGEY used GUST!

It’s not very effective…

BADFACE used JUSTIN BIEBER MIXTAPE!

PIDGEY fainted!

Poor Pidgey. It couldn't grasp the true form of the face's attack.


…Toykind… is doomed…