Gremlins Hero Puppet Head Prop Restoration
Our restoration of a Gremlins puppet head from Joe Dante’s 1984 film.
While a large number of puppets from the sequel film are in private collections, movie props from the original, 1984 Gremlins are actually quite rare. Even more rare are the hero animatronic “super gremlin” style like this one! We frequently hear the question “It’s too far gone, isn’t it?” And it’s easy to assume when looking at the before photos of this Gremlins puppet head, that “too far gone” may have been the case. Over the years the delicate foam latex had dried out and began to crumble. The ears had been folded in so dramatically that the armature wire inside had burst through and the ears had fused to the head.
Our client for this was one of the largest private Gremlins collectors, The Gremlins Museum (https://www.gremlns.com). We originally discussed their hopes for the piece and while they were comfortable to the idea that we may have only been able to stabilize the piece, they were happy to have us do anything that we could do for this puppet. They had even resigned themselves to the fact that the ears may end up stuck in that position. Lead artist on this project Patrick Louie was not only able to get the ears unfurled but pulled off a beautiful full restoration to make this incredible piece of Gremlins history display beautifully once again!
Patrick started by carefully stabilizing the crumbling foam so that it was even sturdy enough to safely handle. Once the Gremlins puppet head was stable enough to start the restoration he gently trying to separate the ears from the head. We allow the material to dictate how far we can take the restoration on these delicate pieces. We prefer not to risk the original material when it’s not necessary for the safety of the piece. If the process of trying to remove the ears had posed a risk to stability of the rest of the piece, or caused what was left of the ears to disintegrate, we would have recommended leaving them as is. Luckily that was not the case in this 1984 gremlin puppet!
Once the ears were separated Patrick was able to gently work them back into a pose similar to their original position. With the head in a better overall position, he was able to start rebuilding the missing and damages areas. When we restore these foam latex pieces we only rebuild areas of missing materials. This helps to maintain as much of the original material as possible, it also helps to strengthen the remaining original foam latex, by giving it additional support in the surrounding areas.
Once all of the repairs were completed we got to work painting the repairs to seamlessly blend with the original material. As always, our paint work was strictly limited to the areas we repaired.We were also able to gently reposition the eyes to give the piece some additional display impact! We then had a beautiful museum style display pedestal fabricated to complete our client’s display!
Read more about this project on the Gremlins Collection site: https://www.gremlns.com/animatronic-gremlin-movie-prop/
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