Happy Monday y’all! We recorded Episode 2 of Pixels and Puppets on Friday and hopefully it will make your work commute a little more bearable. Please do share around, word of mouth is our only real way of reaching people.
I’ve got a few requests over the past couple of weeks, so I thought I’d post here about a subject that comes up occasionally: Muppet Replicas.
Naturally nearly everyone in the puppet space loves The Muppets and lots of people want to own a replica of their favourite character(s). I have made two Kermits myself, building a Kermit being something of a rite of passage for puppet builders, and my full body Kermit is proudly in the background of my build stream chat cam.
Because folks see my Kermit in various places, they naturally ask me if I can build one for them, and unfortunately, I always have to say no. Then they sometimes go on to ask me for the patterns and as covered in a previous blog, that’s an even bigger no.
The issue of course is copyright and intellectual property. The Muppets are copyrighted characters and as such, I am not authorized to make and sell replicas. Truthfully Disney probably wouldn’t be too happy about me building a Kermit for myself even, but as I’m not making money off it, it’s not worth bothering about. Selling replicas, however, is another matter.
People tend to get the wrong idea about copyright sometimes. I’m small enough that Disney wouldn’t ever even notice the occasional Kermit coming out of my shop, but that’s not the point. I’m not afraid of Disney suing me, but there’s a wider issue.
The puppet building community is relatively small and interconnected. People know, or at least know of, other people. I sometimes get work from professional puppeteers and if you are going to work professionally in any entertainment medium, the best thing you can do to sabotage your chances of future work is to violate intellectual property. If you are a known IP violator, you will lose work, and more importantly, the respect of your peers.
There’s also an ethical consideration. I don’t own those designs. Someone else does, and I have no right to just take them and make money from them. Yes, Disney is a giant evil corporation, I agree, but theft is theft. I’ve had my own designs stolen by another builder, and I know what that feels like. I would never do that to someone else, no matter how big. Building a Kermit for myself is one thing – I’m not making money from that, or taking anyone else’s income. Selling Kermits, is another matter.
Now, there are some builders out there who do sell Muppet replicas. I’ll tell you straight up right now to be very wary of anyone so willing to do so. There are a couple of notorious figures in the grey market of Muppet replicas who are famous for taking the money (usually a great deal of money) and running. It happened to me before I started building.
You are much better with a lack of Kermit than discovering you’ve had your money stolen by someone claiming to sell you one. Honestly what I wish would happen is Disney pick a few reputable builders (cough cough) and license them to make replicas for a (likely sizable) percentage of the income they generate. Limited runs so they’re not mass produced, boutique items, etc. Sadly, Disney is very much in “vault mode” with all that and would prefer to play legal whack-a-mole with shady builders.
Better yet, learn puppet building and make your own. The Kermit you build, no matter what it looks like, will be a thousand times more valuable to you than any you could buy.
The lesson is simple. If you don’t want it to happen to you, don’t do it to other people.
One thing I do want to happen to me right now is coffee.