Character: Rowlf
Hand type: Live hands
Builder credits:
Pattern – Wally Wingert, Alex McGee & Shelley Johnson
Head and body foam construction – Wally Wingert
Mouth plate fabrication – Wally Wingert
Nose and eye piece sculptures – Wally Wingert
Nose piece replication – Jim Ojala
Eye painting and pupil fabrication – Wally Wingert
Head and neck seamstress – Alex McGee; Alex In Wonderland
Body seamstress – Shelley Johnson
Fur trimming and styling – Sergio Lopez
Height: 25” pinned up/35” with skirt fully extended
Notes: I decided to try my hand at puppet building again after a hiatus of over 35 years. On Christmas Eve of 2018 I took on the Muppet character with whom I’ve had the longest history.
When I was a toddler, my parents loved seeing Rowlf the Dog’s segments on the old “Jimmy Dean Show.” In fact, they loved him SO much we named our first dog “Ralph” in his honor. Why not Rowlf, you ask? Jimmy Dean had a fairly thick southern accent, and as a result my folks mistakenly thought he was referring to Rowlf as “Ralph.” And that’s how our family dog got his name.
When I was 19 I built a Rowlf based on the Fisher-Price puppet. I utilized the wonderful head that came on the toy, but I completely reconstructed and expanded the body utilizing a different fur. I still have him to this very day.
During a search for more elements to use in my forthcoming Oscar the Grouch project, I found a wonderful brown faux alpaca fur. I was happy with the dusty green fur I had found, but I needed a good brown for his unibrow. After getting a sample in I realized that the texture was perfect for a Rowlf replica. Since building Rowlf would be a good first step toward building a more complex Oscar puppet later, I opted to “come out of retirement” by building Rowlf.
As with any project like this, you have to choose your target. And even though Rowlf’s look has changed a lot throughout the years, my “target” for Rowlf was how he appeared in 1979’s “The Muppet Movie.”
But I made the mistake that (according to what Muppet builder Caroly Wilcox once said) even real Muppet builders make. I made him too darn big. I decided that I wanted his body large enough to house two puppet operators should a piano-playing occasion ever arise. But as a result, his head was about 10% too large to be in scale with my other Muppet replicas.
My Rowlf made his public debut at the 2019 Wondercon in Anaheim, CA. In the summer of 2021 I shrunk the head patterns I had created for him by 10% and remade his head. This reconstruction process allowed me to fix other issues I had with the first version I made.
Once again, Mark Evanier was kind enough to let Rowlf and I crash the Cartoon Voice Actors’ Panel
The new, smaller head (which I had dubbed “10% Rowlf”) was transplanted onto the existing body and he’s now in better scale with the other replicas.
On the old “Jimmy Dean Show” on TV, it was a running gag that Rowlf had a crush on Lassie. Much to Rowlf’s starstruck amazement, Lassie actually appeared on the show a few times. In honor of that, my dog Roxy (great granddaughter of Lassie) cozies up with my Rowlf replica.