Adam Savage Meets a Real Fraggle Rock Puppet!

Hey everybody, Adam Savage in one of my happiest places, Prop Store. Actually, the mothership in England with Stephen Lane. Hey Adam, lovely seeing you here, man. Thanks a lot for coming out. I'm so glad to finally be here. It feels like a long time coming. We're having a lot of fun today, man. I'm loving this. We are covering so many awesome objects, including this wonderful character. We have an actual Muppet in the house. It's an actual Fraggle, yeah. Of course, creator Jim Henson for the Muppets as well came up with the concept of the Fraggle. I've actually been to Fraggle Rock. It's a little lighthouse down in Cornwall. I've been around it and I've walked around it as well. Obviously, they only film the exterior there, but this guy is incredibly rare. It's the only one we've ever seen in private hands. We've never heard of another one that's out there. We've actually chatted with Henson's about this. They were interested about it as well. Wanted to hear the backstory to it. And it's just, it's a fascinating fellow to have survived all these years. Well, not only to have survived, he looks absolutely in performance-ready shape right now. Yeah, he's generally speaking kept under glass and under a cabinet. So it keeps all the dust off him because he's a little bit difficult to keep clean and tidy. But I just love the life that you have in the hair there. I mean, I think this is like an ostrich feather or something like that, but you just give it a blow there and it just comes to life, doesn't it? Well, and it speaks to one of these things. We shot some sequences with Puppet Master Rick Lyon in New York, and he was explaining to us that on the Muppet, the feather gives what they call secondary movement. And so parts of the character is always moving the way people or animals are always actually moving. And I noticed further that they've added more feathers in all around his torso here. And again, I think that's for that secondary movement. I noticed another thing that's classic Muppet is he's made of the correct Antron fleece. The specific synthetic fleece that Muppets are made out of because it's a dyeable synthetic. Yeah, I knew that, by the way. Yeah, yeah. I figured you did. Antron fleece, wow, man. Seeing these things up close and in person is always such a crazy treat because there's so much character in it. Yeah, totally. Now, this particular guy, he's just like one of the background minions, if you like, that you see on a regular occasion, often changing jumpers. So they clothed him as well. So he'd have like a jumper that he wore over the top of a jersey that he'd wear over the top of this. But the way that we can pick this guy up so well is actually that his eyes are actually just a little bit off center, a little bit quirky. So whenever he pops up on screen in the various episodes, you can pick him out pretty quickly because it's just that sort of tiny little detail that's identifiable. That's a really interesting part of your whole job here, is watching things until you have an eye to be able to spot the thing you're looking for. That's not easy to do. No, no, it's not. And there's a lot of sort of watching films, TV shows, frame by frame by frame or on fast forward with no sound at all, you know, to get to the right scene. I've done a lot of that. There's a lot of dedication and love for it, but nothing beats getting a match. And there's also this moment of like you're looking and you're looking like, I don't see anything. And you realize, oh, I've just been having the whole wrong brain. I have the whole wrong frame. And there it is. It's been there the whole time. And I hadn't seen it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And of course, this was puppeteered. So it has an aperture in the back of it. It has a little sock down the back here as well for the puppeteer to get his hand up inside and then manipulate and bring motion to the head. So you can see that the sort of the body there is separate to the rest, leaving the sock up to the top, up through the neck. And there's a hole in the bottom of the hands to allow for the sticks for his arms. Incredible. And you said you've never seen one of these come? No, no. Muppets in general are really hard to find. I mean, obviously, they use them extensively. And then they have a tendency to break down the materials over time of use. And so a lot got repaired or restored or just got discarded and then were built new again. So this guy obviously came out at the right time and has just been preserved ever since and still is in excellent condition. I'll tell you, if I bought it, I would have a hard time not puppeteering it all the time. I wonder if the owner, did they get maybe some puppeteering lessons? It would be cool to do, wouldn't it? I think as sort of custodians of original artifacts, rather than the replica things that you generally work with more often, I think we're all about, okay, you know, are we introducing any element of risk of damage if we do that? You know, if I open and close his mouth, am I going to introduce a split here or something? And that would just be horrendous to do something like that. So more often than not, it'll be on the display. And like you said, he's spent his life up till now under glass. This doesn't look like there's any, I don't, obviously, I can't know that there wasn't any fading, but he really looks in insanely good condition. Yeah, the colors are really strong as well. Again, UV is something that we're very, very aware of at Prop Store. We're always making sure that there's other film on windows or where you've got the right filters on lights and things like that, and nowhere near sunlight. So he's been well cared for. I love this. It's so awesome. And so the auction is happening right now? Yes, the auction is online right now. You can bid live right now online. And then we have the actual live auction event taking place over four days, November 3rd to the 6th at the BAFTA 195 Piccadilly in London. So if you want to come down, if you're in London, come along, join the fun. You can see some of the props on display. There'll be a handful of the props on display. Most of it's going to be here at the preview exhibition at Prop Store HQ London. That's more about the auction on that day. But yeah, come and take part one way or the other. Stephen, thank you so much for letting me mansplain Muppets. This guy is so beautiful. Look at that.