Making a Marionette: Murdering Ken & Barbie

Posted under A Geek Dad's Life, Blog Posts

My daughter came to me and asked “can we have a puppet show?”  Of course, I said SURE!  She then proceeded to ask me to help her build some puppets.  I envisioned some popsicle sticks, some markers, some paper. and some glue.  My daughter had other ideas…

She began describing puppet with strings.  Ack.  She wanted marionettes;  Seven of them.  How else would she do a puppet show of “High School Musical?”

After some attempts at negotiating with her, my daughter finally settled for two of the seven.  We examined the Ken doll, made a shopping list for materials, and set off for Lowes.

We returned home from Lowes with some wooden dowel stock, fishing line, screw eyes, and a new workbench vise for Dad.  I started working on my quota of two marionettes by measuring and marking out the dowel stock for the legs and arms, and planning the all-wooden hinges.  It turns out that the knee joints, while somewhat difficult to manufacture, were simple compared to the elbow joints.  The result is that the new Ken marionette has a fine pair of legs, but only one arm and a broken elbow joint.  End of night one.

I was coming back from lunch the next day, sitting in the minivan with a bunch of kid stuff in the front seat.  There, resting on the passenger’s seat, was a Ken doll.  I had an epiphany; use a hack saw on Ken, and stitch him back together with fishing line.  Mwoohhhaaahahaa!!!

Flickr pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/podcheck/1369546156/in/photostream/

I’m still very proud of Ken’s custom wooden knees, but even more proud that I avoided wasting over 30 hours of “Daddy time” re-creating something that’s already been crafted by the finest Chinese factory workers in… er, China.

So, I begin the journey of turning the $12.99 of plastic and nylon into a masterpiece… and then do it again with Barbie.  It’s proving to be pretty easy as they are very simple and elegantly designed toys.

One tip for you if you decide to undertake this project; buy new Barbies, and do not use your daughter’s old Barbies even if you ask them first.