- Puppets offer engaging care giver and child interactive play experiences
- Puppet play provides developmental benefits for toddlers and preschoolers
- Great for home, schools and other learning centers
- Great color and texture to captivate the child¿s imagination
This “monster” hand puppet couldn’t scare a flea, but her fuzzy hair, colorful features and kooky bug eye give her a monster-sized personality!… More >>
For Christmas, I decided to buy puppets for office coworkers. I spent several hours researching Amazon’s puppet selection, so hopefully this saves you some time. Initially I ordered about a dozen different style puppets, mostly by Manhattan Toys, whose colorful, more cartoonish designs reminded me of the Muppets. Manhattan Toys brand are also about $5-10 cheaper on average than the Folkmanis brand.
I sent ALL the Manhattan Toys brand puppets back–the first time I’ve ever sent anything back that I ordered thru Amazon. The main reason was poor ergonomics. All the Manhattan Toys brand puppets were ergonmically flawed in some way–too tight, too rigid in the mouth, and just plain uncomfortable to use.
This particular puppet, Boylie, was probably the hardest one to send back. It’s mouth moved a bit better than most other Manhattan puppets, and the eyes and hair are crazy awesome to look at. But the mouth was still difficult to close all the way, and the neck is so thickly padded that it’s tight around the arm and really hard to feed your hand into. Like I said, it looked great and the stitching and materials seemed good quality, but if you want to actually manipulate the puppet convincingly and comfortably, do not buy Manhattan Toys brand.
I bit the bullet, spent the extra few bucks on the more realistically-designed Folkmanis brand, and all my coworkers were absolutely delighted. Everyone still has them displayed somewhere, and every few days someone will stick their puppet over their neighbor’s cubicle and say something stupid with it for a moment of levity, which is exactly what I’d hoped for.
The best design of the Folkmanis brand that I purchased are:
Unicorn Stage Puppet
Hippo Stage Puppet
The Unicorn and Hippo are by far the most comfortable to hold and manipulate, and they look great.
The wolf, pig (better than its picture), dog and cat are also very cute and comfortable. Their little mouths aren’t as easy to manipulate, but you can simultaneously move their arms, which is super cute:
Big Bad Wolf Stage Puppet
Pig Stage Puppet
Sheepdog Stage Puppet
Cat Stage Puppet
The only Folkmanis puppet I sent back was the Shark:
Shark Stage Puppet
It’s just too big, rigid like cardboard and the mouth is hard to manipulate.
Rating: 2 / 5