ARCHIVE

2007 2005

2006 has started off well for us, beginning with our new animatronic fish alien character costumes, Zorak and Alron, who turn the tables on us, fishing for people with bottles of Bud Light as bait. "It's all about the lure." This job was nearly canceled, but our concept drawing showing the aliens fishing for humans as fish style aliens added the extra humor needed to justify reviving this commercial project back to life.

Our heavy duty Stunt Bodies are continually being put to the test, taking more car hits (like they originally did in "Meet Joe Black"). This time our Stunt Bodies have been rented to be used for the upcoming Robert DeNiro movie, "The Good Shepherd," shot in New York.

We are still traveling a lot, and at the start of this year, we flew to Taiwan for our second trip there with our popular animatronic Grizzly Bear character costume; this time, for a series of local Ford Escape commercials. For an unrelated Mercedes campaign in China, we created Old Age makeups, aging world renown pianist, chinese piano prodigy Yundi Li.

We upgraded our Sasquatch character with animatronics for a McDonald's commercial, where he gets acquainted with Ronald McDonald. Our Sasquatch can't resist sharing his enthusiasm with Ronald, "Hey, I have big feet, just like you!" This year we also created an animatronic shaved face version of our Sasquatch for Ask.com where he finds and and follows helpful tips for "impressing girls," with some very humorous results.

We created an alternative to Godzilla with our new Peptosaurus Rex costume, that ravages a town and develops indigestion from eating buildings and cars. Pepto Bismol comes to his rescue and he lumbers happily off into the sunset; this spot was shot in Romania. For two Comcast commercials, we created some pretty ridiculous - but stylish - Deer and Bird character costumes and makeups.

A Western Union commercial used our animatronic Squirrel puppet as the head of a gang of squirrels that overpower a poor guy and take his wallet. We also created animatronic Squirrel puppets and animatronic Goose puppets for Bud Light, where our Squirrel deters a potential thief from stealing his pal's Bud Light by tackling him and pounding him in the forehead with an acorn, and our Geese go to great lengths, turning the tables and creating decoy beers to distract a group of campers, so the Geese can fly off with their cooler full of Bud Light.

Our Cow head and legs are featured in the new Chik Fil' A commercial, carrying on the cows' humorous campaign to get people to "eat more chicken." We also provided our Big Turkey for yet another TV star to get their head stuck inside of (first used in the "Friends" show), this time for the popular children's series, "That's So Raven."

For two new Burger King commercials, for Spain, we created two new Tomato and Onion costumes that required our highly skilled suit performers to run in, at full speed, maneuvering around obstacles, down stairs - and even have their feet snared in a lasso, bringing them crashing to the ground. We also made an Ant costume for a trailer for the upcoming movie "Ant Bully," and a Stinkbug costume for the insecticide Bidrin8. We created some wild Flying Mustache puppet effects for a Vault Energy Drink commercial.

For a Santa's workshop in a Mercedes commercial, we created an animatronic Teddy Bear puppet, and altered our Cuckoo Clock puppet.

Our makeup department has been busy this year, creating various stages of Pregnant Forehead appliances for a General Electric commercial showcasing a very literal Birth of An Idea. For Remax, we created a Wolf Grandma makeup. We created some very funny, literal Bad Haircuts for Super Cuts, haircuts that are so bad, they actually stand up on top of the actors' heads, insulting and demeaning all around them.

We finished up the year with another funny Bud Light campaign, engineering and creating the ApologyBot 3000, a fully functional, remote control robot that delivers apologies for people who are unable to bring themselves to apologize in person - like the guy apologizing to his ex-girlfriend for 'accidentally' letting a 'private video' of her get into a nationwide video rental store, and the Japanese Sushi Chef whose badly prepared blowfish is going to be the death of a customer who just ate it.