ANIFORMS
The first appearance of an Aniforms puppet was on the Saturday morning edition of CBS TV’s Captain Kangaroo. Morey Bunin created and worked the controls of a character named Fred who appeared on the TV set on the wall of the Captain’s Treasure House.
Aniforms evolved into an attention-getting device for corporate conferences, mall advertising and street corner public relations. At a television conference/trade show in 1977, two executives from WPTF-TV were so impressed that they signed a deal to use an Aniforms character on their station.
For years the process was TOP SECRET. Anyone who operated or worked with the puppet in any way had to sign all kinds of non-disclosure agreements. The operator of the original Barney has mentioned occasionally altering his voice in public around kids during that time so as not to arouse suspicion.
Production-assistant Tony Madejczyk remembered from his time with Barney #2, “When Dale wasn’t performing we had to drape a tarp over the puppet per our agreement with Aniforms in NYC.” And once the show was over, they were shipped back to New York.
The puppet is made from a thin sheet of foam-rubber material. There’s a dowel attached to each arm and a rectangular arm extended from the top of the puppet’s head to off frame where the puppeteer stood. The arm had switches for controls of the facial features and this would also move the head from side to side. The colors on the puppet are all inverted.
The camera would invert the colors (which according to a former Aniforms employee, “wasn’t just a flip-switch on a video camera, it had to be custom-engineered”) and this would also wash-out the controls and cause the puppet to look very 2-dimensional.
Here’s a photo of a homemade Aniforms-style puppet…
