Baldness on Red Fraggle

[minor muppetz]

This may sound weird but.... Anybody ever notice that, while Red Fraggle has two pigtails, the surface of her head is otherwise bald? Seems like normally the only hair she has is in her pigtails, with no hair surrounding the very top of her head. I wonder if this would qualify as a puppet version of the "Charlie Brown baldness" trope at TV Tropes.

Whenever she has her hair down, her hair does cover her whole head, but when it's her usual pigtails style, the only hair she has is in her pigtails. I guess this would also be a good place to ask, when her hair was down like that, did they actually remove the ribbons and hair stuff for her pigtails (and then go through the trouble of setting it up again) whenever her hair was down, or did they use a separate Red puppet for such occurrences?

Otherwise, the very top surface of her head is bald - which includes illustrations, merchandise, and the modern puppet. It's especially noticeable whenever her hair is wet (and I guess really noticeable on the Funko Pop, which has beady eyes as opposed to the usual pingpong ball eyes). Though I feel this is less noticeable in the last season, where her hair and eye placement seem to be closer.

 

[Harold43]

There are a lot of design quirks about Fraggles and Fraggle Rock in general. I never specifically noticed that aspect of Red's hair but it does remind me that there was supposedly an ancient Egyptian hairstyle for women where they were bald except for one tiny tuft of hair at the back of their head that was braided down. Simply because I read about that fact in a book doesn't make it true but, pre-Internet, it seemed plausible.

Amongst head scratchers if you want to apply "real-world anything" to the Fraggle Rock world:

** Cave environments usually favor small creatures and albino features unless they leave the cave on a regular basis (ie bats & bears). There's an argument that Fraggles do that (to steal radishes from the Gorgs) but do they do this on such a regular basis that they have no evolutionary pressure to be smaller and not evolve color?

** Air in cave environments is not optimal if you want your species to grow large. Any mining expert can tell you that you need ventilation once you get so far into a cave. Where does the oxygen come from and how does the carbon dioxide escape?

** Food security always seemed somewhat precarious for Fraggles at Fraggle Rock. The Doozers produced Doozer Sticks but there's a lot of background Fraggles and they all need food and they all need drink... That's a lot of food infrastructure that you need.

Any television show has it's inconsistencies. Seinfeld was demonstrated to have an "impossible apartment hallway" based upon Seinfeld's apartment layout (which was optimized for television viewing) and that was a show for adults.

 

[ErinAardvark]

Or maybe it's due to this:

OK, let me explain. I wrote a fanfic back in 2017, involving this OC of mine, Felonious Fraggle, who is basically the Fraggle Rock equivalent of a snake oil salesman (look it up if you're unfamiliar with the term). The Storyteller told about a time known as the Great Baldness that was brought on by "Dr. Felonious Fraggle's All Purpose Cure All Moss Oil," which was a fraud, and caused every last Fraggle to go bald. Completely bald. We are talking no hair, no fur, no balloobiouses.That wasn't the entire plot of the story however, just a brief blurb to explain what kind of Fraggle Felonious is (as if you couldn't tell by his name). Though in my warped imagination, "The Great Baldness" happened before Red was even born, so make of that what you will (and I hope that you make of it that I am not being serious about the thread).

(No, I did NOT draw this by hand. It was a base I found on DeviantArt. I couldn't draw a Fraggle to save my life!)

 

[minor muppetz]

OK, let me explain. I wrote a fanfic back in 2017, involving this OC of mine, Felonious Fraggle, who is basically the Fraggle Rock equivalent of a snake oil salesman (look it up if you're unfamiliar with the term). The Storyteller told about a time known as the Great Baldness that was brought on by "Dr. Felonious Fraggle's All Purpose Cure All Moss Oil," which was a fraud, and caused every last Fraggle to go bald. Completely bald. We are talking no hair, no fur, no balloobiouses.That wasn't the entire plot of the story however, just a brief blurb to explain what kind of Fraggle Felonious is (as if you couldn't tell by his name). Though in my warped imagination, "The Great Baldness" happened before Red was even born, so make of that what you will (and I hope that you make of it that I am not being serious about the thread).

In Mokey Then and Now, it's shown that Fraggles used to be bald. Maybe he was the cause of that.

 

[ErinAardvark]

In Mokey Then and Now, it's shown that Fraggles used to be bald. Maybe he was the cause of that.

Well, could be . . . . . but Felonious isn't THAT old!

 

[Beige Fraggle]

Or maybe it's due to this:

OK, let me explain. I wrote a fanfic back in 2017, involving this OC of mine, Felonious Fraggle, who is basically the Fraggle Rock equivalent of a snake oil salesman (look it up if you're unfamiliar with the term). The Storyteller told about a time known as the Great Baldness that was brought on by "Dr. Felonious Fraggle's All Purpose Cure All Moss Oil," which was a fraud, and caused every last Fraggle to go bald. Completely bald. We are talking no hair, no fur, no balloobiouses.That wasn't the entire plot of the story however, just a brief blurb to explain what kind of Fraggle Felonious is (as if you couldn't tell by his name). Though in my warped imagination, "The Great Baldness" happened before Red was even born, so make of that what you will (and I hope that you make of it that I am not being serious about the thread).

(No, I did NOT draw this by hand. It was a base I found on DeviantArt. I couldn't draw a Fraggle to save my life!)

This fanfic sounds amazing! Like, I can picture it as an actual episode of Fraggle Rock! Can you please give us a link to it?

 

[Streed]

neat character, I could definitely see him as an antagonist in the show

 

[monsieurRoobus]

She's bald so you can slap her on her bald head,,, :]
(Do not do this out of malice, however. That would be very rude :[ )

 

[TheRealFraggle]

It's possible that the top of her head is indeed bald between her pigtails, but I don't think you ever see that in the actual show (I'm in the middle of a rewatch of the series right now, and never noticed that she didn't have a full head of hair). As for whether they built a separate Red puppet for when her hair is down, it's possible, but most likely they simply covered her pigtails with a wig. I don't think multiple puppets were ever used for one character on the show, aside from the remote-controlled variants (and of course Gobo's redesign after episode 12).