Puppetry and plush dolls. Match made in heaven?

[SurfPark]

I've been readin the forums and notice a lot of people talk about two things:

1. People wanting to touch the puppets.

2. People asking "where can I get a puppet like that?"

It made me think of how lucrative a puppet/plush doll tie-in would be after a preformance. Those that design with antron fleece or fur know that the visual texture screams "touch me" to little kids. They want to hug them and just feel them.

Today's top quality puppets resemble toys, but are so much more fragile. Are there any puppets made, in the professional world, that are built with duribility in mind? Or am I asking for something that isn't done in puppetry?

Also, has anyone had much luck by reverse enginnering a puppet via "skinning" a plush? If you have photos, I'd like to see it.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

I know different people have done the plush toy/puppet tie-in thing. I worked on a pilot for a TV series that didn't sell where the workshop designed the main characters from day one so they could be duplicated exactly as plush toys/puppets.

Axtell Expressions sells (or used to sell) expensive professional latex versions of their puppets, but also used to offer similar puppets that were smaller and made from vinyl - which is cheaper - for puppeteers and ventriloquists to sell after shows. I also know of a puppeteer in the UK who sells small hand puppet versions of one of his characters after a show.

There are a lot of old threads dealing with reverse engineering plush toys. The Kermit pattern that's been discussed a lot lately came from a plush toy. If you read "Puppet Mania" John Kennedy explains a fairly simple method for converting plush toys in to puppets too.