Charmayne's push puppet web site

Welcome to my passion of push puppets. It started with the Italian cowboy and the plastic Helm Smurf my sons found at a charity second hand shop in the mid 1980's. While I volunteered in the shop, they would play with the toys, finding little treasures such as balls, spacemen, and Legos and yes, the two push puppets. My sons have long passed into adulthood and big boy toys while I continue to search for push puppets. I now have quite an amazing collection. Boxers, Drunks, dogs, people, animals, buildings, bugs, cartoon and movie characters, wood puppets, plastic ones, combination or transition puppets, puppets on round bases, square bases, hexagon bases, puppets on wine bottle corks, puppets on music boxes, puppets and puppets galore!!! My favorite? Without a doubt, Happy Dog. But each puppet speaks to my heart! Yes, that means I must be a collector.

Push puppet, push-ups, Wakouwa. These are the most common names. They might also be called floppy toys, thumb toys, collapsing toys, dancing toys, bendy toys, "that toy we had as a kid that would move when you pushed on the button under the base". They go by a lot of obvious names but why Wakouwa? These little articulated wooden toys were created in Switzerland by Walther Kourt Walss in 1932. WAlther KOUrt WAlss. WAKOUWA! Brilliant!

All are composed of a hollow base containing the pushbutton and a spring. Strings (not elastic) attach to the pushbutton and are fed up through the figure which sits on top of the base. When the button is depressed, the spring is compressed and the strings go limp. This is the way the figure is animated. It will come to life and dance for you, shake or nod a head, lay down, do a bow, etc. The original ones were wood but now come in plastic also and many shapes, sizes, and themes. Some contain squeakers so when you push rapidly on the button, air is forced out through the bellows and a little squeaking sound is heard.

Below you will see different links to my various pages or sections. I hope you enjoy my collection and my push puppet page. I would be happy to hear from you. Emails can be sent to me at: pushpuppet@2kiters.com You may need to be patient for a reply, but one will come!

What is new on my site?

01/17/2012 Donkey puppets from around the world.

01/16/2012 Home made puppets. Not many but unique.

01/12/2012 This group is ditzy: the Ditzy by ROME puppets!

01/10/2012 I have added another boxer to that group and a new group called Dancing Animals.

11/14/2011 Updated Links to other push puppet collectors and interesting related web pages.

03/03/2010 Paper push puppets

Click on the donkey below for the link to all my gallery pages.

Donkey puppets

Homemade puppets

Ditzy by ROME puppets

Dancing Animals

Paper puppets

The Gallery of Charmayne's Puppets

I have started the massive chore of photographing my collection. Everybody is getting a good dusting in the process! Dusting takes time. It is risky because it is easy to snap a string on the old guys. You need to be very careful and gentle. It is hard not to play a bit, too! I will add groups of puppets as I finish them. The link to the left will take you to a table of contents page for all my different galleries. I am making progress with my wood puppets. I now have 20 groups.

	2 Push Puppet Makers
	Bob and I were in Germany on holiday in June, 2007. We drove to the Erzgebirge region so I could scout out new push puppets and perhaps meet the craftsmen. We were so fortunate to meet both Jan Stephani, who makes the animals and Karl-Heinz Bilz who specializes in people. Both men are third generation masters. The link takes you to see them and their puppets.