i'm wondering if anyone knows where to get ahold of eyes that are like those on bert (from sesame street).

they are perfectly round, somewhat flat, but have a very nice black rim around them. any help would be appreciated. thanks.

chimei

You might want to try here.............. I only carry the dome eyes.
http://www.puppet-planet.com/puppetsupplies01.html

Billy D.

You might even try making some by modifying plastic spoons or cutting shapes out of craft foam.

Most Muppet eyes are vacuum formed.

As a couple of people have already mentioned, puppet builders often need to make things from scratch or adapt them from existing objects since they aren't always available ready-made. If that sounds like something beyond your current abilities maybe you could make arrangements with someone here to make a pair for you to your specifications. Otherwise, looking around the dollar store or a thrift shop through creative eyes can often lead to satisfactory solutions. I picked up a cheap plastic two-cupped microwave egg poacher awhile back in a thrift shop for 80¢ that could easily be cut apart to make four great domed puppet eyes.

The one I found is very similar to this...




Another source for Muppet-style eyes is to salvage them off of Muppet toys in your local thrift shop's stuffed animal aisle. As you noted, Bert's eyes are much flatter than some of Henson's characters, but if you keep your own eyes open you may be able to find a suitable substitute without spending a lot of money.

Good luck!

 

Ron G.

Berts eyes ARE flatter, so that his movable eyebrow can cleanly float over it without catching. Here's how I would make them...
Craft foam (Foamies it one brand, a bit expensive but nice and dense and good range of colours. Use a compass to mark out 2 circles on black foam, adjust the compass a few millimeters smaller and mark out your white circles, adjust to a much smaller size to make pupils or mark and cut a hole in the white to let the black show through.
cutting a perfect circle can be extraordinarily difficult. Use a super fine mark and cut patiently with a sharp scalpel, change blades before you notice that it's dragging. or practice with scissors, a lot! Some craft stores have great die cutters, but to get so many sizes can stretch the budget a fair bit. I have heard of people mounting a round handled scalpel in a compass, but you need to stab the point of the compass needle in so hard that you end up with a big, ugly hole in the rubber.
Experiment and practice the outcomes that show promise!

One especially good thing about the sheet craft foam that ScubaSteve mentioned is that it can be heated and shaped somewhat, and hold its new shape after cooling. That would be good since Bert's eyes are slightly curved downward, or rounded at the edges, giving them a low-relief effect even though they are basically flat. There are other thermal-set plastics that can be used as well, which are stiffer than craft foam sheets and would hold the new shape better.

You could even shape the eyes from wooden disks or ovals available at many craft stores, and then cover them with a few coats of glossy or matte white paint before gluing on the black pupils. You might even figure out a way to adapt commercially-made googly doll eyes from craft shops. There are also carvable plastics from which you could cut ovals and round down the edges, and polymer clay, which is a malleable plastic which can be shaped and then baked hard in a toaster oven. Some of the new formulas of polymer clay are much tougher than the older ones, which were somewhat fragile.

 

Ron G.

Most of the original Sesame Street Muppets with flat eyes were supposedly made using a stacking toy produced in the 1960s called "Wacky Stacks". It's very unlikely you'll ever find any, Jim Henson actually bought the company's entire inventory when they went out of business.

Nowadays, if the Wacky Stacks supply has run out I'd assume they would just vaccuform an original pair of the eyes, as thecreaturework suggested.

"Nowadays, if the Wacky Stacks supply has run out I'd assume they would just vaccuform an original pair of the eyes, as thecreaturework suggested."

This may be a dumb question but what is "vaccuform"?

Angel in TX

Vacuforming is the process of heating a piece of styrene (plastic) until it is pliable, then molding it to the desired shape over a form. A vacuum is used to achieve this.

Building a Vacuform Table