In the summer of 2021, my sister Lauren and I appeared on the second season of LEGO Masters on FOX. These breakdowns delve into each episode and talk about the process behind the build, the challenges Lauren and I faced, and the stories of our finished products.
In episode 8, we saw that giant puppet theater on-set and didn’t think it was LEGO. Then we saw the little edges of bricks, and were blown away! When Will Puppette entered the scene, immediately we knew what we were building. Puppets! Another absolutely insane thing we never could’ve imagined we would build out of LEGO.
Lauren and I used to put on puppet shows for our parents as kids--the home videos are classic. Our rinky-dink stage setup used to collapse on top of us while we were performing, so we were hoping this one wouldn’t do the same! Admittedly we hadn’t put on a puppet show for a really long time, so this was going to be interesting. It was really cool to learn who was behind Will Puppette--Steve Whitmire, one of the voices of Kermit the Frog! Steven knew who he was immediately, and we were all really impressed when we found out. He was such a nice guy, and really generous in his attitude and the energy he brought to set. You could tell Will loved working with him--he just seemed to be having so much fun doing full-on improv with an experienced pro. Will even called his son to say hi to Will Puppette on set.
A big component of this challenge was that we had to build with another team. The decision of who to pair with was super easy for us. Michelle and Natalie were our best friends on-set; we were van buddies with them as we were shuttled back and forth at the early (early!!) hours of the morning, and the late nights, so we got to know them really well in a short period of time. They also have a fun, playful build style that we thought would work well with ours. So we teamed up, and got to work!
Very soon after Will and Puppette announced the challenge, I had the idea that we should build our puppy at home, Hazel. She’s a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel with these floppy ears, and an adorable smiling face that we thought would make for a great puppet. To bring even more character into the puppet, we decided to make her a princess--which our dog definitely is at home! She could have a princess crown and a bedazzled collar, and a bejeweled tennis ball perfect for fetching.
The first thing I had to tackle was the mouth of the puppet. I built it using angled Technic liftarms that would slope down and give us a little platform we could press down on to move the mouth up and down. To create Hazel’s adorable, panting face, I built a curved base of her mouth that would make her look like she was always smiling.
While this was happening, Lauren started working on a princess crown using hinges and yellow wedges. The first crown she built was a bit too big; that was a bit of a tense moment when Lauren had to scrap it and build a whole new smaller one!
As the puppet mouth came together, Will and Billy (Will Puppette) came around to say hi. They had this hilarious interaction where they tried to one-up each other with gifts they would give us to be the best host. It started with free lunch, and ended with a private jet to a Hawaiian vacation. Can we cash in on that now, please?
As you see in the episode, they asked what voice we’d be using for the puppet. As my friends could tell you with shame, I’m not shy when it comes to doing my English accent. I grew up watching the Harry Potter movies and wanting to be in that world, and a big part of that is...the accent! So I shamelessly tried it out in front of a famous actor and a famous puppeteer. I personally think it’s not that bad, no matter what they say! For the puppet show, my plan was to use the same voice as Ron Weasley in the Potter Puppet Pals, which are some of my favorite YouTube videos (and very relevant puppet-wise!) I used to read the Harry Potter books in those voices to Lauren to get her excited about them, so doing that voice for the puppet show was a throwback for us.
I moved on to the face of the puppet after Will’s check-in. Our head was quickly becoming quite big, which the judges warned us about for weight. We had learned that bigger always meant better in LEGO Masters, but maybe not for this specific build! One good thing about the bigger sized head was that it allowed us to build really big eyes using white rounded plates (which we had used before for the frosting edges on our cake!) The big head also was really expressive, and we felt that’s how we could create a “lovable” character that the Brickmasters were asking for. We even gave her little eyelashes using black minifigure-sized lever parts!
Movement was another component of this challenge, so to incorporate that, I built Hazel’s ears on spinning axles so they could move freely in the wind, just like a dog’s ears would. Jamie liked the plan, and thought it was a unique way to get organic movement. We tried the same technique with the tongue, attaching it to an axle so it would sway slightly back and forth. With a bit more time, we might’ve figured out a better mechanism to really get that tongue wagging!
Strength was a big thing on my mind for this challenge. We really didn’t want our puppet to break--that seemed like the worst thing that could happen. So we built a really strong spine using Technic bricks that I could hold onto, and be confident that the puppet wouldn’t fall apart. This spine added to the weight as well, but we felt it was a fair tradeoff for strength.
Lauren then got to work on the bedazzled pink collar, which turned out great. She built it using ball joints and sparkly translucent cheese slopes that popped nicely. She also included a pendant attached with chains, which would move with the body of the puppet! While this was happening, I built out the body of the puppet as a thin layer of bricks, trying to incorporate color variation with her white chest, and lighter brown sides. Lauren built the arms using these maneuverable Technic links, and I built the little puppy paws with long sticks for holding the arms up. We wanted to make sure the arms and paws were tiled off to give them that smooth finish.
Finally, Lauren built a little bejeweled tennis ball for Hazel to fetch. She built it in a standard Lowell sphere form, with white lines along the edges and translucent 1x1 plates to give it a “bejeweled” sparkle.
With about 30 minutes left, we had to set some time aside to practice with Natalie and Michelle. We worked out all of the kinks--one of them being that the arms weren’t fastened securely enough!--and got a sense of how our puppets would perform together. One thing was for sure: both of our puppets were going to be heavy.
For the show, we were each provided a script with lines we had to memorize, as Puppet #1 and Puppet #2. The scene involved both puppets introducing themselves, and talking about a VIP “very important puppet” show they had to attend. There was also room for each puppet to show off a “special skill” individually, plus a moment at the end for the puppets to perform something together. Hazel’s special skill was fetching her bejeweled tennis ball! We had Betty Brick throw the ball for Hazel to catch in her wide-open mouth. That got a good laugh from the judges.
For the end performance together, we planned a song with Natalie and Michelle to sing together. Natalie came up with the lyrics, and we had Hazel add a little “woof” at the end of each line. And of course, in the lyrics, we reminded everyone that the plural of LEGO is LEGO! It was so much fun. Honestly, we had no idea that their arm fell off during the show. There was so much going on. Between memorizing lines, operating the puppet, and getting the voice down, I was hyper-focused on what I was doing (there was so much to think about, that at times I forgot to move the puppet’s mouth or make sure the ears were moving!). But overall, we thought it went really well! The puppet was HEAVY, though, like other teams struggled with too. I had to put the puppet down on some wood blocks to rest my arms a couple times during the show. At least they let me take my blazer off! Thank goodness! Just when we thought we were done, we had to perform the show a second time, without the judges or Will there, to use as extra coverage if needed.
When it came time for judging, we had no idea what the judges would think! Every puppet was great, and every puppet had things that the judges wanted to see improvement with. At this stage in the competition, everyone had won a challenge, and we were all just hoping to have that extra something to impress the judges. Regardless, Lauren and I were really proud of our build. It reminded us of home and our cute little pup, and we thought it captured her well.
When we were in the bottom two with Natalie and Michelle, it was a little comforting. We had done the puppet show with them, and we were in it together. They were our best friends, so at least we got to be in that position with them.
When they called our name to go home, it was a rush of emotions. I barely knew what to say, and was holding back tears, so I’m just happy that what I did say was somewhat coherent! I had tears not of sadness for leaving, but of pride and gratitude for Lauren coming on the show with me and supporting me--this is my lifelong creative hobby and passion, and for her to come along on this ride, and rise to the occasion like this was really amazing. With every build, no matter the challenge, we wanted to tell stories. We hoped to bring fun, lovable characters to life whenever we could, and build fantastical worlds that we wanted to see in LEGO bricks. We hope you enjoyed the builds as you came along on this adventure with us.
