Bear in the Big Blue House Fisher Price Little People

My very first customized Fisher Price Little People were based on Sesame Street characters. Shortly after that, I made some Muppet Show Little People, and eventually I got around to Fraggle Rock (not a series I grew up with, but fun all the same).

A production that I ended up really enjoying was Bear in the Big Blue House. Initially it ran from 1997-2007 on Playhouse Disney, and you can still find it on various channels and on DVD from time to time. Centered on a core family of characters, and developed by the Jim Henson Company, it has a lot of the same magic that Sesame Street and the Muppets in general have. By the time we had our own children, I loved Bear in the Big Blue House, and so of course I decided I had to make some Fisher Price Little People of the main characters.

More than some of the other properties that I made figures of, there are radically different body shapes and sizes, from Tutter--a small blue mouse, to Bear--an enormous full-body puppet along the lines of Big Bird, to Luna, a floating moon that sings a goodbye song with Bear every night. (Still one of my most favorite songs, and I included Luna in our Toy Room Mural.) So I had to depart from the usual Fisher Price Little People design more radically than usual, but tried to keep that same design sensibility in place. So here's the result:

(From left to right) Bear, Tutter, Treelo, Pip and Pop, Ojo, and Luna

Winnie the Pooh Fisher Price Little People

I've been a fan of Winnie the Pooh since before I can remember. Some of the earliest pictures of me have me wearing Pooh Bear pajamas, and back when we listened to those little records and books that said "turn the page when the chimes ring," the Winnie the Pooh ones were some of my favorites.

As I got older, I learned to appreciate the original books by A.A. Milne, and I find them as charming as the Disney animated adaptations. When I was on a mission for the LDS Church in Germany, I read all of the Milne stories "auf deutsch" as a sort of language study, and whether it's in English or German, I love the words.

When I decided to make some Winnie the Pooh Fisher Price Little People, at first I was going to make them in the Disney style. Then I decided that making them in the "Classic Pooh" style of Ernest Shepard's illustrations would be more challenging, so I went down that road.

Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore

Tigger, Owl, Rabbit, Roo, and Kanga. And a blinding flash.

The whole Hundred Acre Wood Gang. They'll mess you up. And your Hunny.