Meeting Mr. Meaty

This past summer I was fortunate enough to be invited on to the set of Mr. Meaty. For those of you who don't know what Mr. Meaty is, I will tell you. It is a puppet show that is the brain child of The Grogs. The same groups that brought us the children's show called Nanalan.

This new show is for a much older demographic, more like teens and tweens than younger children. The show is about two teens named Josh and Parker who work at a fast food joint called (oddly enough) Mr. Meaty.

The show started out as a series of shorts that aired on CBC here in Canada, but has now evolved into a half hour show. This show takes place in a mall setting. This is where I want to jump in to my take on the show.

Some people have stated that the show doesn't seem good, others say it looks great. My take is that this show is not only amazingly entertaining, in contains some of the best set and puppets around.

The puppets themselves are not your standard Muppet type puppets, but rather very cool and stylized hot foam puppets. I had a chance to try some on and I must say they are not only wicked to look at, but they are very comfortable to boot. Hot foam is something that I want to try to work with very soon.



The puppet builders and puppet wrangles are so talented, I was really just amazed by how much talent there was on this set.

Each puppet was carefully kept safe off to the side of the set. They were covered in a thin clear plastic that reminded me of dry cleaner bags.



There was a building station just beside the puppets where the puppet wranglers never seemed to stop working.





Some of the funny things that I noticed on their work tables were things that I have on my son's change table. Like baby wipes, and baby power; but that aside they had all the regular stuff like contact cement, touch up paints and paper towels which seemed much more straight forward.














Last but not least I was so impressed with the scale and detail of the set. I mean it was a mall set that had the most amazing detail I have ever seen for a puppet show. With stores like Game Barn and Monolife, the fact that each video game cover was a cleverly made prop is just incredible.

That is another thing that amazed me. They had prop builders constantly making the coolest most amazingly detail props I have ever seen.

Ultimately I had a blast on the set of the show. I look forward to it coming out and I for one will definitely be watching it.