By Cat Eldridge: Over at Green Man, we’ve been reviewing Folkmanis puppets since, oh, before this millennium was born. So I asked Mike if he was interested in running these reviews first and he said yes.  So this is how this review came to be.

First let’s start off with a look briefly at Folkmanis. The company was over forty years by a couple whose last name we, no surprise, Folkmanis. As their site said it was , “Conceived as a ‘cottage industry’ business in Watertown, MA., in the late 1960’s and nurtured among the street vendors lining Berkeley’s famed Telegraph Avenue, Folkmanis® Puppets are the expression of Judy Folkmanis’ active imagination, sewing wizardry, and love of nature.”

If you watched closely, you’d have spotted them in The Last Mimzy as decoration in the child’s room, Lawnmower Man as the Bee Puppet, the Peacock in 30 Rock and NCIS as Bert the Farting Hippo.

Forty years on, they’ve done some two hundred puppets and Green Man has reviewed over twenty a lot of them as the same publicist has been there the entire time. 

Now let’s about talk the ever cute Mini Collared Lizard finger puppet. First thing you should know is it’s truly a life-size lizard at fourteen inches from his head to the end of his quite long tail.  I’ve reviewed a number of Folkmanis creatures such as The Mouse with Cheese and have two wonderful Autumnal creatures, The Mouse in A Pumpkin and The Worm in Apple but this is first one that looks like it’s intended to be life-like.

The Folkmanis site describes it as having “realistic detail while still being cute, soft and cuddly, this stuffed animal toy puppet is a delight for any reptile fan.”  The puppet is realistic as far as the design goes and the colors as you’ll see from the image here of an actual  Collared Lizard are very realistic.  I was really surprised. 

So the puppet itself is a perfect hand puppet which even fits on my hand though admittedly it’d fit much better on a child’s much smaller hand. It has a movable mouth but my fingers are just too large to manipulate it properly. 

I am keeping it as it is far too cute not too. 

As I said, we’ve reviewed a lot of Folkmanis and I’ve seen the designs of their products as they came through here to be distributed to reviewers. The hair is substantially better now than it was twenty years ago, the dyes look better and the faces are a less cartoonish. The face of this Collared Lizard looks like the image above.

So if you like puppets, I’d strongly recommend it; if you’ve got grandchildren that like such things, oh do gift them with this.