Let's Talk about the original STAR FOX puppets!

 Star Fox was a video game that first came out in 1993 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and was created by Shigeru Miyamoto with the help of Takaya Imamura who was the lead character designer for the original game. The video game was very impressive at the time due to the use of the Super FX chip. This chip was designed by Argonaut Software and used in some games back then to work as an extra graphics processor which gave them 3D graphics instead of the usual 2D graphics at the time. Argonaut Software with Nintendo's help created the first Star Fox game to show off the chip capabilities. Anyway, that's enough about the game graphics. we're here to talk about these awesome Star Fox puppets! I mean look at these guys. Some may find them creepy or goofy looking but to me there just great! I love the realistic yet cartoony look and the outfits.

These puppets were used in mainly magazine advertisements and was used for the original box art of the game. One small but interesting look at them was in this Japanese Store Promo which shows a small snippet of Fox McCloud in motion. As far as I know this is the only actual video footage of them that is available. 

Also, this puppet used is not even the same puppet. it looks the same but is actually only the top half of fox as seen in this photo here. From the looks of it the Fox's hand was most likely a person's actual hand. This makes me wonder though. How were the other full body puppets made? Did they have a lot of motion or were they stiffer?

As mentioned by Shigeru Miyamoto himself these puppets were inspired by Gerry Anderson's works. Gerry Anderson was an English television and film producer who was known for his futuristic and science fiction drama shows such as Fireball XL5 or Thunderbirds. These shows he created was made with Supermarionation which became a style of film production that used marionette puppets with electric moving parts. He started creating these shows in the 1950 into the 80s. Here is an example of one of Gerry Andersons shows. This show was called Terrahawks and it released in 1983. You can probably see a bit of where the inspiration came from for the Star fox puppets. 

I would also like to mention this as well. Starfleet /X Bomber was a Japanese marionette tokusatsu TV series created in 1980 by a manga artist named Go Nagai. It has a very similar style and is often mentioned when discussing the old Star Fox puppets. People also mention Star Wars which I don't think I need to explain what Star Wars is. Shigeru Miyamoto really seemed to enjoy this style.

These Star Fox Puppets are sadly lost to time. most likely put away and left in storage to deteriorate and never be seen again. It is really sad to see great creations like this just put away and forgotten to time with only a couple snippets of photos, and promos to prove that it even existed in the first place. However, I like to stay hopeful perhaps someday more information will pop up. anyone who is into lost media knows that crazier things have happened....

If anyone has any more information on these puppets let me know and thank you all for reading! ❤️🦊