Hoggle Reborn

Any of you remember Labyrinth? Labyrinth was the 1986 film chronicling the journey of a young woman (played by Jennifer Connelly)...

on a quest to retrieve her infant brother from the Goblin King (played by David Bowie)...

and his... pants... goblin (played by David Bowie's pants goblin).

OH GOD, IT BURNS!! MY EYES!! MY EYES!!

I digress.

In the film, Sarah meets up with a number of odd characters. There was the fox named Sir Didimus who rode a dog named Ambrosius (that sounds like the plot for a gay porno), the giant beast Ludo… but the best character was the ugly dwarf of a troll named Hoggle. 

Hoggle's hobbies included carpet-bombing fairy nests with the viciousness of a dictator (Khadafy) and collecting plastic bracelet charms with the creepy dedication of a dictator (Kim Jung Il). He was cantankerous and stubborn, he was ugly, he was a loner, and he was in the end the hero of the story (at least to me). Torn between fear of his king (Bowie) and love of the girl (Connelly), Hoggle ended up siding in favor of the girl and helping her get her brother back. He was a classic story of redemption and heroism.

The film's puppetry was handled by Jim Henson & Co., and as you can see from above they really did an amazing job. Even from a still shot you can see details in design that CGI still has trouble capturing. Hoggle (and indeed all of the puppets in the film) truly came to life on-screen. He was destined for an honored place in the pantheon of Henson's Greatest Muppets.


Then someone lost the luggage.

Nobody knows for sure how it happened, but at some point Hoggle was lost, trapped inside a wooden crate prison in an unclaimed luggage warehouse for nearly two decades. When Unclaimed Baggage, Inc. opened the suitcase in 2005 to find this:

The first reaction was probably panic, along with an exorcism or two. After everyone calmed down, it took a while for someone to figure out just what they were looking at. It also took a couple of mid-1980s fantasy film buffs, a few DVD rentals and (probably) a fair amount of alcohol. If it were me, it would be to drown the sorrow. Hoggle was a piece of my childhood and to see it as a rotted horror is kind of a shock.

Once Hoggle was identified, John Marshall, CEO of Unclaimed Baggage, called Gary Sowatzka, a well-known restoration artist, and asked him to work his magic. It took only a few weeks, but Gary got Hoggle back to (mostly) working order. You can read about the details here.

The finished product:

Not… bad. Not at all what he had been, but at least Hoggle has been given a fitting send-off. He also has a place in one of Unclaimed Baggage's small museums.

I would rather see him with the rest of the Henson Muppets, and possibly given a better restoration, but we all take what we can get when it comes to preserving our childhood memories, right?

Now let's hope the rest of the cast fared better.

Yes. Definitely yes.

HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!?!? ARE HIS EYES DIFFERENT COLORS?? IT'S LIKE HE'S EATING MY SOUL WITH HIS LAZY EYE!!

Just be glad I didn't post an updated picture of his pants goblin. I don't think I'm going to sleep for a month.