Hello, folks! Kevin Murphy here.
For our Kickstarter video (and the sake of expediency), we used a couple of "off-the-shelf" Crow and Servo puppets from some bot makers online.
However, during the shoot, we realized they weren't quite rugged enough to handle the grueling puppetry of shooting an actual episode or four. So we placed a call to some folks we know to see if they could help us out.
Recently, two of these Anvil cases just showed up at my door. They contained one Crow and one Servo. I believe them to be from the Elder Days, as evidenced by the shards of painted hot glue and judiciously applied gaffer tape. Also, they're both heavy as hogs.
Servo is in pretty good shape, though he might just need a new spring in the jaw, new string, and some re-gluing and re-screwing in places.
Crow will need some serious work - he's definitely old-school, since the string runs outside the control rod. His eye mechanism is also kinda missing.
But they're definitely originals, and in the hands of our Toolmaster, should become serviceable. We'll be using these (and at least one other pair) for filming The RiffTrax Experiments — and we think that's pretty neat.
- kwm