Jim Henson's Labyrinth - My Collection (Dec 2023 Update: Red Goblin Rider Helmet)

KOMakesThings

Well-Known Member
Thanks for checking out my collection! I've got a newer post detailing more of my prop replicas, feel free to check that out here!

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I’ve been a big fan of Labyrinth for about 15+ years now, and I've been making props for about 3 or so years. A lot of my collection are items found in Sarah’s room at the beginning of the film, the Wizard of Oz-esque nods to characters that Sarah will meet once she gets to the Labyrinth. Here’s a look at what I've done so far:

The Firey Plush
I drafted this plush using a lot of reference photos of the original prop from the various Jim Henson/Labyrinth exhibitions that were making the rounds a few years ago. This photo doesn't give you a good sense of how gangly he is, he's best posed with his legs dangling off the edge of a shelf.

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Ludo Plush
Another fully drafted plush. His little legs gave me so much trouble, but his face turned out super cute! You only see this plush very briefly in the movie which is a real shame. Because of how he's made his arms and legs are somewhat poseable, but he's a little top heavy so one of these days I'll have to open him up and add some poly pellets to make him less prone to face planting.

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Didymus Plush
This was a bit of a cheat, I actually modified a beanie baby (Nuts the Squirrel) to turn him into Didymus. After finishing up the Firey and Ludo plush toys I just didn't have it in me to draft another sewing pattern from scratch. I will admit, as a 90s kid I experienced some guilt in ripping into a Beanie Baby, but it was also kind of cathartic to give one a new lease on life.

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Wooden Labyrinth Game
This was the first Labyrinth prop I ever made, and it was actually inspired by a thread on this forum! When I saw Howlrunner's thread where he showed that the original prop itself was likely a modified store-bought item it made re-creating a movie accurate prop seem possible for a schmuck like me. Once I had completed this prop I had the itch to do another, and 3 years later my shelves are steadily filling up with Labyrinth prop builds.

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13 Hour Alarm Clock
Okay, so this is a real blink-and-you'll-miss-it prop, but in the film you can just barely spot this little pink alarm clock that sits on Sarah's bedside table (This version with 13 hours is specifically scene during Sarah's brief stay in the junkyard facsimile of her room). The actual prop appeared in one of the Labyrinth museum exhibits which is where I first spotted it. I found it really enchanting to realise that every clock that appears in the Labyrinth, even the easy-to-miss one you see in her fake bedroom, has 13 hours. This is a modified alarm clock, so it actually tells time too!

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Sarah's Music Box
The pièce de résistance of my collection, Sarah's music box. This was a team up with myself and a friend of mine, I handled the fabrication of the music box itself and he handled the innards and made it so that it actually turns and plays music! Parts of the music box were 3D printed, and the figurine was cobbled together from a few toys.

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That's it for my collection thus far! I really want to re-create the Hoggle bookend and Jareth statue shown in Sarah's bedroom, so expect to see those sometime in the future. I've been leaving them until last since they'll both involve sculpting, and I'm definitely not super skilled in that regard, but I guess there's no time like the present to try and learn!

Let me know if you want any notes on the construction of any of these guys! I'd be happy to share more photos/details of how I made them.

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Wow, this is totally awesome! I love Labyrinth and considered myself fairly familiar with the movie but you've made me aware of a whole new layer of detail in them. Amazing work on the recreations!
 
Wow, this is totally awesome! I love Labyrinth and considered myself fairly familiar with the movie but you've made me aware of a whole new layer of detail in them. Amazing work on the recreations!

Thank you so much! There's a lot of fun little details to be found in Labyrinth, each time I watch it I feel like I find another prop to add to my list of things to make. The Hoggle bookend and Jareth statue are on that list, but I'd also like to remake the cannonball goblin that's in my profile picture. It was one of the earlier props I made for myself and I think I can do much better now that I've got a bit more experience under my belt.

Here's another item I made recently, the 13 hour clock that hangs in Jareth's throne room (You can see it just before he sings "Magic Dance". This was built around a real clock kit, though I had to reverse the minute and hour hand to make it movie accurate. So it tells time, just not correctly (Which is sorta fitting for Labyrinth in a way).

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As someone who literally grew up on Labyrinth, (Watched it so many times I wore out not one but TWO copies on VHS and was over the Moon when I got a Blu Ray copy) I am absolutely loving these!
 
As someone who literally grew up on Labyrinth, (Watched it so many times I wore out not one but TWO copies on VHS and was over the Moon when I got a Blu Ray copy) I am absolutely loving these!

Thank you! Labyrinth actually scared me as a kid so I didn't wear out any VHS' back then, but in my mid-teens I rediscovered it, fell in love, and have now purchased the film way too many times across various editions and formats (I'm a sucker for new special features!). I actually bought a VHS version a year ago for nostalgia's sake.

Right now I'm working on re-creating the Hoggle book end seen in Sarah's room, and I think I might've identified the teddy bear used for Lancelot in the film. I've ordered it off of eBay and I'm just waiting for it to arrive so I can get some good comparison shots.
 
:) I still have the tape with behind the scenes documentary somewhere. My greatest surprise was that Gates McFadden worked on the movie. Y'know, Dr. Crusher from TNG. Also, one of my fav scenes from the movie is where Sarah and Ludo become friends. "Sarah... Sarah friend!" :D
 
...Also, one of my fav scenes from the movie is where Sarah and Ludo become friends. "Sarah... Sarah friend!" :D

One of my favourite scenes is the Escher Room sequence, I love how disorienting it is (Especially when Jareth is walking around upside down!).

Here's an update on my Hoggle book end build, but first I figure it'd be helpful to post some of my reference photos. There is, of course, the very brief shot of the book end on Sarah's desk at the very beginning of the film. As a side note, I'm already wondering if I can figure out the specific editions of some of the books he's holding up, or if that's a lost cause.

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I was able to find a few better images of the Hoggle statue that appears on the book end. These come from a Facebook group I'm in, the owner of this particular Hoggle statue shared some pictures (Lucky guy is also the owner of Hoggle's vest). Looking at the statue, I kinda think this is possibly a maquette they used to figure out the design of Hoggle before committing to a build of the final costume. My guess is when it came time to dress up the set they decided to make use of the maquette rather than come up with a new prop to represent Hoggle in Sarah's room.

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The above statue isn't the on-screen prop though, because a video by Tough Pigs of some Labyrinth props showed that the original book end is still with the Jim Henson company in their archives. Below is a screenshot from that video. Sadly they never take Hoggle out so you can get a better look at him, they mention in the video that everything is screwed in place inside the box. As a bonus, you can see Hoggle's fairy sprayer in the bottom right corner.

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And here's my attempt at sculpting Hoggle. Comparing it to the actual prop the head is definitely too big/not the right shape, the position of the arms is off, I could go on. I don't consider myself much of a sculptor so I'm honestly just kinda glad that it looks halfway decent, but it's definitely not as film accurate as I was hoping it'd be. I still need to sculpt the base of his figure and then build the actual book end piece, so while I'm doing that I'll be hemming and hawing whether or not I want to take another crack at the sculpt. From face on he kind of looks more like a Dark Crystal Mystic than he does Hoggle.

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My Hoggle book end is all painted up! He's made from Sculpey, which was formed around the typical tinfoil-covered wire armature. I had a near miss with him during the painting stage, I haven't used Sculpey before and it turns out Sculpey and spray paint doesn't mix. The propellant in most spray paints reacts poorly with Sculpey and the result is a tacky mess that I had to spent a good long time scraping off with the help of some acetone. The second painting attempt, with acrylics this time, was much more successful.

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Not the most accurate prop I've done, but it satisfies the scratch I've had for my own Hoggle Book end. Of course now I need to get some books for him to hold up. I'm not sure if I'll be able to collect any of the actual books shown in the movie (That Snow White Annual Book is pretty pricey on eBay), but I definitely want to try and get some Sarah-esque books to add to my display shelf.

Next up will be the Jareth statue in Sarah's room, which I've already begun sculpting.

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Well done! Thanks for sharing your process - I think some books would go great with it!

Thank you! I've been poking around on eBay for the last little bit on the off-hand chance I can spot the specific editions of books shown in Sarah's room (Given that we only see the spines of the majority of the books, that might be a bit of a long shot).

Thankfully they're all well known books, so even if I can't find the exact editions I'm hoping to find ones that are similar enough. For the Snow White annual I was able to find decent quality scans of the cover art so I'm currently thinking I'll get that one printed as a dust jacket and wrap it around a cheaper book.
 
These are AMAZING!
And your Hoggle is adorable!

I was besotted with Labyrinth back in the day, and remember wanting a room just like Sarahs! :)
.. I did receive that marble game the following Christmas, which was a delight - but I always wished it was closer to the one she had.

Might I ask what colors/paints you used for yours? And how you added the towers and such to the walls?
 
Might I ask what colors/paints you used for yours? And how you added the towers and such to the walls?

Thank you! I used Folk Art’s "Mossy Meadow" for the green walls, and Folk Art's "Vintage White" for the obelisks. The brown obelisks were a custom colour I mixed up to match the shade of wood my labyrinth was made out of.

To make the obelisks I started off with a bit of balsa wood that I cut/sanded into shape. I wanted to try and make all of my obelisks the same size so I made a mold of the wood ones with some silicone putty and then cast duplicates in resin. You could definitely just carve all of your obelisks from wood, I just didn't trust myself to do so evenly. The circular details are just different sized beads glued together, and the vaguely person-shaped detail are two slightly different sized rods cut and glued together with another bead on top. The wires you see on some of the pieces are how I attached them to the labyrinth, I just drilled a small hole into the corresponding spot and slotted them in.

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I'll note that for my wooden Labyrinth I redid all the walls because I wanted them to be higher to better match the movie (Plus some of the obelisks fit into the corners of the walls, so you'll either have to carve those spaces out on the existing walls or redo the walls entirely like I did). I basically just manhandled my board to pry the existing walls off, which definitely was a risky way to do things but I couldn't think of a better solution at the time.

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I'm not sure I still have the file but before I started attaching anything I made a colour coded legend to make sure I matched everything up with what was in the movie, based on the few reference photos that were available.

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So a while ago I mentioned in a comment that I thought I had potentially identified what kind of bear was used in the Labyrinth for Sarah's beloved Lancelot. Well the teddy in question has arrived and unfortunately now that I see him in person I'm thinking it's a matter of "Close, but no cigar". Still, I figured it might be worth documenting things for future reference.

First things first, here's a few reference photos from the film:

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And here's the teddy I found. This is a teddy from Dean's Childsplay Toys, which based on the specific design of the tag puts it's manufacture between 1982 - 1986. The manufacture date is one of the things that got me excited about this bear, it would've been on shelves during Labyrinth's production. The geography also lined up, as this is a UK made bear and Labyrinth was primarily filmed in the UK (A few of the scenes of Sarah running home in the rain were filmed in the USA).

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So the colour matches, the paw pads match, it even has the little red ribbon!... But something's for sure off in the shape of the head and the body proportions. Lancelot's head should be larger and wider, the ears larger as well, the positioning of the legs should be lower on the body... etc. Here's a few additional reference shots of Lancelot as he appears in recent exhibitions for comparison.

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I specifically wanted to show some shots between the Centre for Puppetry Arts (Left) and MoPOP (Right) exhibition as I feel like there's a slight visual difference between Lancelot in the two exhibitions. Lancelot at the MoPOP seems to have a more triangular shape to his head, while Lancelot at the CFPA looks like he has a flatter head. Maybe the stuffing got shifted during transport/display? The paw pads also appear to be very different colours, but I'm assuming this is maybe just a difference in lighting and not the beginnings of some odd, multiple Lancelot conspiracy.

For the record the CFPA exhibition was the earlier one (April 2017 vs July 2017). In hindsight I think I was maybe referencing the MoPOP photos while I was looking at eBay, so this is likely what skewed me to the pointier shape of the Dean's Childsplay Teddy (Well that and the eBay listing photos were a bit blurry).

So any thoughts? Any one on the forums with far more Teddy Bear knowledge than me? I've seen recommendations for Teddy Bear Encyclopedia by Pauline Cockrill, which is supposed to be good for identifying unknown teddies. I'm getting mighty tempted to order it and see if there's a better match to be found. At least for the time being I have a period-accurate stand-in for Lancelot on my shelves.
 
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Interesting. The CPA one has brown paws, but the MoPOP one doesn't. I wonder if they were two different bears used in different sequences. But your screenshots suggest that brown paws was used throughout? MoPOP has a wider mouth too. The CPA chest sewn lines also match the screenshots.
Maybe he's just a very good/almost stand in for display?
 
Interesting. The CPA one has brown paws, but the MoPOP one doesn't. I wonder if they were two different bears used in different sequences. But your screenshots suggest that brown paws was used throughout? MoPOP has a wider mouth too. The CPA chest sewn lines also match the screenshots.
Maybe he's just a very good/almost stand in for display?

Yeah I'm starting to lean towards that myself. I chalked it up to lighting at first but I've found a few more images of Lancelot at the MoPOP with consistently lighter paws, so maybe there are two Lancelot's (At least, two different Lancelot's that were exhibited, so far he seems pretty consistent in the movie). MoPOP on the top, CPA on the bottom:

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My latest Labyrinth project: The Jareth statue that appears in Sarah's bedroom.

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This statue has made appearances at a few museum exhibitions, so that thankfully provides a few more reference images to work with. Interesting to note that the riding crop isn't shown in the below images, presumably it was lost in transit at some point. These images come from one of the Labyrinth related Facebook groups I'm in (I'm pretty sure these are all from the Seattle MoPOP exhibition from a few years back).

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Onto my version! This was pretty similar to my Hoggle book end build. I just used some armature wire wrapped with tin foil to create the base structure, and Super Sculpey as the final layer for all the details.

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Then it was just the process of sculpting, baking, more sculpting, more baking... Here's a few WIP shots for your pleasure. I made the cape a separate piece, mostly because I thought it'd be a bit unwieldy to handle and paint with the cape attached to the figure.

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Major inaccuracies to point out that I only noticed after starting to paint my Jareth:

1. His head is facing the wrong direction, it should be pointed towards his outstretched hand. I'm definitely kicking myself over this one, it's an obvious mistake I made because I was too tunnel visioned on sculpting the face and didn't step back to double check the big picture.
2. His boot cuffs should come to a point like his jacket cuffs do. A little less obvious of a mistake than the direction of the head at least.

So without too much more meandering, here's the finished piece. The crystal is just a clear glass marble, and the riding crop is a toothpick with some additional sculpey detail. Everything was painted with acrylic paints, with a layer of gloss varnish applied on top.

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With Jareth done that completes the "Props from Sarah's bedroom that foreshadow characters she meets in the Labyrinth" collection. I had to shuffle my stuff around on my shelves to fit everyone in!

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