Boober

"--? I hardly know 'er!" Boober knows that there are only two certainties in life: death and laundry. Fortunately, Boober loves doing laundry and can often be found washing piles of socks that no one ever seems to wear. He is also an excellent cook who keeps the Fraggles fed with a variety of radish-based recipes. When he's not cleaning or cooking, Boober is usually worrying about the many dangers that could potentially befall him and his friends. Boober is the Eeyore of the Fraggles: grumpy, dislikes crowds, enjoys hobbies that his friends find boring or weird... but he really does love his friends and appreciates that they try to include him in things. He's a bit paranoid and superstitious, but sometimes that helps, when he sees danger coming before anyone else and can get everyone ready for it. In the original series he was portrayed as an over-anxious germaphobe, but that got toned down for the 2022 reboot. Gee, I wonder why? Boober doesn't have the swappable eyes the other Fraggles had, for a very simple reason: he doesn't have eyes at all. Rather, the upper half of his face is covered by shaggy red hair and floppy hat. Interestingly, that makes him the third major character without eyes to be played by Dave Goelz, after Zoot and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew. (Lest you think that's some specialty of his, remember that his most prominent character is Gonzo, who definitely does have eyes.) Boober wears less clothing than the other Fraggles do - maybe he hates the idea of it getting dirty? Other than his hat, all he has is a scarf that reaches down to his knees. This does allow us to see all the work that went into sculpting his body, so that's a fair trade-off. Boss Fight Studio really did a lovely job making molded plastic look like it would be tufted fur, and there's even a bit of texture to be found on the bare skin of his face, arms, and legs. Boober doesn't have any of the articulation problems my last few figures did: nothing broken, nothing misassembled. The figure has a barbell neck, swivel/hinge shoulders, swivel/hinge elbows, swivel/hinge wrists, a balljoint waist, balljoint tail, balljoint hips, swivel/hinge knees, and swivel/hinge ankles. The knees do remain stiffer than all the rest, but they're not as firmly unmovable as Gobo's were - I didn't even need to heat them up to get them moving. The Series 1 figures only had one extra head, but Series 2 provides two. See if you can extrapolate what that's eventually going to mean for Series 3. Anyway, the head he has right out of the box has the mouth open, like he's laughing - or, since he prides himself on not having a sense of humor, perhaps gasping or screaming. One of the alternate heads has the mouth fully closed, and the other has the mouth open just slightly, with his nose bent down in that way that Muppets always use to display fear or disgust. All three have the same hair and the same hat, so there's no need to make them swappable. They could have given him hair without a hat, because he does sometimes lose it. And then get scared and paranoid because he doesn't have it. Since there are no swappable eyes or hair, Boober gets something else. Oh, there are the usual alternate hands (one gesturing, one pointing), but he also includes a second baloobius, which really makes it clear this toy is based on Back to the Rock and not the original 1980s show. In episode 4, "The Glow," Boober learns that he has a rare trait: his baloobius will light up when he'shappy and at ease with himself. So Boss Fight have given us a second tail-tip, the same sculpt but now painted with white and yellow to simulate an internal light. His other accessories include the pan flute he's often showing playing in promotional material (but less so in the actual show), a laundry basket with clothes draping out of it, a clothesline with three mismatched socks and a sweater pinned onto it, a cookpot, spoon, and stack of dirty dishes. Those are all great choices for him, but the clothesline does suffer a bit for being sculpted like a rope that's been tied between two anchor points, but not actually having anything to anchor on. The best you can do is enlist two of the other Fraggles to stand there and hold it for him. Boober gets his personality from puppeteer Dave Goelz - Goelz started as a builder before also becoming a performer, so when trying to do both during the first season of The Muppet Show, he commented that all he had time for was "death and laundry," something that must have stuck with the writers when it came time to devise some character traits for the naked green Fraggle. Boober himself may be boring, but the toy is fun. -- 03/15/26 What's your most boring hobby? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.