Wembley

...maybe we shouldn't review this one after all? Wembley is chronically indecisive. He hates to argue and ends up taking sides with everyone. He often has trouble speaking up for himself, but he means well and will usually find the courage to do the right thing. One thing Wembley is always certain about is that Gobo is his very best friend and Wembley wants to do whatever he's doing, except when he doesn't. In Fraggle language (Fragglish), "to wemble" is a verb meaning "to go back and forth without being able to make up your mind" - so basically, the same as English "waffling" (which shares a common root with "waving" and "wobbling"). I'm not the right one to decide if that makes it logical growth or an unfortunate stereotype that the recent Back to the Rock show gives him an arc where he starts questioning his gender identity and the way he expresses it. Wembley has a more bulbous nose than the other Fraggles, who all have that same sort of short, flat snout; when the original puppet was being built, longtime Muppet designer Rollie Krewson stuffed a ping pong ball in there to make it more distinctive. Wembley also had the unique ability to roll his eyes, thanks to swappable puppet heads, one of which had a mechanism to spin the entire ball around. The toy, alas, does not share this feature - though, as we learned with Red, you can at least swap eyes among his various alternate heads. And all three sets have the pupils painted looking different directions. How indecisive is Wembley, really? Well, he often has trouble deciding which shirt he should wear. He only owns two, and they're identical, but he still can't pick between them. Poor little guy! According to Season 2's "Doomsday Soup," Wembley thinks the pattern on his shirt is banana trees, though they look like palm trees to us. Green palm trees in front of an orange sunset, with a few fuchsia flowers scattered about. Wembley was slightly redesigned for Back to the Rock, making his skin a modestly greener shade of yellow than it was in the '80s, and turning his fur darker. This is close enough that he could stand in for the vintage version, but we still wouldn't be terribly surprised if Boss Fight made a "retro" version at some point. That would also give them the opportunity to pick up the missed paint app: the arms, above the elbow but below the shirt sleeves, are the same white as his shirt, instead of being yellow like the rest of his skin. Part of the reason I was so willing to fix Red's legs myself was that Wembley had partially fallen apart when I opened the box: his tail and one of his legs had both popped off their balljoints and were rattling about inside the tray. It was easy to fix, though, so now he works fine. Well, mostly: he does have one backwards knee, but since it's only one, I can't trade them like I did Red's. The Fraggles move at the ankles, knees, hips, tail, waist, neck, shoulders, elbows, and wrists. Wembley actually gets two bonus heads instead of just one. The normal head has a big, happy smile, which is basically a Fraggle's default expression. The alternates both show him looking worried in different ways - one with the nose straight ahead and the lower lip pulled up, the other with the nose and lip both pointing down. Right out of the tray, there was a rubber band stretched vertically around Wembley's head, which is the only clue we're given that the hair on all three heads can be removed and swapped around. Why would you want to do that? Well, two of the hair sculpts are the same shaggy look you'd expect, but the third is combed neatly and slicked back, which is based on a single, specific episode, "Wembley the Spokesfraggle." Doozer sticks, in the original, were clear rods - thus the word "stick" in their name. Back to the Rock reimagines them as a honeycomb shape for whatever reason, and this figure includes a chunk. It's pink because the Doozers were trying to unload some goo Cotterpin found; unfortunately for them, the Fraggles hated the new taste and refused to eat it; recognizing how impressionable Wembley is, they convinced him to act as a spokeman, getting everyone else to eat up. So the pink honeycomb, the slicked-back hair, and the blue necktie with yellow flames on it are all designed to go together. In a wonderful bit of coincidence, if you recall when we compared wembling to waffling, the word waffle comes from Proto-Germanic *wabila-, which meant "web"... or "honeycomb"! How about that! His other accessories include a set of bongos, the instrument he likes to play, and the stuffie he carries in the episode "Moon Merggle Migration," suggesting he sleeps with it. Boss Fight Studio's marketing copy identifies it as "Bembley," though he doesn't say its name in that episode - it was revealed by the writers on a podcast. It looks like a miniature version of Wembly, right down to the Hawaiian shirt. Finally, we get some alternate hands. You'd think Wembley's indecisive personality would be annoying, but he always ranks pretty highly in popularity polls, right up there with Gobo (the main character of the show) and Red (the face of the show in other apperances), which is pretty impressive. The paint isn't as good as it could be, and being assembled with the wrong upper leg is an annoyance, but he's still fun and brings us one step closer to completing the whole gang. -- 07/24/25 Do like like Wembley or dislike him? Or can you not make up your mind? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.