This year’s American Girl Doll Halloween costume is a little different. Meet Elmoy, the American Girl Doll Bounty hunter.
Back when I was in architecture school, I had a classmate who worked out pretty quickly that he hated architecture. He spent all of his time very stoned and making the most amazing 3D renderings of spaceships instead of whatever the professors expected him to be making. One day I was in the lift with him, and I was wearing an enormous neon pink scarf made out of fun fur, and by the time we had risen up to third floor, he was giving me serious side eye.
“Is it real?” He said.
“Didn’t you KNOW?” I said. “I’m a bounty hunter for rogue Muppets in my spare time.”
The poor guy flattened himself into the corner of the elevator, and when the door opened he edged out sideways without taking his eyes off me. He kept a wary eye on me for the rest of his time there, until he left to go make amazing 3D spaceships for a video game company and I was left to my architecture assignments… and using my spare time to hunt down rogue Muppets, apparently.
And then Horizon Zero Dawn came along. Horizon Zero Dawn has the prettiest danged in-world universe I ever saw, and the main character, Aloy – well she practically IS a rogue Muppet hunter, if your rogue Muppets had armored plates and laser cannons instead of goggly eyes and cozy little furry butts.
Cosplay-Hero-ishly speaking, that game had everything:
1 – sparkly 90’s Rave hair,
2 – chonky leg wraps
3- excitingly textured aprons and tabards
4- dangerously exposed torso and
5 – wearing all ones battle trophies at once.
And then a Tickle Me Elmo doll popped up at the local thrift shop and I realized that this little cosplay wasn’t about ME at all.
I started with the stake – A dowel from the hardware store, a craft knife to give it a point and texture, and some paints for base color and drybrush highlights.
I hopped on pixiefair and picked out some leisurewear (the Eighties Ensemble by Crafty lil Turkey), hit up the stash for red silk and black jersey, a strip of plush ‘crocodile hide,’ leather thongs and assorted bits of chain link and plate.
(Note: never throw anything away. Ever. You’re not hoarding, you’re saving it for when the monsters come to town.)
Then I decapitated my Elmo doll, tore off his feet, ripped out his beating giggle-box and strapped his hide to my monster hunter’s shoulder. His head I mounted on the pike. This part, I admit, felt a little heartless. This was Elmo, for crying out loud. And I was shoving a stake down his cuddly throat and up through his cranium for AESTHETICS.
But it was done, and done well, and a few giggle-wires glued to the wound helped sell my sadism, and then we had….
The American Girl Doll Bounty Hunter – if her city were overrun by giant furry animatronic dinosaurs, Elmoy here would be there in a heartbeat, taking down those terrible giant giggling monsters before anyone besides the monsters got hurt!
