Frequently Asked Questions

How did Gremlins become important enough in your life to want to create a museum?

Somehow, the stars aligned for Gremlins to become one of those strange recurring threads throughout my life.

One of my earliest memories is visiting an old electronics store around 1985 with my dad, who was there to buy a Betamax player — whoops. For reasons I’ll never fully know, the owner of the store decided I should leave with a Gremlins Rub ’n Play transfer set. Maybe I had just come from seeing Gremlins at a drive-in theater and had talked his ear off about Gizmo, but whatever the reason, I remember owning that set vividly.

Somewhere around this same time, I was clearly having significant nightmares about Gremlins hiding under my bed. I remember one especially terrifying dream the night before swim class. The next day, while I was lined up with the other kids at the diving board, someone pointed out that I had a giant slash mark across my chest. In my mind, that settled it: Stripe and the Gremlins were real.

Fast forward about half a decade, and Gremlins 2 mania was making the rounds. I was very into the Nintendo game at the time, and I remember thinking the image of Mohawk surrounded by red and gray smoke was the coolest thing I had ever seen. I have no idea how many times I just stared at that box, completely mesmerized. There is a surprising amount going on in Mohawk’s design, so even now, it is hard to get bored looking at it.

At some point around then, there was a TV commercial for the Gremlins 2 video game that, as far as I could tell, aired exactly once. I could not believe how cool it was. Mohawk emerging from a larger-than-life video game box and dancing around with the game in hand was unbelievable to me. In a time before YouTube, I stayed glued to the commercials for weeks hoping to see it again, but alas, it seemed to be a one-time deal. Now it can be found online, and I still go back and watch it from time to time.

The last major Gremlin “bullet point” from my childhood came around this same period, and it was probably the most defining in terms of where things are now. I remember riding my bicycle around my rural town, passing the local barnyard animals, with the latest Nintendo Power feature on Gremlins 2 probably still fresh in my mind. At some point I began seriously wondering, “How could I get my own Gremlin puppet?”

This was before the internet, so you were relying entirely on whatever bits of print material happened to intersect with your world or your friend group. It was a fleeting thought, but somehow that memory stayed with me. Fast forward to now, being surrounded by many of the puppets I adored from afar as a kid, and I could not be happier.

What is the story of the first Gremlins prop that found its way into your collection?

I’m convinced certain things happen for a reason to push you down a path, and the Gremlins Museum was certainly an odd one.

In the decades leading up to finding our first puppet, I had been closely following the restoration work of Tom Spina Designs, so I had a rough sense of what original film props were out there and the condition they were often found in. Even before that, I eagerly followed updates from one of the few early Gremlins resources on the web: John Paul Cupertino’s Gremlins Online. At the time, John Paul’s site was one of the only places where you could actually see photos of these incredible puppets, and it was mind-blowing to me.

Around 2020, I was fairly deep into tracking down interesting and rare Gremlins merchandise, checking eBay regularly to see what might surface. One afternoon, I had just woken up from a nap and groggily opened eBay to see what was new. That was when I saw a set of crude photos showing a Gremlin that, at first glance, looked a little like one of the Trick or Treat Studios replicas that had been released a few years earlier.

But something was not quite right.

The eyes looked different — almost glass-like — and the puppet had been beheaded, much like examples I had seen years earlier on Tom Spina’s site. It was rough, but I had a very good idea of what this little relic might be. And it had been posted no more than four minutes earlier.

I reached out to the owner to see what he wanted for it. He currently had it set up for bidding, but every once in a while you can convince someone to sell something outright. His description said he knew it had been in the movie, and that it was in really bad shape. It also sounded like he mostly just wanted to get rid of the thing. He quickly replied with his price, and I responded with something along the lines of: send the invoice over… please.

After that, I walked downstairs, and my wife and daughter could immediately tell something was not quite right. I was shaking.

“[Adult phrase], I just bought a [expletive] ’84 Gremlin… I think.”

Of course, they did not fully understand the significance of the moment, but I did my best to explain it with my somewhat limited knowledge at the time. Winning the lottery was really the best analogy I could come up with.

The following week was spent in suspended animation as I waited to see if this thing was actually going to show up. Predictably, the FedEx box was delivered to my neighbor’s house instead of mine, but sure enough, there he was inside. Flaking forty-year-old foam, detached head and all — and honestly, not in that bad of shape, considering what he was. We have put together a separate write-up on the 1984 Gremlin restoration story on our Props page for anyone who would like to read more.

From that moment on, it sent my family on a whirlwind adventure: learning as much as possible about these props, finding out where they were hiding, figuring out how to ship fragile foam monsters, and working with the right people to restore them back toward their original glory. As many prop collectors eventually realize, there is no recreating the first rush of finding your initial piece — that complete mind explosion of emotion, disbelief, and adrenaline.

Knowing what I know now about how incredibly rare and difficult it is to find original 1984 Gremlin props, it still blows my mind that one more or less fell into my lap. There are probably fewer than ten intact examples left in the world. That’s it.

Do you have a favorite prop?

It is a tough call because I tend to gravitate toward the actual Gremlins more than the Mogwai, but over the last year, my favorite prop has probably been our animatronic Mohawk Mogwai.

He has been incredibly well cared for and looks like he jumped right off the movie lot. I also tend to love puppets where it is immediately obvious that they had an important job to do on set, and the giant rig he is mounted on really shows how much work went into creating and operating the animatronic. There is a real presence to him, not just as a character, but as a piece of practical-effects engineering. Looking at the complexity of the build, it is clear that bringing him to life took serious skill, coordination, and artistry.

Where are you located? Can I visit?

The Gremlins Museum is a private collection located in the greater Seattle, Washington area, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States.

At this time, we are not open for public visits. However, we continue to share exclusive photography, research, restoration stories, and archival material through this website so fans around the world can enjoy the history of these one-of-a-kind movie props.

Are there any plans on making your museum a public place?

Not currently, though that could change in the next few years. For now, the Gremlins Museum remains a private collection and online archive. That said, we are always open to the right opportunity, and a future partnership with a museum or cultural institution — such as MoPOP here in Seattle — could be an exciting way to share the collection with the public.

I want to own a Gremlin prop! Are you selling anything from your collection?

Gremlins — and foam latex movie props in general — are often large, fragile, and expensive objects to care for. In many cases, these props were never designed to survive much longer than the productions they were created for. Now that we are more than forty years removed from the original Gremlins, restoration and conservation have become essential parts of slowing that natural deterioration.

As caretakers of these pieces, we feel a responsibility to protect them from UV exposure, extreme temperatures, unnecessary handling, and other risks that can accelerate damage. For that reason, we are not currently selling anything from the collection. Considerable time and care goes into researching each piece, acquiring it, arranging professional shipping from around the world, restoring it when appropriate, and finally displaying it safely under acrylic for long-term protection.

If you have questions about a specific prop, please feel free to contact us and we will do our best to help.