Hero Mohawk Mogwai Movie Prop

screen used for most Mohawk shots, full animatronic motions

Introduction

Much like the George Gremlin design, the original sculpt of Mohawk was assigned to Cinovation Studio's Jim McPherson. He took the work of Steve Wang's completed Gremlin design and sculpted a perfectly tuned mogwai face that encapsulated pure evil.

When it comes to Gremlins 2 props, it really doesn't get a whole lot better than this animatronic Mohawk. He really announces his presence and gets you looking in close and appreciating all the beautiful fine details. Everything from perfectly placed hand punched hair to veins running inside the ears shows how the best in the business were working on puppets like these.

Our prop from what we can tell was one of the main Mohawk animatronic puppets. We were able to screen match him to a number of scenes via a particular vein in his right eye. I'm fairly confident this is the Mohawk that initially crawls out of the trash can amongst others.

This puppet was designated a 'Type 4' on his case and from what we can tell 'Type 3' animatronics were the main hero characters shown in the movie, this is the only Type 4 that we know of.

His specially designed stand is filled with a wonderful collection of 80's robotic tech which is designed to bring this little creature's personality alive. Though none of the wires are still connected to the body, we had it presented in a way to showcase how it would have looked on set.

A question we're asked a lot about this and the animatronic Gizmo is 'can these puppets still move?!' The short answer is for a period of time, yes, but due to the age and how fragile these props are, any sort of movement would contribute to the breakdown of the prop. In restoration it's very common to lock down any motion so we can continue to enjoy these props for many more years to come.

Restoration

This Mohawk was originally purchased via PropStore a few years back by his previous owner. He had some light restoration work done and a new stand designed via Tom Spina's team. Thankfully his original rig was just broken down and not discarded. After we acquired it we had artist Joe Petro reassemble the rig componants based on old archival photos. To us and many others, these animatronic rigs are iconic little pieces of art in their own right.

There were a few new trouble spots that developed in the past few years, so Joe was able to get in there to repair the damaged foam and paint match so you could barely tell any work was done on it at all.

Storyboard

This particular Mohawk mogwai was seen in this great illustration from John Hora's storyboard binder.