Triumph Insult Comic Dog and Mask Illusions Latex Dog Puppets

I’m working on an Arduino installation that requires a specific set of vintage dog puppets made by Mask Illusions called ‘Hand Critters’. This is a line of toys that originated the puppet known commonly as Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, voiced by Robert Smigel on Late Night With Conan O’Brien.

If you’ve ever wanted to know details about the original Triumph dog puppet here they are:

The puppet used as “Triumph” is a rubber/latex puppet (head only, and a few inches of a neck) of a Rottweiler dog. The prop masters on the show apparently also have placed one of these on the modified body of a stuffed rottweiler dog also. If you look closely, you can see that while the head is smooth latex, the “body” is furry. They seem to have also made an “arm” or “leg” for Triumph that is basically just a stick that can hold things like a microphone. They will hold this off-camera to make it look like it is part of the puppet, but if you watch closely, you’ll see it’s not attached.

The latex rottweiler head puppet was manufactured by a company called “Mask Illusions” based out of the San Diego/ Chula Vista area of Southern California. I have also seen this company referred to as “Masked Illusions.” In any case, the company went out of business a few years ago. I checked with “ALPHABETS” in New York, where people have mentioned they have purchased it. They did not have any more of these in stock.

I have extensively searched the web, and have found distributors that still have some Mask Illusions items in stock, but none of them I have found so far have had the actual rottweiler puppet (Mask Illusions made similar puppets of dogs, lions, tigers, dolphins and about 2-3 dozen other different animals and characters).

A Letter from Mask Illusions

Mask Illusions no longer manufactures or sells the puppets. In November of 1998 we sold our business and the puppets were discontinued. I wouldn’t know of anyone that would have what you are looking for because it has been such a long time since we stopped selling the puppets.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

C.Birse
Mask Illusions

I’m searching for ANY Mask Illusions dog puppets for my project. If you have an old Triumph puppet or any of the other dog breeds please contact me: sunil AT suniljohn.com.

Puppet breeds I’m missing include a Bulldog, Cocker Spaniel and a Black Labrador (see mugs shots above). I’ll even double up ones I have, because I will likely need backups in case the puppets I have rip or disintegrate because of their age.