Punchin' Politicians bring a little good-natured liveliness to 2020 election

Good-natured political jabs are hard to find these days, but Longboat Key artist Lynn Armstrong-Coffin is trying to bring some levity to the political scene in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election. 

Armstrong-Coffin has reopened her “Punchin’ Politicians” Etsy shop, which features “Rock-em-sock-em robot”-style puppets with the caricatured head of either a donkey or an elephant with some familiar yellow hair. They’re leftovers from 2012, when Armstrong-Coffin and a partner began the concept with Obama and Romney puppets, with the candidates’ cartoonish heads sporting black eyes. 

Originally inspired by an antique boxing dinosaur puppet Armstrong-Coffin had in her studio, they got to work, bringing them to rallies and bringing levity to the election. They didn’t sell out and took a break in 2016; Armstrong-Coffin said she felt a bit burned out then.

“When Trump came along, and this whole political landscape changed to almost to where anything goes, I started thinking about them again,” Armstrong-Coffin said. “They're just apropos to this time.”

Armstrong-Coffin’s studio is currently covered with bagged donkey and elephant heads. Her original models — “Dodgin’ Don” and “Sleepy Joe” — are on the right and left of her worktable. The donkey has half-lidded eyes glued over his original ones, and the elephant prototype? 

“Remember Troll Dolls?” Armstrong-Coffin said, pointing at the elephant’s shock of fuzzy yellow hair. “I found a Troll Doll from my childhood that I had saved and it had that hair, so I took it off and it was enough to make two heads.” 

Since then, she’s ordered yards of fuzzy yellow fur that she adds to the elephants and has cut out dozens of eyes for the donkeys — tedious work, but fun, she said. Scattered around the studio are her previous puppet heads, including the sculpted and 3D-printed models that started it all. Rick Santorum was her first model, sculpted, then printed and made into the soft, squeezable heads of the final product. 

“What made it the most difficult was it was a learning process,” Armstrong-Coffin said. “I had never sculpted before.” 

Every part has to be manufactured separately, from the heads to the suits to the fun-sized boxing gloves before the whole thing is assembled. 

After 2012, she fittingly made some elephants into University of Alabama football fans and even made Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien puppets in a bid to bring the punchin’ puppets to the world at large. All of her puppets have exaggerated, caricature-esque features. 

Armstrong-Coffin takes no sides in her political puppet battles, aiming to go right down the middle and bring just a little humor to the “battle of the century,” as she calls it. The puppets sell for $9.99 to $19.99 on Etsy.

“Well, it's not my political view that I'm putting out there,” Armstrong-Coffin said. “And I'm just trying to provide some humor. You know, it's sort of a violent and nasty time. People can be so mean that I thought it might bring a little levity.”

She’s picked up another new skill, pitting her puppets against each other in goofy videos complete with sound effects of splats and landed punches. When Armstrong-Coffin films, she directs herself down to the diminutive details, putting the donkey puppet on her left hand and the elephant on her right. She and her husband have spent a few hours in her studio, rolling globes around the floor and throwing heads around. So far, she’s had a few sales. 

“I've gotten a late start because I just decided to do this about three weeks ago,” Armstrong-Coffin said. “I should have started sooner, but I thought well, what the heck, they're here. I need to get them out there, because the time is right.