The Pear

Content

A pear eating a pear. Funny and eye-catching. The pear speaks the text, ‘It's another best pear year this year.’

Trivia

This commercial was meant to be shown on TV for three consecutive years. After the first showings, a complaint came from parents of a child with Down syndrome, then named as mongolism. They felt that this peer was too similar to their child.
The Dutch Advertising Code Committee proved the parents right. The film was never shown on TV after that. It was ironic that this very commercial had been awarded best (commissioned) animated film of the year.

Not Dollywood

This film was made by Toonder-Geesink studios. Under this name, a small group of former Dollywood people continued after the Geesink/Dollywood empire went bankrupt. The studio had moved to Nederhorst Castle, where the stop-motion room was housed in the former stables.

Technology

In order to animate this pear, a drawing of the front and side (profile) of the pear was first made by Henk Kabos. The drawing was given to Ton Foederer. He had succeeded the now-retired Harry Tolsma. He made a model carved from wood. The head was then poured into a mould of silicone rubber.

The mould was divisible and contained a hollow space in which a sophisticated mechanism of several aluminium wires was build. Each wire had a separate function during the animation. This was a very precise job because the wires were never allowed to touch the mould, otherwise they would come through the skin keen and be visible to the camera. If the threads were too deep, they were unusable for animation. Realise that not only animation options were needed in the mouth, the eyes also had to be able to be animated as well as the eyebrows.
Next, the mould was filled with a latex-foam mixture. This had to harden in a controlled manner. Then the foam pear could be removed from the mould and painted with the help of airbrush technique. The whole thing was mounted on a board around which the white napkin lay. This napkin provided camouflage for the mounting points and the ‘invisible’ hand wiping a drop from the corner of the mouth.
In the end, two casts were needed, the last of which was used.