"Don't forget to wave up high!"
Welcome Home was an American children's puppet show created by Playfellow Workshop. Its first episode reportedly aired on October 11th, 1969. According to the Welcome Home Restoration Team's website, the synopsis is as follows:
"Welcome Home primarily focused on the neighbors, the show's inhabitants, who were accompanied by a mixture of animated breaks and illustrated story book segments. The setting itself was a colorful and exaggeratedly designed town named 'Home' with unique elements like a post office and a bodega, as well as brightly colored creatures that lived within it.
Episodes usually began with Wally introducing the focus or theme for the day before coming across other characters who would join him on his escapades until the end of the day, which would signify the end of the show. All of the characters had notable, recurring segments that were sprinkled throughout the entirety of the show's run, such as Eddie Dear creating arts and crafts, Sally Starlet performing plays, or Wally Darling painting a picture with the help of other members of the cast. The viewer was often regarded as an additional neighbor, with Wally speaking to them on a regular basis."
The show was abruptly pulled from television in 1974, and nothing further was heard from Playfellow Workshop — Welcome Home would be their only production. No footage of the show is known to exist, but a dedicated group of anonymous fans and enthusiasts are working tirelessly to search for whatever scraps of information they can about this show. But as they recover scripts, development sketches, old storybooks, and advertising connected to the show, it's entirely possible the group has found something that should have stayed lost.
So, yeah. As you might have guessed, Welcome Home is, in truth, an in-development Psychological Horror multimedia art project created in 2022 by Clown Illustrations. The story is currently in its prologue stage, and can be found here
. Due to the sudden popularity of this project, the website was temporarily closed for maintenance until July 22, 2023, when the website updated with new art and audio featuring a new voice cast. Eventually, the site would split off from ClownIllustration's own site to its own found here. Here is the artist's blog for more info.
Not to be confused with the 2018 film.
NOTE: All general and prologue tropes are unmarked. New information from the 1st update onward will be tagged for spoilers.
This story provides examples of:
- The '70s: The wardrobe, color palette, and general aesthetic of the show all heavily evoke the seventies.
- Affectionate Parody: At first, Welcome Home seems like a cross between Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, but once the dark mystery behind the surface is uncovered, you will see that it's also suspiciously similar to Don't Hug Me I'm Scared.
- All Just a Prank: This is discussed by the Question-Answerer on the "staff-only" page. He wonders if the WHRP team is just pulling a big prank on him, since he can't find any physical evidence of Welcome Home existing, or anyone who remembers the show.
- All There in the Manual: Enforced trope in-universe — without any available footage, the only information available about this show comes from outside material. The new update features hidden video files that seem to be from the lost episodes. However, they also seemed to be filmed from Wally's perspective, so their authenticity is questionable.
- All There in the Script: Again enforced in-universe — while no footage of the show has been recovered, information on the show and the characters has been gleaned from surviving scripts. Somewhat subverted after the update, where hidden video files may derive from lost episodes, though nothing is confirmed by the Restoration team in-universe.
- And Here He Comes Now: In the Homewarming storybook record, Wally tells the Narrator that he wants to ask Barnaby a question. Cue Barnaby suddenly appearing inside Wally's house. When confronted about this, he points out that the Narrator left the door open, much to his embarrassment.
- Happens again shortly after, this time between Barnaby and Frank:
Barnaby: It’s nerd talk for ‘thinking.’ Just like how Frank would say it!Frank: How I would say what? - Anonymous Benefactor: "Questions Answerer", the mysterious figure that contacts WHRP and offers to run an exhibition on Welcome Home to present their findings to the public. The first update subverts it somewhat, as the secret page takes the perspective of Questions Answerer, showing them growing increasingly confused and horrified (and more than a little mad) by all the bizarre stuff that WHRP is sending them.
- Arc Symbol: Hypnotic spirals and eyes repeatedly appear in concept art and the website's hidden pages. Bugs also appear throughout the update, as clickable links to hidden videos.
- Artistic License – Child Labor Laws: In the commercial compilation, Howdy's nephews Howdo and Youdo (who appear to be around 5-7 years old) are shown working in Howdy's shop. The song "What Child is This?" even establishes that they sleep in the middle of the aisles when on their break.
- Art Shift: Bugs crawling around the website are hidden links to dialogue videos. Most of them are colorful characters except for the last one in the "woxyve" page, which is a photorealistic roach.
- Biblical Motifs: The website appears to have mild references to biblical phrases and events, though it's quite subtle.
- On the front page, the site tells you to "love your fellow neighbor," which is almost word-for-word a reference to "Love thy neighbor."
- Sally Starlet's backstory has her be the brightest star in the sky who eventually fell down to Earth, which directly refers to the backstory of Lucifer.
- One of Barnaby's jokes talks about how he wants to be a "good Samaritan".
- Wally's design gives visual callbacks to American televangelists (what with the bouffant hair and taste for dress clothes), and
Word of God mentions Jimmy Dean as inspiration. While it's in the context of the website's News page, Wally appears on a card asking the viewer, "have you heard?"note - The website's sticker page talks about "spreading the good word," which also happens to be the name of the tab (i.e., Spread the Good Word!). To "spread the [good] word" is another way of referring to evangelism or sharing the gospel.
- Bilingual Bonus: Page 8 in the Guestbook has a message in broken Brazilian Portuguese from somebody named Thaila/Tayla about how she wants to escape into Wally's world. He replies to her with a sun drawing cryptically titled "eu não sei onde estamos" ("I don't know where we are").
- Binomium ridiculus: In the Homewarming record, Frank shows Wally a bug sleeping in a nearby tree hollow, dubbing it Caninus Coccinellidae.note While Wally reacts in awe, Barnaby simply says “gesundheit”, causing Frank to react in anger.
- Bizarre Taste in Food: If the Welcome Home Cookbook is any indication, none of the residents of Home have very... conventional tastes. Examples include the Macaroni Dog (a hotdog in a bun with macaroni and kiwi slices), the Queen's Game (a mug of hot cocoa encased in gelatin), and a Single Pea on a Plate (self-explanatory).
- Body Motifs: Eyes. The website's background is covered with them and Wally is always staring straight at the viewer. Not to mention what appears to set Home apart from the other houses in the neighborhood is its eyes.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: The Welcome Home Cookbook has a section completely devoted to different types of hot dogs – seven pages worth, to be exact. The first four listed are relatively normal dogs, but the more pages that are flipped, the weirder the dogs get, including the Hearth Dog (a dog with a ribbon threaded through the tip), the Half-Eaten Dog (Exactly What It Says on the Tin), and the Not Dog (no dog, just the bun). This becomes (somewhat) normal to see after a few pages, until the twenty-fourth dog (It's a Dog!) shows where the 'dog' from the Not Dog went: splattered on the wall with the mushed up remains lying on the ground, looking suspiciously like someone's intestines. Then the next page shows the Holly Jolly Dog.
- Brown Note: In the first update, both the website administrator and the Questions Answerer mention hearing an incessant ringing noise, that's slowly driving both of them to madness, with Answerer's notes filling in with repeated "I have to answer the phone".
- Chekhov's Gag: A Single Pea on a Plate. Initially, it's used as the final punchline of weird food items in the Welcome Home Cookbook. However, it returns three times in the commercial compilation on the hidden website: first as one of the dishes listed by the narrator in the Welcome Home Cookbook ad, then as one of the items sung about in “The Twelve Deals of Homewarming”, and finally as Eddie's meal of choice in the final intermission. Specifically in the intermission, it's one of the few points of focus during Eddie's revelation, showing him changing between his storybook and puppet appearances while bathed in a Red Filter of Doom.
- Crapsaccharine World: It takes only a little searching on Welcome Home's site to uncover a dark mystery lurking beneath the show's sunny façade. The prologue introduces an ambiguously sinister relationship between Wally and Home, Wally's house and the only sentient building in the area. The first major hint is shown on a hidden page labeled "[1]◊," which depicts Wally kneeling before one of Home's jittery, bloodied eyes. The 1st update also hints that characters other than Wally may be more self-aware than initially thought.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Word of God is that Eddie and Frank are canonically in a romantic relationship, but due to the show airing in the late 60s-early 70s, when LGBT+ people weren't as accepted, The Playfellow Workshop could never show their relationship, and had to resort to subtly hinting at it instead. The update shows this in detail in the video files through their interactions: the official canon art and video show an awkward, but friendly relationship between the two; while the Restoration team and subsequent fan art has them much closer.
- The Homewarming update for the website uncovers several old commercials advertising products that would be considered inappropriate for children's characters to show off in modern times, such as using Howdy's twin nephews to sell a bubble-blower pipe. The commercial compilation on Away From Prying Eyes shows Barnaby and Howdy advertising real cigarettes, as well as Wally in an ad for Remderum sleep medication.
- Digital Horror: The prologue takes place on it's website, and digging a little deeper reveals itself as something more than a little off...
- Disguised Horror Story: The Welcome Home website introduces itself as an archive of all things related to the production of the eponymous fictional puppet show. There is an expansive selection of concept art and character blurbs on display to help viewers learn about the show and its characters... But if some viewers dig deeper, they'll find that these puppets may be living a far less ideal life than what first impressions would imply.
- Dope Slap: Home does its own modified version of this to Barnaby at the end of the Homewarming record by whacking him with one of its shutters.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: From Clown Illustrations' official Twitter account, the series dates back to 2018, and the initial lineup of characters was drastically different, as Sally Starlet, Howdy Pillar, and Eddie Dear were not created at that time. The lineup also includes a second bird character that was later scrapped.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: In the Homewarming record, Poppy invites Wally and Barnaby to have a slice of Sunflower-seed ham, which is ham shaped like a sunflower-seed. Since Poppy’s description mentions her being a vegetarian, it can also be assumed that the ham is made out of sunflower-seeds as well.
- Foreshadowing: The Welcome Home Wish Book has an advertisement featuring Santa reading out what each of the neighbors want for the holidays. When he gets to Eddie, however, the track dissolves into static and cuts out ...much like what happened in the hidden bug videos whenever someone called Wally's name. As such, he’s the next character to realize the nature of their world..
- Furry Confusion: Howdy Pillar is an anthropomorphic caterpillar, while Frank studies non-anthro butterflies.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: In Howdy's Holiday Hullabaloo, Gam-Gam Sally Tations whacks Howdy over the head when he starts panicking over how many of his family members are coming to visit, to the point where he starts anticipating relatives who aren't confirmed to be coming. While it works, he does complain about her methods.
- A Good, Old-Fashioned Paint Watching: In the Homewarming record, after Barnaby insults him with a joke, Frank threatens to give Wally and Barnaby a lecture on how grass grows if they don't leave him and Julie alone.
- Hibernation/Migration Situation: The main theme of Bug-a-Bye and Goodnight involves Frank wishing all the bugs goodnight as they settle in for the winter. During his rounds, he notes just how sad doing so is making him feel, but he continues anyway due to knowing just how important it is for them to hibernate.
- Hide Your Gays: In-Universe. Eddie and Frank are confirmed to be a married couple through Word of God, but the Playfellow Workshop could only have their relationship expressed through subtle hints and throwaway dialogue. This also extends to the WHRP's description of Frank, claiming that the Halloween record "Happy Halloween to Boo and Yours" implied that he and Julie were a couple instead of Eddie.
- I'm Standing Right Here: In Howdy's Holiday Hullabaloo, Howdy's verse about his brother Latter is quite negative, with his focus being specifically on him being a bad poet. When Latter points out that he said that right in front of him, Howdy opts to ignore him in favor of greeting his sister Seeya.
- Interactive Narrator: Happens in both the records Happy Haunting to Boo and Yours and Homewarming, though the Narrator is different between the two.
- Irony: Wally can "see" out of eyes that people draw in his image, and teaches this in one of the hidden audios. In a series of hidden videos, the audience sees out of his point-of-view, and yet just vacantly stares at nothing the whole time.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: In-Universe, no known footage of the show exists, but the archive team is trying desperately to recover any and all tapes linked to the show.The update has hidden video files showing the characters interacting. These could be snippets from lost episodes; however, with the camera's perspective shown from Wally's point-of-view, the file's authenticity to canon is questionable.
- Laser-Guided Broadcast: W has an old television in their house. When the WHRP website first launched in 2022, their tv slowly began airing bits and pieces of media from Welcome Home. This was how they got the stills from the "Julie-Rella" episode, and later, twenty-two minutes’ worth of commercials interspersed with brief intermissions from Eddie's point of view, which W guesses are from the show itself.
- Leave the Camera Running: A series of hidden videos are shot from Wally's perspective as he just... stares into space for a long time while a pair of characters talk nearby and offscreen. The most he does is gesture "tea" in Morse at a teacup in front of him. Each video glitches and cuts off when somebody calls his attention.
- Living Crashpad: Frank acts as this to Julie after the latter falls off Home's roof in Up from the Home-Top. While Julie remains unharmed, if the 'crack' Eddie heard is any indication, the same cannot be said for Frank.
- Medium Blending: In-Universe. While Welcome Home primarily used puppetry, the discovery of the "Julie-rella" cels suggests that Once per Episode, there would be a hand-drawn segment featuring the characters reenacting fairy tales.
- Happens in a much more disturbing fashion during Eddie's revelation in the final intermission of the commercial compilation, which switches between a storybook style and a live-action one, with Eddie appearing as a puppet in the latter.
- The Merch: In-Universe, it's stated by the Welcome Home Restoration Team that the show had quite a lot of merch in its five year run, including books, toys, and even vinyl records of the show's songs. Attempting to find this merchandise is part of their efforts, and the gallery includes an advertisement of some of this merchandise and recreations of a few Valentine's Day cards the team managed to recover. The update also shows photos from the team's exhibition, which includes a cardboard cutout of Wally, a rotary phone, and assorted art, in addition to the discovery of a company that created some of Welcome Home's merchandise, Marlo Inc.
- Mood Whiplash: On the Updates page for the site, the webmaster at one point abruptly falls into despair because of the readers attempting to communicate with Wally and decides to close the Guestbook because "the ringing is already enough". The next entry is all cheerful again and comes up with an excuse to close the Guestbook as if the previous entry didn't happen, even as the writer does nervously note that the Guestbook has pictures (Wally's replies) that weren't there before.
- No Fourth Wall: In-universe, scripts indicate that the viewer of the show was treated as another neighbor, with Wally directly addressing them on a regular basis à la Mister Rogers.
- No Name Given: While all puppets are named, all of the human characters remain anonymous. The closest to have their own name is Questions Answerer, and even there, it's a nickname derived from the name of their company, Questions Answered! Custodial Services.
- The only possibly exception being the reported creator of the studio, The Playfellow Workshop, that produced the In-Universe show, Ronald Dorelaine. However, there is yet be anymore information released regarding him, so his identity and role beyond that remains speculative.
- Nothing Is Scarier:
- A set of hidden videos in the site features Wally attempting to communicate with the viewer with increasing desperation, telling them to let him in and that he'll "find a way soon". One hidden page, on the other hand, features a contextless scene of him with his eyes shaking violently and slowly typing that if the viewer can see him, then they should keep quiet.
- The Vault page ends on a ominous note in shaking text that "It's in here". Clicking it simply leads back to the regular 404 error page, where the final hidden audio with Wally saying "Let me in" is.
- One website update shows the webmaster asking the entity possessing the pages to do certain actions ("Write Hello", "Move Barnaby"). When Wally politely follows each instruction, the scared webmaster hastily purges all the hidden pages and messages from Wally while remaking the site and only leaves a coded message for readers to find an explanation about what happened. No reaction from Wally yet, but the new site still seems far from normal as the background is stretched to a blurry mess and several elements pulsate as if breathing.
- Odd Friendship: Julie and Frank - respectively the cheeriest neighbor and a Perpetual Frowner - are described as being best friends.
- Ominous Obsidian Ooze: A hidden page in the first update shows that all the material WHRP sent to Question Answerer seems to be covered in strange black substance. WHRP even warns them not to touch anything with their bare hands, and to pack up any object that begins to grow more of it. Despite that, it seems the precautions were not enough, as photos show the walls and floor of the exhibition absolutely smeared with the black ooze, and Question Answerer complains about nausea and headaches, the noted symptoms of coming into contact with the substance.
- One-Book Author: In-universe — Welcome Home was the only show ever created by the Playfellow Workshop.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: One of the prologue's hints is an audio file in which Wally sings Stephen Foster's "Beautiful Dreamer," presumably to Home as a lullaby. Wally sounds utterly forlorn throughout the entire clip.[After he finishes singing, Wally lets loose a mirthless laugh.]
Wally: Ha ha ha. I don't know the other words... That's all Barnaby taught me... Do you like it...?
[Home produces some banging noises in response, which translate from Morse to "I do".]
Wally: That's good... I think. - Retraux: The website itself evokes web design from the mid-to-late 90s, with its colorful borders, hit counter, guestbook, and abundance of animated gifs.
- Running Gag: Some of the secret tapes with Julie involve a made up color she created, "breen". Other characters express confusion at what breen is and the subject quickly gets shifted before an explanation is given.
- Sapient House: Wally's house is alive and its windows are large moving eyes. While this is presented as just a typical puppet show quirk at first glance, it quickly becomes apparent that this is meant to be unsettling.
- Schedule Slip: In-Universe, the site's webmaster apologizes for doing the "Homewarming" update three months late in March 2024. Due to their Sanity Slippage, they had missed track of time by that much.
- Surprisingly Creepy Moment: Even if one doesn't look too deeply into things, there are scattered hints that not everything is quite so bright and cheerful, as a misclick on Wally's house might reveal, to name one example.
- Tie-In Cereal: The show was popular enough to have had a commercial cereal, "Crispy Sweets". The October 2023 Update revealed recovered parts of a licensed cookbook, with one of the recipes being for cereal bars in the shapes of the show's characters that featured the cereal as the primary ingredient.
- Wham Line: A set of video files on the website features conversations between two characters in the cast. Each one suddenly glitches and cuts off when one person asks for Wally's opinion, revealing they're shot from his POV. He was just quietly standing there the whole time, staring at nothing. The last one with Barnaby and Home is the most ominous, as Wally is said to appear disturbed when Barnaby remarks that a clown without a kazoo is "like an artist without his paintbrush". This video also confirms that each of the other videos took place on the same day.
- You Mean "Xmas": The inhabitants of Home celebrate holidays that resemble ones in the real world, which are known by alternative names such as "Haunting" for Halloween and "Homewarming" for Christmas.
- Hello.
You're there. I can't see you.
Do you see me?
Then stay quiet.
