My research so far into Daedalus Games & Aster's history
As mentioned on the home page, Aster was created as the mascot for game store Daedalus Games's local gaming magazine. I've got a bit of a backlog of info I've been saving up that I still need to organize and get out here, and there's recent stuff too (honestly, it's the recent stuff that finally got me to make an archive for it all).
You've seen the photo of my Aster plushes around the site, I'm already an avid collector of obscure 80's plushes and he fit perfectly into my collection! It was when I was trying to find information on him that I fell down this whole rabbit hole. Like a lot of lesser-known mascots from that time period, he's pretty difficult to find since there was never any home media or widespread merch released.
I know some of you are just here for the animatronic. That's ok! From what I can tell, he's from Californian company Terry's Carving Co. that shifted from carved statues to specializing in animatronic shooting galleries as a budget option for theming. Terry's Carving Co. doesn't appear in any Daedalus Games' records, but I noticed a few of the names credited with the animatronic's creation overlapped with Daedalus' owners and crew. Since the company is local, they likely knew each other or were reccomended by a mutual friend. Which may explain why a video game store got ahold of an animatronic in the first place, it's pretty uncommon even for a project as big as their re-vamped flagship location.
Unfortuantely, I'm still trying to look for photos of the animatronic itself in its place outside the store. In the meantime, I have a handful of other photos I've dug up of bears made by TCC. They tend to re-use the same face mold for almost all of their bears, so I assume Aster looked pretty similar. He of course would have grey skin instead, with darker fur, and some sort of Hawaiian or collared shirt. I don't believe the eyes of these ones move, and I'm unsure if that was something they were be capable of doing.
A carnival barker bear being prepared for instalation
