Santa's Face Before & After

Here's a very detailed look at the cleaning of Santa's Face without the beard, mustache, eyebrows, and hat. This shows the original condition before any cleaning and how it came out after very detailed and careful initial cleaning. You can see extra dried glue from the eyebrows, and other dirt and marks from the aging process. The dark areas where the beard touched the head were caused by an original foam material that was used to stuff the original beard. The foam decayed inside the beard and caused the staining of the face under the beard. Fortunately the areas that will be exposed were not much affected. The beard has been cleaned too and restuffed with a better foam that will not decay over time, so Santa's beard will stay full and clean from here on. Another thing to note is that Santa's face is still all original paint. There was no need to repaint or even touch up the paint, which perserved the authentic look of Santa. The paint you see on screen when watching the TV special is the same paint you will see now when viewing the puppet.

Again note that Santa not only never had a mouth, but he never even had a chin! The beard covered all that and gave the illusion of a normal full face.