Neighborhood of Make-Believe
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The Neighborhood of Make-Believe was the fictional kingdom inhabited by the hand puppet characters on the children's television program Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. The show's puppeteer was Fred Rogers himself, who played Mr. Rogers. Rogers developed many of the puppet characters years earlier for Josie Carey's program, The Children's Corner.
The adventures of the citizens of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe would appear in a short segment once in the middle of every episode. Mr. Rogers deliberately made clear the distinction between the "real world" and the Neighborhood of Make-Believe by transitioning into and out of the Neighborhood segment via a model electric trolley which looked like a small, red San Francisco cable car and would enter and exit through small tunnels in the wall, and by discussing what had happened with his audience after each segment had ended. The same storyline would continue for a week or more, though Rogers would always be sure to recap the plot for children.
The Neighborhood of Make-Believe was ruled by King Friday XIII and his wife Queen Sara. Other puppet characters included:
- Prince Tuesday, the young son of King Friday and Queen Sara;
- X the Owl, the resident intellectual who lived in a tree;
- Henrietta Pussycat, X's neighbour;
- Lady Elaine Fairchilde, the outspoken and cranky operator of the "Museum-Go-Round";
- Daniel Striped (pronounced Stripe-ed) Tiger, a shy introvert;
- Cornflake S. Pecially, the proprietor of a factory; and
- Donkey Hodie (a play on Don Quixote), a donkey.
- Grandpere, a French tiger who lives west of the castle, in the Eiffel Tower
- The Platypuses who were duck-billed platypuses and lived in a playtpus mound.
The Neighborhood also featured many characters played by actors wearing costumes (rather than puppets). Being full-sized human beings, these characters were much larger than the hand-sized puppet characters, and sometimes helped the puppet characters with tasks such as lifting or moving large objects, which the small puppet characters were unable to do. Some of these full-sized characters included:
- Bob Dog, a simple-minded canine;
- Lady Aberlin, King Friday's niece and frequently the "main" character of the segments;
- Mr. McFeely the delivery man sometimes delivered a letter to a citizen of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe;
- Robert Troll, the gibberish-speaking whimsical friend of the castle.
The world of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe also featured several other "regions". Along with King Friday's realm, there were also bordering territories, including the city of Westwood run by Mayor Maggie and her assistant Neighbor Aber, the city of Southwood, and the nebulous Someplace Else. Characters also frequently interacted with the inhabitants of the Planet Purple, where everything was purple and exactly the same. There was also Northwood where a goat lived.