There’s another creative force along Emeryville’s Historic Park Avenue District that gets a bit less attention than its Oscar-winning neighbors — albeit in a decidedly more “analog” way.

For 50 years, Folkmanis Puppets (pronounced “fohk-mah-nees”) has been creating remarkably detailed hand puppets from specialty fabrics, foam and plastic — turning everything from raccoons and turtles to dragons and dinosaurs into toys designed to spark imagination.

The company has survived the destructive 1989 earthquake, the threat of displacement, the rise of increasingly screen-based entertainment and, most recently, navigating tariffs. Through it all, Folkmanis has remained a family-run Emeryville business with no apparent plans to slow down.

From Latvia to Yellow Springs, Ohio

Folkmanis co-founder Atis Folkmanis was the son of a Latvian family displaced during World War II who eventually immigrated to the United States and settled in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

While earning his bachelor’s degree at nearby Antioch College, Atis met his future wife, Judy Siegel, who had grown up in Brooklyn, New York.

After serving together in the Peace Corps, the couple settled down and started a family. Their first son, Daniel, was born in 1966, followed by Jason in 1968.

That same year, Atis returned to graduate school, eventually earning his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

While Atis pursued his studies, Judy began sewing puppets from a pattern she found in a magazine to entertain her young children.

The timing was fortuitous. In 1969, Sesame Street and The Muppets brought puppetry into millions of American homes, helping fuel a new appreciation for puppets as both entertainment and educational tools.

Following Atis’ graduation, he was offered a postdoctoral research position at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1972, the family packed up and headed west.

1972: Move to Berkeley, “Furry Folk Puppets” Is Born

While Atis worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Berkeley’s molecular biology department, Judy began sewing puppets for her son’s nursery school and school fundraisers.

She soon moved beyond existing patterns and began creating her own, increasingly lifelike animals — including a skunk, beaver, koala, bunny and raccoon. She studied animal and nature books, magazine and newspaper photographs, and visited zoos to better understand how the animals moved.

Other parents took notice and began asking for puppets of their own.

Judy eventually began selling her creations along Telegraph Avenue, then a thriving craft marketplace, helping supplement the family’s income.

After Atis completed his postdoctoral fellowship, the couple decided to give the fledgling business a serious try. They figured they would give it “a year or so” to see whether they could build something sustainable, even writing a contract with themselves to formalize the commitment.

In 1976, they established Furry Folk Puppets.

The division of labor was natural: Judy was the creative force while Atis brought his scientific and analytical background to the business side.

The company quickly outgrew the family’s living room and moved into a small commercial space in Berkeley. They hired seamstresses, expanded their offerings and introduced a line called “Folktails.”

They also quickly established a niche around realistic animal puppets. In their first year, they sold approximately 8,000 puppets.

One of their first significant breakthroughs came when they began selling Judy’s patented “Tenderfoot Turtle” — a green turtle puppet that could be pulled completely inside its shell — through a toy distributor.

1977: Folkmanis Comes to Emeryville

In 1977, Furry Folk moved to a job-site trailer in the Emeryville Marketplace parking lot, which had opened two years earlier but was struggling to attract tenants.

The company was offered rent-free space on the condition that it open a store in the developing marketplace. The arrangement gave Folkmanis its first Emeryville home, where the puppets were manufactured from 1977 to 1978.

“I remember exploring the area as a child when my parents were busy,” their younger son, Jason, recalled of Emeryville in the late 1970s. “I’d get a sandwich from my favorite Marketplace stall and go count train cars along the Southern Pacific tracks. That was the most entertaining thing I could find!”

By 1980, Folkmanis had moved again, this time to 1219 Park Avenue, a distinctive brick industrial building that the company purchased and which would become its long-term home. Built in 1917 as the Peoples’ Baking Company, the building gave Folkmanis room to expand as the company grew.

It was around this time that the company began making the business decisions that would transform it from a small craft operation into a much larger specialty toy manufacturer.

Rather than relying primarily on craft fairs and direct sales, Folkmanis expanded into specialty toy retail and wholesale distribution. As demand grew, the company began outsourcing manufacturing to Asia — a pragmatic decision that allowed the relatively small Emeryville company to increase production and compete at a much larger scale.

At the same time, Atis and Judy sought to balance the more hard-nosed realities of running a growing business with a commitment to giving back. Folkmanis established a community giving program that provided puppets to nonprofits and educators, where they could be used for early childhood development, language learning and emotional support.

They had started with puppets sewn in their Berkeley living room; now they were building a company with a growing workforce, an international supply chain and a distribution network reaching far beyond the Bay Area.

1989: Quake Damage and a Threat of Displacement

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake inflicted huge damage across the Bay Area, including Emeryville, where many of the city’s historic industrial buildings suffered damage.

At Folkmanis, a brick chimney crashed through the roof, injuring an employee.

But the disaster also brought the company’s employees closer together, according to a 1990 Oakland Tribune story covering the recovery efforts.

“We got closer. It was like we were a big family,” seamstress Ana Floriendo told the reporter.

The damage required a roughly $300,000 seismic retrofit, but the company was able to make the repairs, rebuild and continue growing.

The next big threat came in 1993, when Kaiser looked to acquire the Del Monte property across Park Avenue to build a new healthcare campus. Atis and Judy feared their business could be displaced through eminent domain.

Amid strong community pressure, Kaiser ultimately abandoned the project, and Pixar moved in four years later.

2001: 25th Anniversary

By its 25th anniversary in 2001, Folkmanis had built a successful business without relying heavily on the mass-market toy industry. Its growth was fueled by independent specialty toy stores, museum shops, nature stores, national park gift shops and educational retailers. Rather than pursuing mass-market chains, the company focused on partnerships with smaller specialty toy and gift stores, science and nature museums, zoo and aquarium gift shops and national parks.

By then, Folkmanis had grown to roughly 30 employees, with jobs spanning puppet design, product development, sales, marketing, warehousing, shipping and administration. Their oldest son, Daniel, was already working alongside them, beginning what would become more than four decades with the company.

The strategy helped the company develop a loyal following among both children and adults.

Its puppets also began making appearances in unexpected places, including Saturday Night Live, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, The Colbert Report and numerous films.

Collectors and fans of their products included Robin Williams, Dr. Ruth, Mr. Rogers, Iris Apfel and Steve Jobs.

As the toy industry became increasingly dominated by technology, Judy remained committed to the basic appeal of a physical toy that could be held, manipulated and brought to life by its owner.

“As the industry becomes more technological, we remain true to our original mission, making wonderful puppets that are as much fun to play with as to cuddle,” she told an interviewer at the time.

Passing the Torch

Throughout their lives together, they traveled the world including two trips to Africa where they saw some of the animals up close that had helped to inspire the creation of the business.

Atis and Judy were among the donors who helped revive Antioch College after its closure in 2008. The campus President’s House was renamed in their honor.

Judy passed away in 2016 at the age of 74 following a two-decade-long battle with multiple sclerosis. At the time of her passing, Folkmanis had distributed more than 50 million educational animal puppets worldwide. The company continues to recognize her creative vision, which remains part of its DNA.

The company faced another significant challenge just a few years later, when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted its retail customers and operations.

Jason, whose career had been in journalism, stepped into a larger role in the family business to help lead the company through the unprecedented disruption. As retail stores and other customers closed their doors, the company had to quickly adapt its operations.

“I brought in my two children and wife to help box up products and ship them to customers,” he recalled.

Despite the uncertainty, Folkmanis was able to retain all of its employees and ultimately weather the downturn, emerging from the pandemic with the business intact.

Atis passed away six years after Judy in 2022 at the age of 83. Daniel and Jason officially assumed leadership of Folkmanis, continuing the family business their parents had built.

Folkmanis Today

Today, Folkmanis remains headquartered at its longtime home at 1219 Park Avenue, with brothers Daniel and Jason Folkmanis carrying on the company their parents founded.

The business continued to grow, and in 2015 Folkmanis acquired an adjacent property used for storage, shipping and receiving, expanding its footprint while keeping its operations centered on the same Park Avenue block.

The company has continued to evolve while staying true to its original formula: imaginative, tactile toys that encourage children to create their own stories.

Over its five decades, Folkmanis has created more than 2,000 different puppet designs, ranging from realistic animals to fantastical creatures and licensed characters. The company continues to introduce new designs each year.

That adaptability has become increasingly important as traditional toys compete with ubiquitous screens and digital entertainment for children’s attention. Folkmanis argues that hands-on, open-ended play offers something fundamentally different.

“Toy trends come and go, but one thing remains true about traditional play: the best toys are those that actively engage a child mentally, physically, emotionally, and socially,” the company says.

“For fifty years we have taken great pride in providing classic, evergreen toys that are a mainstay in toy collections around the globe,” says Elaine Kollias, Folkmanis’ Creative Director. “We endeavor to keep pushing the boundaries in plush puppets as we uncover new sources for inspiration.”

“It took me a while to fully understand, but our corporate culture is really rooted in being a family-run business — something my parents instilled in us,” Jason explained. “We’ve always focused on our core strength: creating unique, realistic and engaging puppets.”

After 50 years, the formula remains remarkably close to what Judy Folkmanis discovered in her Berkeley living room: a little fabric, foam, ingenuity and imagination can bring an animal to life.