Help me find a giant, not too expensive snake. (please. thanks)

March 15, 2009 11:03 PM

Help me find the most cost-efficient giant [fake] snake, please.

Ok, I need to get a giant toy/plush/otherwise fake snake. The problem I'm finding is that different people have different ideas of giant, and that giant-ness doesn't scale well price-wise. I can get a 6 foot snake here for ~$10, so that's about $1.67 a foot....but at the other end of the scale is the $100, 18-foot snake at a staggering $5.55 a foot. I'm hoping that I can find a pretty ridiculously long snake for under $20, and in my mind, that should get me at least 12 feet or so. Is there a secret store people go to for giant things?

posted by niles to grab bag (10 comments total)

Are you cool with making it yourself? (Minimal effort, dollaz, and talent required, I assure you.) Here you can see me with a roughly 3.5' worm I made for Halloween.

Materials and cost:

Large men's tube socks (8 bucks for a 6 pack at target...my worm used two)
RIT dye (one buck at a huge, non-specialty craft store--also available at walmart)
felt for embellishment (one buck at craft store/walmart)
bag of poly-fil for the stuffing (3 bucks at craft store/walmart)
needle and thread (I already had this, but it's, you know, super cheap too)

Total: Far under $20.

I dyed the socks, turned them inside-out, and stuffed them, then sewed them together. For a larger thing, you could just cut off the toe and patch together a mega-snake. And it totally doesn't matter if you sew like a retard, because the thread (use a like-color) will sink into the pile and basically disappear. After the dye had dried, the worm took about 15 minutes to throw together. Sweet.

Happy snaking!
posted by phunniemee at 11:39 PM on March 15

And to clarify, that's two socks, not two packs of socks that the worm used.
posted by phunniemee at 11:41 PM on March 15

IKEA usually stocks their giant green toy snakes.

Plush, safe for kids, inexpensive. Unfortunately you can't buy it online in the US from IKEA.
posted by seawallrunner at 11:56 PM on March 15

I have a green IKEA snake, and it's great, but it's about six feet long. You can find them on eBay sometimes. I'd probably buy two 6' snakes and carefully cut and sew them together to make one long snake.

A semi-related story: when I was in sixth grade, I wanted to make a very long snake prop to illustrate a presentation about boa constrictors or something like that. I collected piles and piles of cardboard tubes from empty toilet paper rolls, I painted them green and brown, and I strung them on some yarn. For my presentation I had a friend hold one end of the snake while I stood across the room holding the other end of the snake, and I talked all about how awful it would be to get eaten by something that big. It was great.
posted by dreamyshade at 2:06 AM on March 16

phunniemee: That's genius. Can I use regular thread, or did you use something thicker? (pretend I know nothing about sewing)

And dreamyshade, I love the tube idea. It's not really the look I'm going for, but I might be able to somehow incorporate that into the...project...that I'm working on here.
posted by niles at 2:15 AM on March 16

I used regular thread but went over my stitches several times. I was more worried about the stuffing coming out the gaps than I was the thread popping. However, if your snake is going to get a lot of play, you might want to get a stronger-than-normal thread. Ask at the craft store--they ought to have thick, strong thread in a variety of colors for making stuff like handbags. My favorite (cheapo) go-to solution for strong thread, though, is dental floss. It's pretty much impossible to break. If your snake is green, buy some mint...or you could let the white stuff (unwaxed) soak in a little bit of dye for a while.

Also, if you want your snake to be somewhat poseable, you can get a piece of semi-stiff wire and run it down the length of the guy. Just make sure to twist the ends into a nice, blunt ball so that the wire doesn't start poking itself out the snake's butt.

(If you do end up making the snake, you must post pictures.)
posted by phunniemee at 8:44 AM on March 16

Very cool. Thanks. I'll be going shopping today!
posted by niles at 10:37 AM on March 16

I dyed the socks with purple RIT dye after I went shopping a few weeks ago, and tonight I've finally had time to sit down at the sewing machine to start assembling my 10 socks. Hey, I said I wanted it to be giant!
I've actually run out of poly-fil for tonight, so I'll have to pick up another bag tomorrow. I should have some pictures up before the end of the week.
posted by niles at 11:37 PM on March 28

And...pictures!

The snake, and the snake stretched out.

He measures in at roughly 16 feet long, and with spending under $15 in supplies, I spent much less that $1/foot. If I hadn't needed to practice learn sewing techniques on a few socks, I could have ended up with something closer to 20 feet long.

phunniemee, thanks so much for your ideas and tips!
posted by niles at 10:01 AM on April 6

Aaaah! He is way cool. I'm so glad it worked out!
posted by phunniemee at 12:13 PM on April 6