Wallace and Gromit superfans have swamped UK tattoo parlours since the beloved animation returned to TV screens last month - but not to celebrate the show’s heroes.
It is Feathers McGraw, the evil penguin who comically disguises himself as a chicken with a red rubber glove on his head, who has become an unlikely sensation in British inking shops over the past month.
McGraw, who is the main villain in Aardman’s Oscar-nominated Vengeance Most Fowl, which aired on Christmas Day, has become a viral sensation since he was defeated by the inventor and his sharp-witted dog.
Images of the feathered criminal have now been spread widely online - and according to tattoo artists, on fans’ skin.
“In this last week just gone I did six Feathers,” Faith Garvie, a 33-year-old tattoo artist at Black Moon Tattoo Studio in Liverpool, said. “I’ve been brought to tears a couple of times because people have been so positively impacted by the tattoos.”
The tattoos take between one and three hours to create, Ms Garvie said. They are usually placed on people’s arms or legs, and women between 18 and 30 are the most common clients.
“I guess it’s just the magic of claymation, as he’s so emotive, but he doesn’t speak at all,” Ms Garvie said in explanation of McGraw’s popularity.
“I’m super lucky with my clients, we have the most wonderful conversations about why they’re getting the tattoos,” she said. “A lot of it will be they grew up with the characters or their family grew up with them.
“One guy came in and got his first tattoo, it was of the Feathers wanted poster. He was the dad of two teenagers and said he had really wanted the tattoo since lockdown, so that was really lovely.”
Gia O’Donohoe, a 20-year-old international relations student at Liverpool John Moores University, decided to get the tattoo after watching the Christmas Day special.
“When I saw the scene with him and the seal, it was a lightbulb moment and I knew it was going to be that one,” Ms O’Donohoe said. She had an image of McGraw with a seal pup on his lap tattooed on her right arm by the Brass Tattoo Company in Liverpool.
The image of the tattoo received more than 9,000 likes and 200,000 views, and was reposted by Wallace and Gromit creators Aardman.
“It was kind of crazy, I just decided to tag them and they were one of the first people who liked it, and then they reposted it and then it got 3,000 likes overnight,” she said.
Despite the McGraw tattoo, Ms O’Donohoe’s favourite character is actually Gromit. “He’s a really cool character and even though he’s docile, sometimes he can flick a switch and become the hero of the day,” she explained.
There are two images of McGraw which are the most popular, Ms Garvie explained. “One of them is from Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers – it’s where Feathers gets stuck in a glass bottle.
“Everyone seems to adore that and some people get it with the glove on his head and others without.
“There’s also a scene – again, where he’s in The Wrong Trousers, where he’s standing at the bottom of the stairs in Wallace and Gromit’s house and he looks over at them, and people get that scene a lot as well.”
Ms Garvie plans to get a McGraw tattoo for herself once business calms down. “It’s mainly just finding the time to be honest,” she said.
