On tour now is Imago Theatre's ZooZoo, a production chock full of anthropomorphic animal costumes.

ZooZoo is a 55-minute performance comprised of a series of short, silent theatre pieces, each from four to seven minutes in length. The cast of five play animals ranging from fireflies to hippos, in skits that include penguins playing musical chairs, and anteaters dressed as waiters. As the promotional video shows, there is quite a bit of audience interaction:

Having completed most of their tour already, the production appears in Ithaca, New York on Friday, April 12, and then moves on to Cleveland, Ohio (May 7-11) and St. Albert, Alberta (May 28-June 1).

… takes them to the dungeon, and does bad, bad things to them. If you thought VancouFur had an offensive theme, watch out! This one is truly NSFW, and best for those who appreciate wanton displays of licentious content.

The queer furry rapper's video, "Why the Boys All Love Me", follows an announcement for the making of a "nightmarish gay goth animal S&M" video at Halloween in San Francisco. It flaunts his mission to "put Satan back into hip-hop", and makes a sequel to a previous video featuring fursuiters. This time, Furry content is minimal, and indirectly limited to a few cameos and participation by dedicated furries who cross over between that group and others (such as the S&M fetish scene). Please consider it labeled that way up front, and view accordingly.

Following an unsuccessful campaign on Kickstarter (covered last month), Shota Ishiwatari has moved fundraising for Tailly, 'the tail that wags when you get excited', over to Indiegogo.

Tailly responds to the wearer's heartbeat, wagging fast when a raised heartbeat indicates high emotion and slowing with the pulse to a swing.

This time, the target amount is $50,000 – just over half the Kickstarter goal of £60,000 – which needs to be raised by March 7th, 2013 if the project is to be funded.

The Cartoon Brew has reported earlier on Warner Bros. making tests of live-action/CGI versions of Marvin the Martian and Hong Kong Phooey for “live-action” features featuring the cartoon stars. Now the CB has that test footage, thanks to director Alex Zamm.

While Marvin the Martian is borderline anthropomorphic (what else could he be?), Hong Kong Phooey, based on Hanna-Barbera’s 1974 TV cartoon, is undeniably anthropomorphic.

The Cartoon Brew says, “Quick! Check these out before they remove them from the internet…”, which presumably means that this may be considered too embarrassing to leave up for long, due to the literal toilet humor..

Shota Ishiwatari, who worked on prototypes of the necomimi brainwave-activated cat ears for Neurowear, has turned to Kickstarter to fund a new, independent project, Tailly.

Attached to a belt, Tailly responds to the wearer's heartbeat to produce a wagging motion when a raised heart rate indicates excitement, slowing to a swing as the heartbeat drops. The tail comes with a white furry cover as standard; black, brown and grey are available.

Update (29 Jan): The campaign failed, but it's been restarted on Indiegogo.

Emoki hopes to make a splash with custom ears for the Necomimi EKG-triggered headsets first sold this May.

The Californian startup's foam ear fittings come in bear, fox and rabbit forms, while the faux-fur sleeves come in a variety of colours – including a limited-edition "pika" variety for those willing to throw in an extra $10.

But at $12,416, the Kickstarter project meant to raise initial orders is only a third of the way to its goal, with less than ten days to go. [tip: Nathaniel Hahn]

Update (3 Nov): Emoki cancelled their Kickstarter project and restarted it on Indiegogo with a $3500 goal.

The Cartoon Brew website has been covering the partnering of Barneys New York, a luxury haute couture shop, with the Disney organization to feature some classic Disney characters wearing exclusive Paris fashion styles, as part of Barneys’ Electric Holiday campaign, debuting at Barneys’ Madison Avenue store on November 14.

Women’s Wear Daily reported on August 29,

When unveiled to the public on Nov. 14, Barneys’ Madison Avenue flagship will feature a three-dimensional electric light show; a moving art short film in the window displays that will turn Disney’s most favorite heroes into runway supermodels and fashion regulars into Disney types, and an original score by Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino. […] The theme is a riff on Disney’s famous electrical parade, as well as the special lighting installations so central to the New York holiday season and the flashbulbs of fashion runways. […] The short film centers around Minnie Mouse’s fantasy to be at the Paris shows. There she comes across key Disney characters — Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Daisy Duck, Cruella de Vil, Princess Tiana and Snow White — all decked out in unique designer clothes as they make their way down the runway.

The announcement was also covered by the Los Angeles Times, Retailing Daily, Fashion Weekly, and others.

But the Cartoon Brew has the exclusive on the controversy that this is causing. The online Change.org is soliciting signatures for a petition to “leave Minnie Mouse alone”.

MC Crumbsnatcher's recently released first music video is set to be followed by a second video shoot on October 15, timed to benefit from Halloween season. The video is themed "S&M gay bar in hell", and is meant to cross over with leather/animal costuming popular among a subset of the San Francisco furry community. It will feature a story about witches who abduct Crumbsnatcher's love interest, a penguin.

A series of videos are set to follow, including a shoot in Las Vegas for a wedding scene of a unique nature.

Library director Janet Nocek of Portland, Connecticut had her work cut out explaining furries to board members tonight after calling a meeting to review the library's behaviour policy, reportedly after fursuited visits to other local libraries raised fears of child enticement.

The piece in the Hartford Courant highlighted concerns about those visiting in disguise, and in particular non-religious use of hoods or masks (forbidden by the library's rules of conduct), which in this case might cause families to mistake fursuiters as official mascot characters.

Update (14 Sep): The issue was raised in a discussion thread started late last month by Henry Dutcher of Enfield. Initial replies were humorous, but the talk got more serious when he mentioned a child took a fursuiter's paw and was "led away by them" (within the library).

Update 2 (17 Sep): Television stations WFSB and NECN have also covered this story.

Are they anthropomorphic? Thank Roscoe there is nothing like them in real life!

There has been so much successful anthopomorphization in animation in the last few years that we tend to forget that anthropomorphization can be done in full-body suits, too – and I don’t mean fursuits! The Oogieloves are a throwback to Barney the purple dinosaur or H.R. Pufnstuf, except that Sid & Marty Krofft did it better back in 1969.

The Oogieloves in The Big Balloon Adventure, released in over 2,000 theaters on “Oogust” 29, features Goobie, Zoozie, and Toofie (they’re anthropomorphic somethings!) who live in Lovelyloveville, in a feature that encourages the audience to talk, sing, and dance in the aisles while the movie is going on; with cameos by live-action Toni Braxton, Cloris Leachman, Christopher Lloyd, Cary Elwes, Jaime Presley, Chazz Palminteri, and others.

The distributor is Kenn Viselmann, the former producer of Thomas the Tank Engine and Teletubbies, which will tell you what age group he is aiming for (old enough to sing and dance in the aisles; too young to have cel phones).

The Cartoon Brew website, which has covered this release, reports that this has gotten “disasterous reviews” (LA Times - NY Times). But Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 38% rating (Ed: now down to 30%), which means that several reviewers did like it. Hmmm. Watch the trailer and decide for yourself – if you are not too embarrassed for Toni Braxton, Cloris Leachman, Christopher Lloyd, et al., acting like retarded idiots.

As reported a year ago, "mind-controlled" cat ears are finally on the market. [CalistaF]

It's unclear whether the technology relies on brainwave analysis or muscular nerve inputs, and the promotional video shows movement to be limited. Still, they seem to be in demand.

This year Anthrocon got pushed into Father's day weekend to make way for the NHL Draft as opposed to its traditional timing of the last Sunday of June. Now it would appear that furry is returning the favor and encroaching on the NHL.

When asked about taking on the Penguins in the quarter-final playoffs, Ilya Bryzgalov, the goalie of the rival Philadelphia Flyers, said:

You know, I'm not afraid of anything. I am afraid of bear, but bear is in the forest.

Being a city that is no stranger to animal costuming, the response of "about 70" Pittsburgh fans was to don bear costumes to taunt and perhaps take advantage of Ilya's ursaphobia.

Although the tactic appeared to be having an effect at the start, the Flyers seemed to overcome their fears, and now hold a commanding 3-0 lead in the playoff series.

On io9, Ron Miller posted a gallery of his photos of Cosplayers from 1970's science fiction conventions. (NSFW)

This subculture spun off Furries, and it made me wonder if any proto-furry costumes were included. The closest I saw were a bird-woman and insect characters, who could be described as anthropomorphic, but not "furry".

What are the earliest records of organized furry activities? I'd guess these are somewhat underexposed and could be better documented [Yarf #46 (Jan 1997)].

Experts from Wolong National Nature Reserve believe interaction with researchers in these goofy looking costumes may increase a panda cub’s chance of survival once introduced to the wild.

"Well, it's funny looking but hey, whatever works!" said one employee when asked of the outfits.

In 2006, the research team introduced a captive-born male cub into the wild, only to have it tragically rejected and killed by its free-roaming brethren, according to the Washington Post.

For this month, I’ve kept the tags to ten. Hopefully they catch the furry zeitgeist.