Ratoath man's company fitting out Toy Show set
Shadow Creations, a company headed up by Ratoath man Kevin Murphy, has been very busy this week preparing for what promises to be one of the greatest Late Late Toy Show productions ever staged, as the country and world reaches the end of 2020, the pandemic year.
For over 20 years Shadow Creations Ltd has specialised in the construction of sets, props, models, costumes and miniatures for the TV, film, event, and advertising industries, and has produced sets for many well-known RTE shows over the past decade, including The Late Late Toy Show set-up.
Current projects include the Toy Show, the Santa Experience at Croke Park, Guinness Storehouse at Baltimore, Maryland, USA, and Guinness Storehouse at Shanghai, China.
Presenter Ryan Tubridy says: "Never before did the children, their parents and their grandparents deserve a Toy Show like the one they're going to get on Friday. And strangely, this is a show for children, and grandparents, as much as for parents, because too many people have spent time looking through windows and meeting relatives through windows.
"This Toy Show is about coming home. Back on the couch, get the chocolates going and get busy laughing at me, and occasionally with me. But laughing, because there hasn't been enough of it. So let's bring that to the table on Friday night."
Tubridy teased that the "Covid situation allowed us to mix things up a little bit", with "a little bit of involvement from our friends in the showbiz world or thereabouts" to complement the real stars of the show.
He said that "nearly every kid" who applied to be on this year's Toy Show had acknowledged the Covid-19 emergency in their application.
"They're missing their grannies and they're missing their granddads and they are missing their cousins in Australia and in England and in America, who they should be rocking around the Christmas tree with in a few weeks' time. So we won't hide behind the Christmas tree on that one, but we won't go heavy on it either because it isn't about that. We're not going to pretend it hasn't existed, but we'll be doing it with a twist of seasonal silliness because we're allowed. Anything goes on Toy Show night."