The Rats of NIMH

The Rats of NIMH was KGB's Booth entry for the Independent category to Carnival in 1998, which was themed "Children's Literature." Although not entirely a Russian themed story (Peter and the Wolf had been taken before, and nobody seemed keen to do it again), but I think we managed to give the rats a sort of communist/socialist theme to them.

The structure of the booth was simple, re-using the basic parts from booths from years previous. Basically, it was a simple one room structure with steps and a two doorway entrance/exit. The exterior was supposed to look like a rose bush, with the interior emulating an outside scene of a farm field at night. In the middle was a tree and a small plot where a small diorama of rats and objects were placed, and the game was to use a pulley /magnet system to lift a stone "house" to rescue the rat family.

There were three Booth chairs that year; Daisy Church, who oversaw Art Direction, Elaine, who designed the game and structure, and John-Eric Hoffman, who oversaw construction. We had many, many hard-working KGB-ers who pitched in to help and make it a great looking booth, but we lost out (honestly... I can't even remember if we placed? Anyone? I think we might have placed third, but then might have had some sort of judging mistake and had it taken by Fringe, but I'm not sure), resulting in much sadness and a long running "Bitter Bus" joke that ran it's course for a few years afterwards.