Meet the Owner of The Blob Silicone

Wes Shank bought the blob in November of 1965. Not an action figure, or even a high-end replica of the gelatinous thing, but the blob; the slow rolling, man eating, havoc wreaking blob itself. In the flesh. He keeps it in a can in his Delaware County home.

“I have to call it ‘The Blob Silicone’ though, or something like that,” he explained during a break from his job at Raymour and Flanigan Furniture, talking to a reporter about the thing reporters occasionally call to talk to him about this time of year.

“There are legal reasons,” he added.

We’ll take this one from the top.

The year is 1965: Shank, a science fiction enthusiast turned memorabilia collector, then 19, caught a screening of The Blob at a theater in Ardmore. It wasn’t his first viewing—he’d seen the picture as a child when it was rereleased in 1958—but on this afternoon he noticed during the closing credits that it had been produced at a studio called Valley Forge Films.

“Could that be a studio around here?” he thought to himself.

After consulting a phonebook (a detail that dates this story as well as any) Shank learned that a facility by that name was located in nearby Chester Springs. Curiosity piqued, he recruited a friend and the pair called and asked if they could swing by the studio and take a look around. The voice on the other end, puzzled, flattered, said sure, why not? When Shank and his pal arrived at the lot, they were met by an unexpected greeter: Blob director Irvin “Shorty” Yeaworth, who proceeded to give the boys a guided tour.

“He took us all around the place. He showed us the editing room, the screening room,” Shank remembered, “and then I saw something sitting in the corner of a dusty sound stage.”

He and his friend, with the blessing of Yeaworth, walked over to the black can to get a better look.

“We peeled the lid off and inside was this red sticky substance,” Shank said. Two gallons of industrial silicone, dyed red. The teen had stumbled upon one of the most celebrated monsters in movie history.

He decided he had to have it.

But when Shank offered to buy the monster from its creator he was promptly rebuffed. Undeterred, he tried again. And again.

And again.

“I was bound and determined to buy it from Shorty and I just kept badgering him,” he laughed.

After a few months, Yeaworth finally relented and sold it to the persistent kid for a sum that will forever remain a mystery. (Its owner won’t tell and Yeaworth died in a car accident in Jordan in 2004).

Shank owned the blob silicone. Most of it anyway.

“I was told it originally filled about half the can it was stored in. I got a little less than that, about two gallons of it,” said Shank, adding that a special effects supervisor explained that the remainder had been lost during filming or given away to the crew as keepsakes.

There’s also the matter of the name. While Shank owns the silicone, he doesn’t have its naming rights. Consequently, he has to be creative in how he refers to it.

“I’ve been in trouble before for that,” he admits.

Whatever it’s called—and he’s still not completely settled on that question—Shank takes his role as its caretaker seriously. He keeps the blob silicone in its original container—“Shipped from Union Carbide, West Virginia,” he says proudly—and has even bought over the years a couple of the miniature sets that were used on the film.

And he never misses a Blobfest. The event's organizers tracked him down before the festival's second year and he's attended each one since.

If you see him this weekend at the , say hi. He might just show you the inside of his can.

Editor's note: an earlier version of this story identified Shank as the owner of 'The Blob.' While Shank owns the silicone it was composed of, he does not have ownership of the name 'The Blob.'