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Welcome Home brings lost neighbours to life with a new store

April 12, 2025
Welcome Home
Creative  It seems you don’t hear as much about alternative reality games (ARGs) as you once did. In the early days of Al Gore’s internet, they carried a novelty that came with exploring a new medium. By the 2010s, they were mostly being used more cynically in marketing campaigns for video games and films. These days, it’s not only that ARGs have lost their magic. The entire internet just isn’t as fun anymore.

That feeling has translated broadly into nostalgia, a desire for escapism, and curiosity about the unsettling. Along with that has come a resurgence of ARGs that uncover old projects, such as Welcome Home.

Created by the artist Clown, Welcome Home centres around a children’s television program of the same name from the 1970s. The show features puppets in a style similar to Sesame Street, with eight neighbours who live in a town called Home. The show ended abruptly in 1974, and now nobody seems to remember it.

The entry point for this ARG is the Welcome Home Restoration Project, which recovers artifacts from the show and publishes new materials every few months. The show seems innocent at first glance, but close examination of the recovered materials suggests that something is amiss. Fans have been trained to pay close attention to inconsistencies, mistakes, and other details that hint at the dark secrets behind the show.

Unlike marketing campaign ARGs that conclude with the release of a film or video game, Welcome Home preserves the feeling of not knowing what comes next. Before each update, the Restoration Project site goes offline and returns with new material that often takes the story in unexpected directions.

The latest “Springtime” update highlights one of the Home’s neighbours, Julie Joyful. Alongside the update, Welcome Home has unveiled a new store fashioned in the style of Howdy’s Place, the town’s grocery store operated by a green caterpillar.

The new store introduces plush versions of four neighbours from Home. In addition to Julie, there’s Wally Darling, Frank Frankly, and Barnaby B. Beagle, each one bearing a Springtime Pin attached to its apparel. The designs lean into the familiar Sesame Street aesthetic that Welcome Home has reframed into an eerie, melancholic nostalgia. The products create a way for fans to own a physical piece of the project while also supporting the ongoing story.

Merchandise can be challenging for an ARG to pull off, lest it throw the entire project into the same light as those marketing gimmicks from the 2010s. Welcome Home addresses this by highlighting the grassroots nature of the project on a credits page on the store. Promotions for the store are presented in the style of the recovered materials, making them feel like an natural extension of the universe. “We worked really hard to make sure the plush toys looked like they could have come straight out of the original show,” said Ben Bliss, Product Development Lead at Juniper Creates, which developed the new products. “We’re so inspired by what Welcome Home is doing, and we want to heighten the immersion, not break it.”

In addition to the plush toys, the store features large collector’s badges of the four neighbours. Each badge includes a backing that depicts the home of its character. All products are available on the Welcome Home shop until May 10.

Credits

Brand Strategy
Geoffrey Hill

Product DesignVictor Chang, Mirelys Colón, Stephanie Huang, Jana Paynor

Product DevelopmentBen Bliss, Tina Xia, Phil Xue 

Marketing + Store DesignNicholas Yee
Project ManagementSteven Thompson

PhotographyKuma Xiong

© 2026 Juniper Creates

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