A little known character that never made it past the cutting room floor, THING 3 figurines are finally available for purchase online. Outside of a handful of Suess historians and die-hard enthusiasts, few have ever heard of the horribly mutated third brother of the red-clad Suess duo. Even by today's lax standards, the idea of a children's book character with a cleft palate, hunchback and lazy eye would seem questionable.
Despite much argument from the author, the decision was finally made to abandon the third less fortunate THING for the quirky but otherwise mutation-free 1 and 2.
"It's not that he (longtime editor Arnie Soapcheck) was opposed to depicting the handicapped," said biographer Nick Warren. "But I mean the thing had open sores and in one draft sketch, a colostomy kit. As avant-garde as some of the Doctor's work seemed at the time, that was just asking a bit much of the audience. Teaching children to welcome differences meant those that may have eaten funny foods or wore strange clothes, or liked to sleep on the roof. Not those with extra sets of fingers coming from their spinal column and an inability to ingest solid foods."
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