All the king's horses and all the king's men may not have been able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, but Tauranga artists Sam Allen and Ally Drury have.

Not only has the much-loved Memorial Park icon been mended, but the repainted version comes complete with a new set of contemporary clothes.

'We wanted to make Humpty Dumpty more modern,” says Sam, 'so we took inspiration from hip-hop culture and added some sneakers to him.”

The two artists were given free rein by Tauranga City Council to come up with a fresh design for the much-loved statue which was vandalised in December last year.

As well as having his arm repaired and a new face painted back on, Humpty's new pair of jeans give him a current streetwear look, and his jacket is based on the Bay of Plenty Steamers' colours.

'We changed it a little bit to not make it extremely obvious that it's the Steamers,” says Sam.

'He also has some ties to Kiwiana, with a pounamu necklace and a kiwi embroidered on his front jean pocket.”

A painting of Mauao is featured on his back along with a picture of Humpty Dumpty surfing at the Mount and a sun inspired by Maui legends.

'Before he looked like an egg without a shell, just showing the egg white all bleached, and now he has a shell. We also wanted to give him a kind, nurturing smile rather than the big grin he had before.”
It took the artists about 200 hours to complete the sculpting and painting, with the cost of the project, including all the materials and fencing, totalling $13,000.

While Humpty Dumpty was being worked on, locals enjoyed watching the makeover.

Sam says only a handful of people seemed puzzled as to why Humpty Dumpty wasn't looking the same way as he was before.

'It was so awesome to have people visit each day. There were about 500 people that came up and said what they liked about it.

'Kids came up all day while we were painting saying ‘wow that's cool' and people came by to say how much they loved it.”