The World of Tim Burton

Our first, and fairly minimal adventure of 2025 was on the 1st of February. Jamie gifted Lauren tickets to the Tim Burton Exhibition for Christmas due to her being a lifelong Burton fan. 

Having followed the tour and eagerly awaiting the final stop in the Design Museum, London, we managed to get in an hour earlier than our booking and explore the treasures within. 

This started with Burton's earlier works, the doodles, his first commercial arts, his desk space. All of which showed his style was developed immediately upon creation. There were no tweaks with the style over the years, what is jotted down on those napkins when Burton has an idea is ultimately what comes into fruition. 

This was quite a minimalistic area, drawings, journals and plaques were on display with writings telling of Tim's origins, but there wasn't anything stand out here, nothing you'd recognise unless you had studied the man inside out. 

Next we moved onto a more recognisable era when we glided into the main area. Here we glimpse Burton's most famous works. 

The first thing that caught my eye were of course the puppets and set pieces from The Corpse Bride. Poor Jamie lagged behind as he tried to read the writings on the wall, but I couldn't wait for him knowing I was mere centimeters away from the pieces from one of my favourite films. These were exquisite and I only wish there were more of these. In the end displayed were a small selection of pieces from The Corpse Bride, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Mars Attacks, and Frankenweenie. 

Having dabbled in stop motion animation myself I greedily took all this in and pretty much ignored the videos and snapshots of Burtons's other works around me. We were at the piece de résistance for me. 

Having finally have been dragged away we walked through and examined some of the early ideas for the pieces we had just viewed. We then went on to look at Burtons's heavy inspirations and then how this affected his work. 

These influences became evident when we crossed into the live action section. Here we had costumes from Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, Wednesday, Miss Peregrine's Home for Perculiar people, Batman, and Mars Attacks. 

Each costume was accompanied by original artwork, however there were only one or two pieces from each film. This exhibition did not seem as fleshed out as other entries on the map and certain films such as Sweeney Todd and Dark Shadows had been ignored and not mentioned. 

Moving swiftly on into Burton's art section, we were met with the weird and wonderful pieces created as our Gothic overlord tried his hand at static creation. These were made to be feared and lured over, to impress and disgust. 

It worked. 

In the final section before the extremely crowded giftshop we got to see Burton's other ventures. This included the adventures of Matchstick Boy and Meloncholy Boy. I was disappointed to see no mention of the slightly more relatable poems featuring Voodoo Girl or this venture. There were captures of other poems but these were all related to the displays already on show. 

This also included a nod to Burton's involvement with The Killers and the music video which came from the union. 

While we of course enjoyed our walk through, we wouldn't have said it was worth our journey to and from. We had treated this as our main event, the focal point of our Saturday and it was safe to say we were a little bit disappointed. 

As it goes Lauren was still glad we went as it has always been her aim to visit, but she was a bit let down by the fact this felt like a half arsed display of her icon. A small collection of pieces acquired unofficially to display in the name of Tim Burton.

We would recommend going of course, but don't make this your main reason for the trip, have this as a stop on the way to your destination. It isn't worth it as a day trip. We spent under an hour looking through, and this was with Lauren in hyper-focus, so take that how you will! 

DISCLAIMER: Now for the official bit. This blog does not receive any paid promotions from the places mentioned above. We have not been approached to promote or act as spokespersons for any attraction mentioned within this post and this is simply a post intended to act as a day in the life of a couple on a cute date. All photos included are taken by ourselves and as such the rights for these images our ours, no links, brands, or companies mentioned otherwise belong or are associated with Phantom Adventures UK. We are responsible only for this blog. Opinions are our own and not influenced by any third party source.. 

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