Sunny day, sweepin' the clouds away, on my way to where the air is sweet, can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?
No, I can't tell you that, but I can ask Dr. Shrinker to shrink you, and give a tour of a scale model of the same street.
But, in all seriousness, I've gotten the mess of fake snow cleaned up for spring, and took a whole bunch of pictures of my scale model for you guys to see; I've tried to get as many angles as I possibly could, even though it was difficult in some spots (ala trying to get a good shot of Big Bird's nest area), but I hope you guys will enjoy this, though truth be told, I'm not sure the pics do the scale much justice... I think in order to really enjoy it, you have to see it in person... but you can be the judge of that.
First things first, as I've mentioned, up until 2008, I pretty much kept updating the scale with the show each season, but with the amount of changes and remodeling that was made that year, I decided not to update the scale anymore, however here in the past few weeks, I HAVE made some small changes to provide a mix of both old school and modern Sesame to the scale, as you're about to see - here are three different angles I shot of the arbor.
Angle One
Angle Two
Angle Three
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I've also taken the liberty of taking two different shots of major areas - one set of shots shows the scale completely bare, while the other set shows the scale dressed. Here's the tenament building that houses the Fix-It-Shop, Bob's apartment, and Hooper's Store; and for the record, these were the best green-leaf trees I could find for the scale, so please ignore the fact that they have patches of snow on them... if fact, when people ask (like my little niece for example), I simply say that it's actually a whole bunch of pigeon poop... see if that helps.
Bare
Dressed
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Now here's the lineup of the 123 brownstone, the construction doors that surround Big Bird's nest, and a brief glimpse of the dead-end alley next to it... and you know what I just realized? The dead-end alley is composed of parts of what used to be Finder's Keepers from Around the Corner. Well, from 1998 - 2007 anyway.
Bare
Dressed
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Speaking of which, here are some shots I managed to get of other locations as well, namely the alley where Oscar parks his Sloppy Jalopy from time to time, Big Bird's nest area, and even the roof of 123.
Alley
Big Bird's nest
Roof - Angle One
Roof - Angle Two
And just for the record, the layout of the roof is backwards to the building, but that's always the angle of which the roof was shot on the show, so that's all I had to work with for references.
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Now a while back, Ed asked that I would include pics of the characters I have to see how well they are in scale with their surroundings; really the only flaw is whenever it comes to merchandising, the Muppets are usually depicted as almost human-sized by nature, even in a lot of illustrations I've seen in books, magazines, etc, so while everyone may not be exactly in scale, I still think they look good on the scale (Big Bird especially, lol), so here they are, as well as the really crappy "homemade" Little People I did of Maria, Luis, Alan and Gordon...
Opening the Fix-it-Shop
"Me want to buy coooookie"
Elmo and Zoe play in the Arbor
"Hey kids! Bird! What IS goin' on?"
Don't mess with Oscar as he "de-buffs" his wheels
"My nest... my home..."
Super Grover and Bert on the roof
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And lastly, here's an aereal shot of the whole thing...
Pic
And to top all that off, here's the scale's timeline, "engraved" into the sidewalk across the street...
Pic
It's still not quite complete just yet... there's a few more things I'd like to obtain for the scale; here's my current wishlist...
Characters
- Snuffy
- Count
- Prairie Dawn
- Telly
- Baby Bear
- Abby Caddaby
Props
- Three sets of tables of chairs for outside Hooper's in the arbor
- A decent worktable for the front of the Fix-it-Shop
- A better blue mailbox
So there ya have it, you've waited, and now it's come; if you got questions, ask and I'll answer 'em.