Hilariously misguided Sesame Street Puppet instruction sheet

[Drtooth]

These were just posted on Muppet Wiki... and all I can say is, Really?

Pare one

page 2

Page 3

So... uh... kids really need parental guidance to know how to work a dang puppet?

Wait... here's another to encourage Using Props

Really?

 

[Schfifty]

Whoever wrote the instructions must have been under the impression that Oscar the Grouch would appeal more to boys than girls. The instructions use the pronoun "he" more than "she."

But I think kids should have parental guidance on how to work them. These are Sesame Street puppets here, and by the looks of them, they were probably targeted towards 2-4 year olds. They don't have a strong enough mental capacity to work a hand puppet like older kids do, especially when it comes to using puppets with a hole in their mouth. So it's pretty important to have parental guidance anyway to ensure that children know how to work a hand puppet.

 

[AlittleMayhem]

At first I didn't really understand how it was misguided, but the more I look at it, the more it seems...odd.

I mean, it has it interests at heart but I have seen kids play with puppets while their parents or any other adults interacted with them and greeting the puppet as a person. It doesn't need to be in an instruction manual, it's should be just a natural reaction. If a child asks you to say hello to their puppet, you better say hello!

I guess the manual's point is to get kids to encourage puppeteering? But, to be honest, I can think of better ways to do so without a manual. In fact, I HAVE taught kids how to handle puppets. (Admittedly with another adult who knew more about kids than I do, but still)

Perhaps when you give a puppet to a child that young, you have to teach them to not get the face dirty and to not play too rough with it and then let them do whatever. It's a little different with a 12-year-old who wants to do it as a hobby or a serious career choice, but that's something else entirely.

And, yes, good point! If you are going to make a manual about puppets for kids aged 2-4, why only use he/him/himself? Does the author really consider female hands to be too weak to stick up a bit of felt? Surely whoever made this would want a general audience regardless of gender, right? Right?

 

[Drtooth]

Whoever wrote the instructions must have been under the impression that Oscar the Grouch would appeal more to boys than girls. The instructions use the pronoun "he" more than "she."

The greatest failure of the English language is that we do not have a special ambiguous gender pronoun. I've been waiting years to say that, actually, because it drives me nuts. We either have to assume everyone's a "he," or we're stuck with the awkward "they" and the really awkward and clunky "he or she."

At first I didn't really understand how it was misguided, but the more I look at it, the more it seems...odd.

I mean, it has it interests at heart but I have seen kids play with puppets while their parents or any other adults interacted with them and greeting the puppet as a person. It doesn't need to be in an instruction manual, it's should be just a natural reaction. If a child asks you to say hello to their puppet, you better say hello!

I guess the manual's point is to get kids to encourage puppeteering? But, to be honest, I can think of better ways to do so without a manual. In fact, I HAVE taught kids how to handle puppets. (Admittedly with another adult who knew more about kids than I do, but still)

I read this thing again, and it's just baffling. It's almost as if it's an instruction book on how to deal with your kid's imagination written for... oh, I'll just say it. It's like the thing was written specifically for Mr. Spock, who finds the concept of imagination "fascinating." On one hand it's instructing mommy or daddy (or whatever) to instruct how to use a puppet. And on the level of this being a commercially manufactured kiddy puppet, there really isn't much to discuss. If a kid that young has ambitions to be a puppeteer, they'll figure it out the big complexities (i.e. the stuff about watching Oscar enough to get the speech patterns and movements down). Right now, it's put it on your hand and make funny noises. And it's not even that complex a puppet. I remember having a real nice Grover that even came with rods to attach to the arms (big, chunky plastic ones). That would be one that would need a complex list of instructions on proper technique.

But on the other hand, it really seems to be written for someone who doesn't know what imagination is... at an adult age. Somehow, it seems like it was written heavy handedly by a psychologist or something. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't. Either that, or they found some way to B.S. a kid's puppet into being an highly educational toy.

That said, I actually like that illustration of the kid holding the Oscar puppet and loudly going "BLECH" right in some other kid's face, and that kid being absolutely horrified by it. Strangely accurate Oscar behavior.

 

[Schfifty]

A slight correction in my post: it looks they were targeted towards 3-5 year olds, not 2-4 year olds. A 2-year-old may be too young to understand how to use a licensed puppet (although I did have a Grover hand puppet when I was a toddler).

 

[fuzzygobo]

Maybe they can start 2-4 year olds with the vintage finger puppets I had when I was their age: Little plastic jobs of Big Bird, Oscar, Ernie, Bert, and Cookie.
All have smiles on their faces, no hands or mouths to work, just let your toddler imagination go. If you can wiggle your fingers, you've mastered it. Minimal digital manipulation required.

 

[CensoredAlso]

Actually guys, it kinda reminds me of the exercises we would do when I volunteered to work with kids in Drama classes. We handed them a stuffed toy and told them a story about the character. Then we asked them questions like, "How does Fluffy feel about what happened?" Yeah I know it sounds like a Psychology nightmare, lol. But the idea is learning how to develop a backstory and you do learn about people's motivations and personalities.

Plus I could see this possibly benefitting autistic kids who need encouragement in starting conversations.

Also, I will be honest, I probably did follow Step 2 on the first page when I was a kid. I often watched TV shows with their corresponding action figures or toys and interacted with them. Kind of a kiddie MST3K, lol. I wanted my playtime to feel "accurate" that way.

Perhaps it seems weird to see this stuff written down in a manual, but they really aren't bad ideas.

 

[Drtooth]

That really does makes a lot of sense when you think about it. It's just very awkward having directions written down that intensively.

On the one hand, the instructions aimed at kids ranges from fairly obvious to needlessly complicated, but on the other hand, the adult instructions seem like they're written by a child psychologist to talk to parents that are either semi-inattentive or devoid of being able to understand the mind of a child. It's almost an educational guide on how parents should deal with imagination. There seems to be a baffling amount of extensively researched child development in the instructions of a children's toy. Especially a kind of toy that usually doesn't even come with a box, just a small hang tag.

It either comes across as they thought of everything or they're trying real hard to push this as an educational product.

 

[CensoredAlso]

That really does makes a lot of sense when you think about it. It's just very awkward having directions written down that intensively.

Yeah exactly, it's the kind of thing you think should happen organically.