Vintage Sesame Street Count Puppet from Canada

[BoppityFrack]

Hey folks, I’ve recently acquired two of the Count puppets. One of which has the smooth white fabric and the other has the ribbed white fabric, neither have a tongue. I’m currently waiting for the ribbed fabric to arrive later today so I can look further into him, but I do have the smooth fabric one in and it doesn’t look like there was any glue residue from the tongue at all. Mine has a small tag on the inside saying “made in Hong Kong” so I’m not too sure about that. I have just found a vintage ad showing him with the Topper Ernie, Cookie and Oscar (who weirdly enough doesn’t have an eyebrow?) and he does have a tongue in the ad. If anyone has any photos of their count or ones sold online, please feel free to send me photos, would be much appreciated! My email is reesejlscott@gmail.com

 

[BoppityFrack]

I have a theory that the puppets were made by Topper but stopped production early because of the rights being sold to Child Guidance. I’m thinking maybe they didn’t finish making some of the hands (which is why some have Roosevelt hands), tongues (which is why some don’t have any) and monocles which is why there are so many variations. They might have potentially ran out of the original fabric they were using for the white and black and had to improvise with the new materials? If that one box is real, I feel like they just slapped it together to get rid of the stock they had, which is why they didn’t take a whole new photo with a kid and the Count puppet and just edited the one of the kid with Oscar. This would all explain why the puppet is in the same style, size and material as the Topper puppets but was packaged in a Child Guidance box with a hand wand (which none of the Topper ones had.)