Vintage Sesame Street puppets

[Cookie3001]

Another toy category we needed a thread about. The vintage Sesame Street puppets made by Topper, Educational Toys, Questor and other companies are probably my favorite out of all Sesame Street toys. So if you also have any thoughts about these toys you know the drill, just post here.

 

[Cookie3001]

Here is my set

 

[Blue Frackle]

These puppets are the greatest thing ever. I'm surprised they released such close replicas of the puppets as affordable merchandise considering the era. It's sad they couldn't get the monsters right (save Grover) given you think they would be easier to make. The Cookie puppet looks good if he were only bigger.

I wonder what these retailed for at the time. (Plastic head) Count and Rosevelt Franklin look great. A family friend of ours had Bert when I was growing up and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. I'm surprised I never owned any of them, though I did get the Fisher Price Rowlf which has a great head sculpt. I would like to own some of these one day; probably Ernie, Bert, Grover, Rosevelt and Count. I prefer the plastic heads; the fabric ones just look like derpy Sid & Marty Krofft creations.

I didn't know too much about this one:

Could you actually create the bunny, pig, etc? I can't read the text.

 

[Cookie3001]

I don't think you could, I think he just came with different eyes, noses and hair. And I think the heads of Ernie and Bert were molded over the actual puppets and I forgot to mention that Oscar was also pretty cheap looking and small.

 

[Bliffenstimmers]

 

[Cookie3001]

I have always wanted a Big Bird from this set. There were 2 different (well, actually 3) Big Birds made. The first 2 were dolls with triggers to move his beak (sort of like a ventriloquist dummy). The first had plastic legs and the second had fabric legs (I prefer the fabric legs). The last was a half bodied hand puppet. The one in the picture below is ugly same as the rest I have seen.

 

[Cookie3001]

Here is another one I really want to find. Roosevelt Franklin. This was one of the only times he was made as a toy and they did a pretty good job on him. Also I wanted to compare him with the Vicma puppet from spain which looks like it is made from softer rubber with lighter colours.

 

[Blue Frackle]

The one on the right looks like the official puppet at first glance... super underrated.

How are the mouths on these? Operable?

 

[Cookie3001]

They are made from soft rubber but it's hard to do it with one of the later ones since those have harder heads, later Count, Bert and Ernie were remade with fabric heads but Roosevelt Franklin wasn't (my guess is because they updated the set during the time he was banned from the show)

 

[Blue Frackle]

Yeah, I looked up some demos on YouTube and Ernie looks like he has decent flexibility while Bert looks impossible. I wonder if Count suffered the same fate.

Came across some of these while eBay searching:

(The finished Guy Smiley doesn't look that ridiculous)... You could build a solid collection between these sets... the only one I wasn't able to find on eBay was the hard-headed Count.