The 8 Coolest Sesame Street Toys Ever

Posted at 5:02 AM Jun 12, 2008

By Brian Heiler

Were you born anytime in the last 35 years? Then odds are when you hear the word "grouch" used, you immediately know it's a green, homeless man who lives in a garbage can. Yes, Sesame Street has been raising us children on behalf of our lazy parents since the invention of lazy parenting, but the good news is we’re better people for it. Sesame Street has also been a license to print money when you consider the merchandising, and the ever increasing amount of pre-schoolers and kindergartners in the world. Take a stroll down memory lane with our list of the top ten best Sesame Street Products (don’t worry, its 100% Elmo Free—we said best).

8) Fisher Price Gordon

Gordon was the coolest human on Sesame Street, period; admittedly, it isn’t saying a lot when your competition is Mr. Hooper and a deaf girl. All the same, Gordon was the man—a Sam Jackson for the sippy cup set. Maybe that’s why Fisher Price chose him over many other characters for a figure,. Take that, Bob!

7) The Count Hand Puppet

Despite his kind of annoying numbers fetish, we can never forget that the Count is a vampire and therefore pretty damned cool for a little kids' show. With this puppet, he can put the bite on other characters and add them to his growing army of the undead. “One! Two! Three zombie minions! Ah-ah-ah-ah!”

6) Finger Puppets

Giving kids the ability to act out an episode in a miniature scale is always awesome, but also giving us obscure characters like the Salesman and Sherlock Hemlock? That’s the kind of shit geeks remember and blog about years later. Ahem.

5) Bert and Ernie Car

Who knew that life partners Bert and Ernie had a car? With this vehicle, one can imagine them as a sort of felt version of Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo cruising the Vegas strip observing madness in any direction, at any hour. “Stop eating cookies in bed, you fiend!”

4) Clubhouse

Although it was never featured on the series, Fisher Price crowbarred in every action feature they could into this fine toy including trap doors, conveyer belts, slides, moving panels and so forth. So agonizingly fun-looking it will have the most embittered adult playing with it in less than eight seconds.

3) Roosevelt Franklin

Lovable, hyper-active Roosevelt Franklin was sadly removed from Sesame Street after complaints that he represented a negative stereotype. Who knew that purple people even existed and they had such a powerful lobby group?

2) Super Grover

Palisades' Super Grover was a love letter to both our inner child and the gross social retard we had all grown up to be. A wonderful figure with a diorama, a change of outfits, a telephone booth to change in, and all wrapped in an Alex Ross illustrated box? The nerd orgasm you received were you able to buy this toy exclusive should have soothed you enough to make you forget that Palisades went under before delivering any other figures in this line.

1) Sesame Street Playset

Without a doubt the single greatest piece of Sesame Street merchandise ever created, this playset looks and feels like the real thing. Like a lot of Fisher Price products, it was damn near indestructible and able to survive generations of kids mauling it, thus sales eventually ceased. Let that be a lesson to you kids—always make things half-assed so they need to be replaced. It's the American way!