How It All Began

Welcome to GROVER'S CORNER! I am close to being a first generation SESAME STREET kid. I loved the show, but what really hooked me was the muppets, especially the monsters. I had tried my hand at making a Cookie Monster puppet with a sock and some googly eyes but I was kind of disappointed with the results - mainly because the eyes were flat, not the ping-pong ball eyes the real Cookie Monster had.

But in the Fall of 1971 I found an advertisement for some forthcoming SESAME STREET puppets (these were the Topper/Educational Toys versions.) I no longer remember where the ad was published, but I immediately cut it out and glued it into a scrapbook I had just started. The scrapbook was about half SESAME STREET and half I LOVE LUCY. I still have my scrapbook and thus still have the ad.

I suspect the ad was published in a glossy newspaper "magazine" like PARADE. I cut out the characters as well as I could. I remember being frustrated by Ernie and Bert's hair. Cookie Monster and Oscar where printed at the side of the ad and I cut them out and placed them on the "wall" to make them look right. I have since learned how to spell "cookie."

Anyway, I told my mom I had to have them and we started looking. I think the ad came out a bit in advance of the toys hitting the stores in Albuquerque.

I do not have this guy in a box yet!

One afternoon after school I had walked over to the nearby Skaggs Drugstore and lo! they had a Cookie Monster (two actually) though they had none of the other puppets.

I raced home and pleaded for a massive advance on my allowance. The puppets were actually quite expensive when they came out, listing at $4.95 each. Online inflation calculators translate this to almost $29.00 in 2014 money! My family was hardly flush (my mom was in Grad school) but she was also very understanding about life's necessities and she eventually gave me a crisp $5 bill. I tore back to Skaggs and if memory serves they had already sold one of the their two Cookie Monsters. I grabbed the remaining one and went to the checkout. I wondered if I'd have any trouble, if the check-out woman would question a small boy with an actual five dollar bill. She rang up Cookie Monster and asked me for $5.19.  Huh?!  I had just discovered sales tax. I'm sure my eyes began to well up and my lower lip began to tremble, and I don't recall what was said, but she let me have Cookie Monster without my having to pay the cursed sales tax.

The Cookie Monster shown above is not mine. My original puppets were lost in a fire when I was fourteen. I have replaced my Cookie Monster but I have not as yet been able to replace him is his incredible box. It is high on my want list! This photo was snagged from an online auction.

Cookie Monster was super, though! He was so beautifully made. He could even swallow cookies! The back of the box had cardboard cookies you could cut out. But my dad made the best Chocolate Chip Cookies ever and Cookie Monster preferred those, as they'd crumble. I, of course, could then help eat the crumbles.

In part two I'll discuss my favorite Christmas ever when Cookie's friends arrived. I will also be posting a more in depth look at the actual puppet, packaging artwork, modifications on how the puppet design changed over the years. We'll be popping around, discussing the rare foreign puppets, other toys, artwork, and much else. Welcome to Grover's Corner!

Click here to read Part Two

Me, Cookie, and Oscar