2 Warps to Neptune

6 Responses to “Play Family Sesame Street (Fisher-Price, 1975)”

1. 1 Fractalbat July 8, 2014 at 3:02 pm

   Mr. Hooper! We will never forget you!

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   • 2 RDO September 7, 2019 at 11:50 pm

     Amen to THAT!

     I was already done watching SS by ’82, but ‘Classic’ Sesame Street as we Gen-Xers all knew it IMMEDIATELY ended with his passing.

     I’m sure there was a very brief period just afterwards, as everyone was mourning, that SS was just a slight tad beneath what it was up to that time. That ‘magical’ spirit of its ‘Classic’-ness perhaps was still enough in-tact, but soon enough…came Elmo. I don’t want to diss the character out of respect for the younger generations who’ve grown to appreciate him, but SS definitely was never the same since he, basically, ‘took over’ the series from there. I’m very, very glad and grateful that I was a young child watching SS while Mr. Hooper was still on instead of Elmo.

     My sister and I did indeed have that very SS set! Brought back flashbacks looking at the pics. Mint condition, I see! I believe it is still in our mothers basement.

     What made SS so ‘Classic’ from ’69-thru-’82 in addition to Mr. Hooper and the rest of the cast and guests, were it’s little shorts albeit animated or not animated; quite a few of them quite…’trippy’ (hey, the ’60s were still fresh enough), naturally mind-expanding indeed! ‘Daddy Dear’ and ‘Milk Crisis’ have to be my personal top-two! I love the dark (literally as well, stars and moon) animated ‘X’ segment with the child constantly heard repeating the letter over and over to that mesmerizing mellotron accompanied by soft understated acoustic guitar as backdrop. Those count-to-12 animated segments sung by the Pointer Sisters (when there were FOUR of them) quite majestic as well! Or Grace Slick singing the count-to-ten one which actually aired on the first episode (just two months after Woodstock). Stevie performing “Superstition”…a Cornerstone moment during SS’s ‘Classic’ phase! I actually got to see Gordon ‘in concert’ at the mall performing “Which of These Things is Not Like the Other?” Unfortunately, Susan couldn’t make it but still quite an early-childhood memory just the same!

     And just like it was great that the ’60s didn’t have just the Beatles but also the Stones and Beach Boys amongst so many others, it was real great for us very young afterschool/pre-dinnertime TV-watchers that it wasn’t just Sesame Street – but also Mr. Rogers and The Electric Company! It was simply THE era for the Children’s Television Workshop!

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2. 3 Jeffery Lovegrove July 8, 2014 at 5:16 pm

   Yup. I totally had one! It was a great playset.

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3. 4 hobgoblin238 July 8, 2014 at 5:49 pm

   I gotta get one!

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4. 5 SamtheQ July 10, 2014 at 3:54 pm

   Absolutely one of the all-time greatest; as was about everything FP made in that era. Believe it or not, I just recently re-bought a complete playset for myself, because I missed that piece of my childhood!! (I don’t believe the yellow staircase in the 4th photo came with the set, either.) Awesome!

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5. 6 Tom Beiter July 11, 2014 at 9:58 pm

   I had a Sesame Street play set similar to this, but it had a thicker base below the buildings and there was an elevator you could lower down into the base. I used to put my pet mouse on the elevator and lower him down. He’d get off in the lower part of the enclosed play set and I’d bring the elevator back up with no mouse. Kind of like a magic trick. Then I’d lower it and wait for him to climb back on and bring him back up. One time, he wouldn’t get back on and my dad had to take the play set apart to get him out. He was none too happy. That was the end of my magic trick.

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