Can these stamps tell me how to get there?

There’s no official launch date yet, but sometime this year, the post office will be rolling out a series of Sesame Street stamps in honor of the show’s 50th anniversary.

I think pretty much everyone has memories of Sesame Street from when they were kids, and the cool thing is, your own kids will have memories of it too because it doesn’t show signs of going away!

Sesame Street first hit the airwaves when I was in 6th grade (please don’t do the math), so I was technically much too old to watch it.  But I didn’t give a crap!  This was the coolest piece of television production this kid had ever seen!

First of all, the Muppets are the Cadillac of puppetry.  Nobody gives as much attention to the details — facial expressions, mouth movement, and an infinite variety of body shapes.  Add to that the ever-so-slightly snarky sense of humor and state-of-the-art graphics, and you have a recipe that made me toss aside my Saturday morning cartoons!  (I couldn’t watch the Street much during the week, but on Saturday mornings, you could catch all five of the past week’s episodes.)

Many of the most beloved characters (except for Elmo) were there from the beginning — Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster, Grover, Oscar the Grouch.  But one thing that struck me was that there won’t be a Kermit stamp in the new collection.  I looked it up and apparently, The Frog had a little bit of a rocky road with the show.  He was almost dropped after the first season because he was “too commercial”.  And he’s the only character not owned by Sesame Workshop.

Also, it’s interesting that only Muppet characters are represented on the stamps.  I don’t know about now, but at the beginning, the human characters were a big part of the show.  Bob, Gordon, Susan, and Mr. Hooper, the store owner who died while the show was in production and they decided to actually deal with his death on the show.

Sesame Street was such a big deal at the time because it was possibly the only educational show that took place in an urban setting.  So kids in the city could relate to it.  Buildings were close together and many people lived in apartments instead of owning their own house.  One of the main characters lived in a garbage can, for cryin’ out loud!

One thing’s for sure, no matter what the weather on the Street, in a certain way, it’s always a sunny day and everything’s A-OK.