I like this guy:
I like him a lot. It’s Cookie Monster! And I always like Cookie Monster, of course. But I’m specifically referring to this exact toy representation of Cookie Monster. Just look at him! He’s so delightfully goofy-looking! How could you not like him? Just try looking at him without smiling. Go ahead, I DARE YOU!
In addition to “goofy-looking,” I would describe him using the adjectives charming, funny, adorable, and cute, and the sound “hee hee!” (Note: That’s not the same as the sound Michael Jackson was apt to make, which I would write out as “HEE-hee!” This “hee hee!” is a very small, bemused laugh.)
This fellow is the Fisher-Price Little People Cookie Monster, and Muppet Wiki tells me he was first made in 1975, along with a 123 Sesame Street playset and seven other characters. But what is it about him that tickles me so much? It’s not like the toy isn’t a good likeness of Cookie Monster. Sure, they had to adjust his proportions somewhat to make him the size and shape of a Little People, but they had to do that with all the characters. Look how Snuffy turned out:
See? They had to turn him into a funhouse mirror version of himself too, so he would be compatible with all the Little People furniture and vehicles — it would be so sad if a kid had a Little People dentist chair and a Little People Snuffy but Snuffy wouldn’t fit in the chair. But Snuffy doesn’t make me chuckle with a mere glance like Cookie Monster does.
So what is it about Cookie Monster? Well, he has googly eyes. But Cookie Monster always googly eyes, and these don’t seem too different from any other merchandise incarnation of the guy. Is it his shape? He looks to be more svelte than the “real” Cookie Monster we see on the show, but no, that’s not what’s amusing about him.
Which brings me to the look on his face. That smile. That’s why he invokes giggles from me. He looks friendly and agreeably quirky. It’s actually a pretty good recreation of the Cookie Monster puppet seen in the early days of Sesame Street, before he was as well-defined as he is now. Like in the original version of “Everyone Likes Ice Cream,” where he’s an inarticulate beast with the voice of Joe Raposo:
The mouth of that puppet has different proportions from the later, more familiar builds. His head starts out small up at his eyes, and gets considerably wider down by his lower lip, which gives him the appearance of having an endearing underbite. The Fisher-Price toy captures this moment in Cookie Monster’s development… despite the fact that, by 1975, that old puppet had been rebuilt or refined and his head had reached its final shape. Was that intentional? Did somebody at Fisher-Price say, “You know, this Muppet looks good now, but he REALLY looked good back when his head was smaller at the top!”
I guess that’s probably unlikely. But it’s neat that that’s the way the toy turned out!
I always like seeing classic Sesame Street clips with Cookie Monster’s goofier old incarnation. And it’s nice that Fisher-Price allowed millions of children (I’m just going to assume that these toys sold in the millions) to play with a toy that resembles him, thus ensuring their childhoods would be that much more agreeably goofy.
Meanwhile… why did they make Herry shaped like a bullet? Your guess is as good as mine.
Thanks as always to Muppet Wiki for images! Click here to spend some time thinking about Cookie Monster’s face on the Tough Pigs Discord!
by Ryan Roe – [email protected]
