Once a year (give or take), Toy Fair comes to New York. The industry event features all the big toys on their way to shelves and online stores. And we have a tradition of walking the convention floor on the hunt for any Muppet merchandise we can find.
This year, we found a decent amount of Muppet and Sesame Street toys that we’re excited to share with you all. Of course, it’s never enough for us, but the fact that there’s Muppet merch at all these days seems like a good sign, right? Right???
Read on to see some of our favorite things that we saw at Toy Fair!
Starting out with our absolute favorite thing that we saw – these Sesame Street action figures from Blokees. Launching with the eight characters you see above, these toys can assemble and dissemble with fun variations. For example, Elmo and Cookie Monster’s eyes can be swapped out for googly eyes, and Oscar’s legs can be removed and attached to the bottom of his can. But best of all, each of these comes with a small rod that attaches to the back of their head that makes them performable like a puppet. The mouths open and close, and the joints move smoothly, making these pieces beautiful to display and fun to play with.
Blokees had these two cases on display to spotlight the different pieces that make up Bert and Big Bird. You can really tell how much care was put into each segment of these figures.
For those of you who care about boxes, here’s a peek at the packaging. We’ve been told that the figures will be available worldwide, so we expect them to come to a store near you later this year.
Finally – for the Blokees, at least – these variations were on display at the Blokees booth. Unfortunately, they’re all just custom builds and won’t be available commercially, but I really really wish they were! The punk rock Count is especially interesting. Just let me buy it!!
Over at Diamond Select, they had their upcoming Sweetums, Robin, Uncle Deadly, and Pepe action figures on display. While Muppet fans have been waiting patiently for their release, we’ve been assured that they will be coming later this year.
But more exciting is our first look at the Lips and Lew Zealand action figures. Lips will help you complete your Electric Mayhem set, and Lew comes packaged with some familiar Muppet fish. We’ll keep you posted on news about the release of these two bad boys.
Continuing the trend of highly-detailed action figures, we got a close look at these Sesame Street toys from NECA. Bert, Ernie, and the Count all come with a bunch of accessories and a whole lot of personality.
Coming soon, NECA’s line will be expanded to include Oscar the Grouch, who’ll come complete with elephants, Slimey, some garbage, and his grating-sounding rubber duckie.
NECA will also release this Big Bird, which not only comes with a Radar teddy bear and Mr. Hooper portrait, but look at that incredible season 1 Big Bird head sculpt! Never in my life did I think we’d see real merchandise based on that puppet design.
And NECA is planning on giving us this absolutely incredible unit of Herry Monster, who looks like he put his finger in an electrical socket and liked it. I genuinely can’t wait to get one of these for myself. He’s gorgeous and pointy.
I also really like the packaging for these figures, which seem to be inspired by the old Sesame Street Treasury books.
If those big NECA figures are too cumbersome, they’re also offering these vinyl figures, which have almost as much personality as the real puppets.
Super7. is continuing their line of Sesame Street toys with wave 3 including Guy Smiley, Oscar the Grouch, Bert, and Ernie, as well as a glittery Oscar variant.
Here’s a peek at the entire Super7 line (so far), making this perhaps the most wide line of Sesame Street characters we’ve seen in decades.
Another one of the new figures will be Mr. Snuffleupagus, seen here in his packaging with Big Bird. On TV, where they belong.
I’m impressed to see that we’ll be getting an action figure of The Alligator King (and his 7th son)! Could we potentially get more classic animated characters in the future? Teeny Little Super Guy? The “noo-nee-noo-nee-noo” typewriter? The King of 8??? One can dream.
And it’s always a joy to see Roosevelt Franklin represented in Sesame merch. And it feels appropriate to see him in such a retro style of action figure.
Lastly from Super7 is this giant Big Bird! As gorgeous as he is, many of us were shocked to see the price tag of $295. We expressed our apprehension to the Super7 team, but they assured us that the previous oversized Sesame Street figures sold very well, and they’re all produced in extremely limited quantities. So if you have one, it really is a collector’s item.
Loungefly had these three Sesame Street bags on display. I especially like the 123 Sesame one – what a terrific idea.
Here’s a sampling of the plush available from Kid Robot, which is a great cross section of Muppets, Ssame Street, and even Dinosaurs. (What, no Fraggles??)
They also had these Sesame Street bobbleheads! Perfect for anyone who needs the daily affirmation of nodding Muppets.
Bleacher Creatures had a whole line of wrestling and sports mascots, and it looks like they’re including these plush of superheroified Sesame characters. Super Grover has never looked more buff.
The new Fun Fun line of vinyl toys will feature some Sesame characters. Like some of the others that we’ve seen in this article, they really do have a lot of personality. That little angry Bert is giving me life.
We found Muppet Clue! The mystery is solved!
Continuing the never-ending search for the next Tickle-Me-Elmo, Just Play will be offering an Elmo that does the Hokey Pokey. They’re really turning the toy industry around.
Elope costumes had some Muppet headwear, including this Kermit mask that looks terrifying both with and without a head inside.
And finally, just to leave you fine folks with some nightmare fuel, these creepy Sesame babies from Nenuco.
Aside from everything we reported on above, we did see more Sesame merch, but not a whole lot that we hadn’t covered in the past. So yes, there will be more plushies and workbooks and bubble blowers and so on and so on. But my camera ran out of film, so this is all you get.
Thanks for joining us on this journey through Toy Fair! Now let’s spend some cash!
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by Joe Hennes – Joe@ToughPigs.com
