Sesame Street puppets (Topper)

143f30c93673f395f0ed4dfa46e4d338 — A 1971 Ad for the Topper puppets.

Educational Toys, Inc., a division of Topper Corp., produced the first line of Sesame Street toys in 1971, including a set of five hand puppets -- Big Bird, Ernie, Bert, Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster. Three more characters, Roosevelt Franklin and Grover were added in 1972 and Count von Count was added in 1973, with Count only being available in Canada.

The Ernie, Bert, Count and Roosevelt Franklin puppets have vinyl cast heads and hands with Bert, Ernie, and Count having foam stuffed arms (Roosevelt having unstuffed arms). The Grover and Roosevelt come with a plastic "wand", which can be attached to the puppet's wrists to be used as an arm rod.

The Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch puppets are made of plush with hard plastic eyes, and they have a string with a ring attached that can be pulled to move the puppets' arms.

The Big Bird puppet is a full-body plush with plastic wired legs that can open its beak, flap its wings, bend its neck and legs, and walk.

Two different variations of Grover were made, one with a fabric, unstuffed head and a fully red mouth and the later release with a rubber skull covered in fur and a fully black mouth.

The Count von Count puppet was only available in Canada. The puppets have varied fabric textures which are shown below.

In the 1972 Topper catalog, two different Anything Muppet puppets are listed as being new products for the season, though only prototypes are known to have existed.

In 1973, Questor acquired the license from Topper, and produced a new line of Sesame Street puppets under the Child Guidance label. Questor's 1973 line borrowed a lot of elements from Topper's, and used similar "How to play with this puppet" instructional material on the boxes.