Sesame Street Tees

Big Bird is that huge, childish yellow freak that all the kids loved and is almost certainly Sesame Street's most famous and recognizable character.

What I liked about Big Bird when I was young was his range of facial expressions, particularly the surprised face shown in the photo. However, as an ornithologist I find it disappointing that I can't include Big Bird on my birdwatching life list even if I was lucky enough to see him!

These days I lead birdwatching tours and sometimes I wind my customers up by saying "Look! Big Bird!" I will never grow up!

The Count was, and still is, one of my favourite Sesame Street characters. The Count is a veritable lunatic who delights in counting everything and anything, laughing manically after every count and accompanied by thunder and lightning when he reaches his final total. The Count embodies everything nonsensical that should feature in the best children's television programs.

Some years ago I was teaching English to some small Japanese children and after counting one boy seemed to cough after counting. I thought that he was sick as the air conditioning was rather cold indeed. However, it turned out that he was learning from a Sesame Street text book and was trying to emulate The Count in his counting!!!!! Strangely, I do too, even to this day.

Here I present one, ha, ha, ha; two, ha, ha, ha; two Count von Count t-shirts, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Mr Snuffleupagus is that freaky elephant-type creature that is Big Bird's special imaginary friend. Why nobody else could see him I don't know because I never had any trouble seeing him and was always delighted when this gentle creature with the wonderfully stupid name turned up; I guess I must be part of Big Bird's special club who can see "Snuffy".

The only thing that I couldn't help but wonder was why the Sesame Street people didn't give him any ears. I guess it was to make him stand out in a crowd of elephants; either that or they ran out of material when making the costume.

Cookie Monster is that goggle-eyed, blue lunatic that runs around stuffing cookies in his mouth whilst growling "cookies". As a kid I loved his manic approach to everything; no matter what he did it would always end up with him crazily gorging himself on something, usually cookies. What made me laugh was that as a puppet he was physically unable to actually consume cookies and instead would just crunch them up and allow the pieces to come flying out of his mouth.

Cookie Monster made such an impression on me that even to this day I can't eat cookies without growling "cookies" myself. Maybe in my senile old age I will turn into a Cookie Monster.

Oscar The Grouch is one of Sesame Street's oldest, most miserable but at the same time, one of the most loved characters.

Oscar lives in a trash can along Sesame Street and is always responsible for bringing up the negative side of any situation. He is still well-loved amongst the other residents as his grouchiness is superficial and deep down he is just another childish character.

My father used to love Oscar as he was a counterbalance to what he saw as the faked and strained happiness of everyone else on Sesame Street. That's a bit heavy for a kid's program dad!

Bert and Ernie are the two friends who live together along with their rubber ducky. Bert and Ernie get up to silly charades and play daft games together in a childish fashion, even though they are adults. Ernie is the happy-go-lucky guy who instigates all sorts of tricks and Bert is the disapproving and reticent guy, who always goes along with Ernie games in the end.

I always liked Bert and Ernie when I was a child because they were just silly fun and got up to all sorts of silly things. It was only years later that I realized that they may be gay! Indeed, people protesting for gay marriage in US have used Bert and Ernie as mascots. Sesame Street was most certainly well ahead of its time.

Fire-engine red Elmo is an optimistic and happy little monster who has a childlike personality that makes him so popular with the youngest Sesame Street viewers.

In later years Elmo has become one of the biggest stars of Sesame Street and older fans have raised criticism about him as they see Elmo's popularity as marginalizing many of the older characters such as Big Bird, The Count and Cookie Monster. I must confess that I don't really remember Elmo, my Sesame Street days must have been before he became so popular.