Sunday, October 18, 2009

Target is a Sesame Street Fan's Best Friend

In the past two weeks I've made two trips to my local Target store, the first time in pursuit of these Sesame Street toys, the second looking for a birthday present for my little brother.

What I found was so much better than either of those things.

The Sesame Street section of the preschool toy aisle at Target has some of the most fun Sesame Street merchandise I've seen in years--and most of it is reasonably priced and good for display in your home with all of your other Muppet goodies.

First, there's the Fisher-Price Collect-A-Pals toys. These are the Sesame Street characters... just molded in round shapes. I bought Snuffy and Oscar but Elmo, Cookie Monster, Ernie, Abby Cadabby, Grover, and The Count are also available (the latter three seem to be the hardest to find). They retail at only $3.00 each and they are all really cool looking. Besides, how often do you have the opportunity to buy a Snuffy toy?

Next, we have some toys from Mattel: Muppet driven vehicles. Your choices here include Elmo, Cookie Monster, Ernie, and The Count. The Count being the obvious wild-card here and the vehicle I picked up. The sculpts here are pretty good--but I mostly just bought it because it was The Count. Retail price is $6.99, making these vehicles the priciest of the Target toys in this post--but still not as expensive as the poorly sculpted PVCs. And, hey, these have wheels!

More from Fisher-Price: Sesame Street "Celebrating 40 Years" plush toys. Included in this line up are Elmo, Cookie Monster, Ernie (sensing a pattern here?), Grover, Oscar the Grouch, The Count, and a blue Honker. Once again I only picked up The Count since he looked the best out of all of them (and I already own a Grover plush), but really all of the dolls looked great. Oscar and the Honker especially. The Count, Oscar, and the Honker seem to be rare, so pick those up if you see them! Retail price is $5.99 each and I declare these the best deal on Sesame merchandise in the store.

Finally, from an unknown toy company, we have Target dollar-bin Sesame Street toys. Big Bird, Cookie Monster, and Elmo were produced. They sat at the front of the store in Target's "dollar aisle." These are by far some of the worst sculpts I have ever seen, but I bought the Big Bird one anyway, just because it was a dollar. He doesn't look too horrendously awful, and the pose is unique. But... if you see these, don't buy Elmo or Cookie Monster. Trust me. You'll give your kids nightmares.

So yeah, that's all the fun Sesame Street stuff you can find at your local Target store! I spent about $20 altogether in both trips combined and walked away with five, five fantastic Sesame Street toys! Ah! Ah! Ah!

What is the moral of this article, you may ask? Simple: Go to Target!

NOTE: Apologies for the poor picture qualities. My camera was dead so I used my cell phone.