Cowboy Cookie Monster finger puppet: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

This molded plastic Cookie Monster finger puppet is one of a set of licensed Sesame Street toys made in the 1980s to capitalize on the popularity of the children’s television series, especially its Muppet characters. The puppet is made of stiff plastic and its appearance is based on the Cookie Monster puppet, with its blue fleece fur, black mouth, and white and black eyes. Cookie Monster is depicted wearing a tan vest and red kerchief, holding a brown plate full of chocolate chip cookies. The puppet has a hole at its flat base to allow a child to insert a finger. This puppet was made by Applause Inc. in China in the mid-1980s and was one of a set of toys purchased and used by a family in the Virginia suburbs of Washington DC from the 1980s to mid-2010s.

Sesame Street is one of the most significant and influential programs in the history of children’s television. Since its debut in 1969 millions of Americans have learned basic reading, math, and social skills while enjoying the show’s mix of human and puppet skits, musical numbers, and animated segments.

The show grew out of discussions between public television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and Carnegie Corporation executive Lloyd Morrisett regarding the potential use of television (especially the fast-paced, contemporary style of advertising) to reach and teach children who were not able to attend preschool or kindergarten, especially those in minority and low-income communities. They established the Children’s Television Workshop with grants from the Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation, and United States government and worked with educators, childhood development researchers, psychologists, media theorists, and television creative talent to create Sesame Street. The show was designed to harness the “addictive qualities” and blossoming creativity of commercial television to teach children basic school concepts, life skills, and social development through a program that would emphasize variety, fun, and engagement with a mixture of live action, animated, musical, and puppet segments.

Jim Henson’s Muppets have been among the most popular characters and features of the series, with Ernie and Bert, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, and others reinforcing the show’s learning objectives with zany humor and indelible personalities. The show’s setting was deliberately urban, somewhat gritty, and multi-racial, an attempt to make it feel familiar and to accurately represent the low-income and minority communities it was primarily designed to reach. Sesame Street was the first American children's television series developed with a team of academic advisors and the first to create a curriculum with clear and measurable objectives. The show was also an incredible success, garnering high ratings upon its premiere in 1969 and continuing to be one of the most popular children’s television programs in the United States in its 50th season.

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: mid-1980s
• maker: Muppets, Inc.
• Object Name: toy
• Object Name: finger puppet
• Physical Description: plastic (overall material)
• Measurements: overall: 3 in x 2 in x 1 3/4 in; 7.62 cm x 5.08 cm x 4.445 cm
• place made: China
• Subject: Television
• Subject: Children's television programs
• Subject: Toys
• Subject: Puppetry
• ID Number: 2022.0111.09
• catalog number: 2022.0111.09
• accession number: 2022.0111
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.