Mikey's Muppet Memorabilia Museum: Sesame Street Toy Cars 1977

Last Updated: Nov 2, 2024

Since Sesame Street's debut in Nov 1969 there have been a wide assortment of Sesame toy cars produced by a number of different companies. I've noted some of the collections that were made, however this page is far from being a complete list of the Sesame toy cars that have been marketed...

A variety of Sesame Street toy cars!!! There's lots of 'em!

Knickerbocker

Soap Box Racers, 1977

To my knowledge, these are the very first Sesame Street toy cars ever to be made. Despite having "Soap Box" as part of the title for this collection*, these little toy cars are actually pretty cool and look like they would be fun to play with. Each car came with a blue launcher ramp that has a button on the back to launch the cars down the ramp. The cars were packaged individually on bubble cards.

Oddly enough, the figures of the characters attached to the cars are smaller versions of the Educational Toys finger puppets from 1971, which were also produced by Child Guidance in 1973. Additionally, Child Guidance made PVC figures in 1974 based on the finger puppets, which Knickerbocker did as well in 1977 for their "Big Bird's Water Show" tub toy. I have no idea why Knickerbocker was allowed to use molds of finger puppets and PVC figures that are from another toy companies product line??? Photos of the four cars are shown on Muppet Wiki.

Big Bird in a light blue egg carton shaped car

Ernie in a white bathtub filled with bubbles (yet he is still wearing a shirt!?!)

Cookie Monster in a yellow cookie jar shaped vehicle

Oscar the Grouch in a light grey trash can shaped car

*The appeal of a "Soap Box" and the name "Soap Box Racers" doesn't exactly scream with excitement. Kids wouldn't likely know that the name refers to a type of homemade foot-peddled car, traditionally made from a Soap Box crate for racing with. I had to look this up too!

Hasbro / Playskool

Die Cast Vehicles, 1980-1987

The entire collection of 28 Hasbro Sesame Street Vehicles!

Hasbro first began to make Sesame Street toys in the early 1980s under their Playskool brand. One of my favourite collections from Hasbro are the Sesame Street metal cars. The above photo shows the entire collection of 28 different vehicles that were made by Hasbro. Another toy company, Kid Dimension, later reissued some of the vehicles from this set as well as five additional new cars which are discussed further below on this page. The toy companies Fisher-Price and Learning Curve also produced die cast cars, and although they are quite similar, those toys are not part of the Hasbro collection (see below).

Originally these Sesame cars were marked Hasbro on the bottom, but this was soon changed to Playskool, therefore some of the cars can be found with both marking variations (either marked Hasbro or Playskool) on the bottom. In my experience the most challenging vehicles to find are the two helicopters. It is especially hard to find them complete if removed from the original packaging, as the propeller blades were easily broken. Ernie's helicopter is the most difficult vehicle to find from this set. Big Bird's dump truck is hard to find complete out of the packaging as the rear dumping cabin is often broken off. Additional vehicles that I found hard to find are Oscar's trash can car, Herry's Gym Mobile and Snuffy's boat, as well as the five vehicles from the final series released in 1987, including Bert's snowplow, Oscar's blue jalopy car, Grover's wagon, Ernie's bathtub, and Big Bird's musical instruments car.

A yellow, plastic, flat carrying case in the shape of a school bus was also made for this collection. It has compartments for holding 12 vehicles, therefore three cases would be required to store the entire collection! (This would allow room for the five additional cars that were later released by Kid Dimension.)

Hasbro also made a playset for this Sesame car series titled "Big Bird's Around Town Roadway". It included puzzle-like track pieces and flat scenery houses, a tree and the Sesame Street sign (shown above). All of the scenery pieces were plastic shapes illustrated with stickers. The set included Big Bird in the green car.

Here is a closer look at the Sesame Street Hasbro / Playskool cars.

Big Bird's green car, Popcorn Truck, and Dump Truck

1, 2, 3,

Big Bird's Mail Truck and Musical Instrument Car.

4, 5,

Cookie Monster's Chauffeur's Truck, Cookie Train, Cake Truck, and Cement Mixer Truck.

6, 7, 8, 9,

Ernie's Fire Truck, Race Car, and Bath Tub vehicle. (Ernie's Helicopter is shown below with Grover's.)

10, 11, 12,

Bert's Taxi Cab, Pigeon Patrol Truck, and School Bus

13, 14, 15,

Bert's Snowplow

16,

Oscar's Garbage Truck, Jalopy Car, and Bulldozer

17, 18, 19,

Oscar's Trash Can Roadster

(The license plate sticker says "TRASH")

20,

Grover's Western Wagon, Speedster (silver spaceship), and Airplane. Aside from the wagon, Grover was given all of the flying vehicles!

21, 22, 23,

Grover's Helicopter and Ernie's Helicopter are both marked 1981.

Ernie's helicopter is the only vehicle in the collection that was not shown

in the assortment of vehicles shown on the back of the card packaging.

24, 25,

Snuffy in a rowboat, the Count's Count-mobile, and Herry Monster's Gym Mobile.

26, 27, 28

That's 28! 28 awesome Sesame Cars! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Variations

I have a Big Bird dump truck that is missing the back section, however I noticed that it does not have any holes in it where the pin that held the back section would have gone. Both of these trucks have the same markings though the one with the pin in it has the markings in a raised rectangle. As such, it looks as though there was a version that just had the back section snapped on into place, and the other version shown above that has the pin holding it permanently in place.

I've also notice this odd variation for the Grover in the airplane. The one on the left has a blue dot on the back left side of the helmet. I don't know if this is a standard variation or just a one off factory error. The markings on the bottom are the exact same on both of these so it's definitely a very bizarre variation!

Cars in order of release, according to the copyright date on the bottom of the toys:

1981

Big Bird's green car

Cookie Monster's Chauffeur's Truck

Cookie Monster's Cookie Train

Ernie's Fire Truck

Ernie's Race Car

Ernie's Helicopter

Bert's Taxicab

Bert's Pigeon Patrol Truck

Bert's School Bus

Oscar's Trash Can Roadster

Grover's Helicopter

1982

Big Bird's Mail Truck

Big Bird's Dump Truck

Cookie Monster's Cake Truck

Cookie Monster's Cement Mixer Truck

Oscar's Garbage Truck

Snuffy in a rowboat

The Count's Count-mobile

Herry Monster's Gym Mobile

1983

Big Bird's Popcorn Truck

Grover's Speedster (silver spaceship)

1986

Oscar's Bulldozer

Grover's Airplane

1987

Big Bird's Musical Instrument Car

Ernie's Bathtub vehicle

Bert's Snowplow

Oscar's Jalopy Car

Grover's Western Wagon

Illco

Large toy vehicles, late 1980's

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, toy company Illco produced a wide range of Sesame Street products. Shown above is a larger sized wind-up toy car with soft rubber figures of Ernie, Oscar, and Big Bird attached. I've shown a Hasbro die cast car next to it for size comparison. The three figures are similar in size to the Tara Toy finger puppets that were made in the 1980s. In fact, they are often mistakenly listed on e-bay as finger puppets, though they are not as they were taken off of this toy.

When the car drives along, Ernie and Oscar move up and down together as Big Bird moves in the opposite direction, up or down. Unfortunately, this one is missing the crank that is needed to wind up the toy. I find this is a very nice vintage display piece for a Muppet collection. Below is a view of the opposite side.

Here is a hard plastic Big Bird friction toy made by Illco in the 1980's. The Hasbro die cast car is for size comparison. When you press Big Bird down, his nest drives forward as Little Bird bobs back and forth. Below is a view of the wheels on the bottom of the toy.

Plastic pull-back vehicles

Illco made two series of Sesame cars with a pull-back feature to make the toy cars drive along on their own. I'm not certain which set was made first, or if they were marketed at the same time.

One series of four smaller sized cars was sold as a boxed set, including:

Big Bird in a red airplane

Cookie Monster in a red train

Ernie in a light green boat

Bert in a yellow car

I haven't been able to confirm what year the above smaller sized set was made, but it is likely from the 1990's as Illco made a second larger sized set in 1992. The vehicles in the larger series were sold individually in boxes, and included:

Big Bird in a police car

Cookie Monster in a yellow helicopter

Ernie in a firetruck

Bert in a blue airplane with red wings

Kid Dimensions

Die cast vehicles, early 1990's

The Hasbro/Playskool die cast toy cars (shown at the top of this page) were quite popular throughout the 80's. In the early 1990's the series went through a transition, as shown on Muppet Wiki, due to the line being re-issued under the Kid Dimensions brand instead of Hasbro/Playskool. At this point five new cars were added to the set. Four of the new vehicles were reissues with Elmo in the driver's seat, and one was reissued with Zoe.

Elmo's vehicles include:

Blue airplane (replacing Grover)

School bus (replacing Bert)

Yellow taxi (again replacing Bert)

Dark green "Melody Mobile" (replacing Big Bird in the Musical Instruments Car)

Zoe was released in a light green Melody Mobile.

The addition of these five cars brings the collection total up to 33 vehicles!

Other reissued versions by Kid Dimension

In addition to Sesame Street cars, Kid Dimension made similar die cast toy cars with characters from Snoopy and Barney the Dinosaur, in some cases reusing the very same cars from the Sesame Street series in different colours. In other cases the cars are completely different and only the wheels are the same. I'm not certain how many of those cars were made.

On the left is the red Hasbro Cookie Monster cake truck with a white cake, next to the Kid Dimension reissued version with Baby Bop from Barny the Dinosaur in place of Cookie Monster, driving a fuchsia pink truck with a light pink cake.

Tyco

Plastic vehicles, 1993

Cookie Monster, Ernie and Elmo

These three Sesame Street cars with attached figures are hard plastic. The cars are hollow and larger than the cars from the Hasbro Playskool series of the 1980s. They were sold as a boxed set of four, with Big Bird driving a red tow truck as the fourth vehicle.

In 2010 Bakery Crafts produced toys of Big Bird in an orange tow truck and Elmo in a blue car that are very similar to these Tyco toys (both are shown below). The Tyco version of Big Bird does not have a seatbelt strap and the wheels are blue, while the Bakery Crafts version has a seatbelt strap across Big Birds shoulder with yellow wheels. The Bakery Crafts Elmo car is shaped differently with headlights and it does not have the race car fin on the back, but it uses the same colours. A comparison of the two is shown below the Bakery Crafts section.

Tyco/Fisher Price

Die cast vehicles, 1998

In 1998 Fisher-Price produced an all-new series of Sesame Street die cast toy cars that are very similar to the Hasbro collection of cars. This can be confusing for collectors trying to identify specific cars.

Above is the Count in the Count Mobile, all minty and new in the original package. According to Muppet Wiki this second set of die-cast cars was started by Tyco just before the company was bought by Fisher-Price. The series continued under the Fisher-Price brand.

For this Tyco/Fisher-Price series the Sesame characters have a very distinct cartoon look to them rather than being designed to look like the actual Muppets as was done with the Hasbro/Playskool series. The back of the card shows some of the other cars in the collection (shown above). Note that the text is in eight different languages! These toy cars were mass produced in large quantities and sold all over the world, so they are not rare by any means. Included in this series are:

Baby Bear in a truck

Bert in a green tow truck

Big Bird in mail truck

Big Bird in a fire truck

Big Bird in a green truck

Cookie Monster in a bus

Cookie Monster in an airplane

Count's Count Mobile (shown above)

Elmo in a train

Elmo in a dump truck

Elmo in a taxi

Elmo on a jet ski (called "wave rider" on packaging)

Elmo in a cement truck

Ernie in a cement truck

Ernie in a blue dump truck with a red cabin

Ernie in a police car

Grover in a yellow helicopter

Oscar in a garbage truck

Telly in a bulldozer ... for a total of 19 individual toy cars!

Muppet Wiki also lists three boxed sets with 9 additional unique cars including:

1) 30th anniversary set featuring Big Bird, Ernie and Elmo in vehicles that have "30" on them

2) "Die-Cast Car Carrier" set with Elmo in a race car, Cookie Monster in a red truck with a white cabin that says "Elmo" on the side, and Ernie driving the big-rig car carrier

3) Construction set with reissues of Telly (shown below), Elmo and Ernie's construction vehicles each repainted yellow and orange so that they will all match, with black stripes added to the sides of the cars. Therefor there are 28 vehicles to collect in all, the same number as for the Hasbro series!!!

Another view of the Count Mobile (to show the bat logo on the hood)

and Telly Monster in a bulldozer from the three-pack set.

Learning Curve

Die cast vehicles, 2008 - 2009

Muppet Wiki shows a third set of die-cast Sesame vehicles similar to the Hasbro series, that was produced by Learning Curve in 2008-2009. The set includes Abby Caddaby in a die cast toy car for the first time. I've seen an online photo showing a light brown version of Big Bird's Monster Truck from this set, which isn't presently shown on Muppet Wiki.

Bakery Crafts, 2010

These are all vehicles with attached hard plastic figures sold as cake decoration sets.