Super7 Sesame Street Yip Yip Martians Super7, 2023
Day #2,687: February 29, 2024
Sesame Street Yip Yip Martians With Action Mouth
Sesame Street ReAction Figure
Item No.: No. MAY2023SAH Manufacturer:Super7 Includes:2 poles and a stand Action Feature:Clever closes mouths Retail:$20.00 Availability: December 2023 Other: Not "retro" but "retro-adjacent" enough to recommend
Another on the list of things Super7 did that I can't believe, Sesame Street Yip Yip Martians are something a lot of us always wanted. For those not hip, they have been around since 1972 and slowly sound out words and react amusingly to things on Earth, explaining technology and concepts to children. But they looked cool, and weird, and while they don't have the marketing cachet of an Elmo or a Julia they do push the nostalgia feels incredibly hard for adults of a certain age.
This set brings you a set of two figures based on their earliest appearances on the show, one blue with white eyes and the other pink with yellow eyes. They also come from an era where "martian" was still a common word for "alien," thanks in part to its prevalence in pop culture and the fact that we hadn't put a rover over there yet. Also this figure went out of stock almost immediately and is already expensive - you might want to check your local collector shops if you want one for close to retail price.
You might be able to get the figures to stand freely, but Super7 included a figure stand with 2 rods to keep them "floating," I always assumed they were more like a squid with their tendrils on the ground. The designs are simple, with lots of strands hanging down and an open mouth with ping-pong ball eyes and silly antennae. I'd say it reads as "not of this Earth" well, but also, I first saw these when I was 2 or 3 years old. As such, I can't imagine not knowing they were space aliens.
The sculptors did a good job as usual, particularly given the challenges in translating fabric puppets to plastic while also giving their forms "legs." Jim Henson's Muppet characters don't always appear as full-body puppets, unless it's a full-body costume, until a specific need arises. As such, I didn't remember seeing any full-body appearances of these guys - so I can't deny these look right. The one thing they couldn't replicate is the bizarre mouth movements, when their jaws open and jut out to the sides. So what does Super7 do? An action feature - there's a lever on the back of each figure to close the mouth, which pops open again when you let go. Given these have no articulation and you have to show some sort of "value" somehow, I think they picked the right gimmick. While a phone or a cow would be a fun accessory, it's not like they have arms and I wouldn't want to be the toy designer who has to take this design and give it "arms" or "hands."
I may or may not buy more of this line, but I had to buy these to float around in a custom Cantina playset a friend of mine makes. These aliens are the kind of thing that Kenner kids would've loved in the 1970s, to go with Star Wars or even those later-era Fisher-Price Adventure People space toys. Since Hasbro has been hesitant to make new Kenner-style alien figures in most of its lines, Super7 offers a lot of great substitutes and brightly-colored ping pong-eyed hand puppets don't seem too far off from 1970s Kenner creature toys.
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