25th Birthday Musical Celebration

As a former puppeteer and avid Sesame Street fan, I really enjoyed watching it myself. It has old clips that have almost disappeared: the original "Rubber Ducky" with the floating bubbles, "C is for Cookie," "I'm an Aardvark, and I'm proud," and some of the letter and number clips you might remember as a kid. I also liked that the storyline was filmed outdoors, making the production values somewhat better than other Sesame Street videos. Having a store of all the "important" songs is really useful, too.

Enjoy this video with your kids - and tell them about the "olden days" when Snuffy was an imaginary friend of Big Bird's and Ernie grew critters - what were those things called? - in his window box.


What a disappointment!   September 25, 2002
26 out of 31 found this review helpful

When I saw this DVD available, I thought I'd found a sort of "Greatest Hits" compilation. It lists the featured songs on the back, which include manu Sesame Street classics. It failed to mention that all of the Rubber Duckie songs are cut short and mashed into an unsatisfying medley. The songs are all showcased within a story about Big Bird looking for "la la-ers," which makes this feel like a bad clip show. I realize that this was a TV special, but the way that the ...story cut into classic songs grated at me. To top it off, this DVD does not include menus or anything to help viewers navigate the disc (of course, it is an older DVD). I really hope that someday soon they decide to release a real "Best of" Sesame Street DVD, with each segment shown in its entirety. I would love to see these classic songs along with some of the great non-musical moments. Unfortunately, in this time of Elmo-centric releases, it doesn't seem likely to happen.


Mostly clips from 25 great years of Sesame Street   June 20, 2001
Amy Z, Afterschooler (Northern Virginia, USA)
24 out of 24 found this review helpful

Watching this video is very similar to watching an episode of Sesame Street on PBS...only not exactly the same Sesame Street that's on the airwaves today. It has musical clips from various episodes throughout the lifespan of Sesame Street and contains more clips of Bert & Ernie and Grover than you will see in a typical episode in 2001.

It's not just a series of old clips, however. The clips and new material are woven into a story of Big Bird looking for LaLa-ers for the show that the Sesame Street characters are planning. Not everything fits just right, but it is fun to watch and sing and dance to.

The most important reason for my high recommendation of this video is the fact that my 22-month-old son is FACINATED by it. It may not be teaching him his numbers or his alphabet, but he is starting to try to sing along.

Not the absolute Best Video out there, but thoroughly enjoyable and worth the price.


Great songs, great characters.   July 14, 1999
20 out of 21 found this review helpful

The plot is simple and silly: Big Bird, Prairie Dawn, and Telly decide to put on a show, and look for singers, dancers, and "la-la"-ers. Big Bird runs into some trouble finding the "la-la"-ers, but everything works out, and it's really just an excuse to show musical clips from the first 25 years of "Sesame Street", bringing back great memories for anyone born in the mid-1960s and after who grew up with "Sesame Street", and entertaining our children who are about to grow up with "Sesame Street". This tape is better than "Elmopalooza" because the song clips are the originals, not new versions done by celebrities (with one exception: "Sing" performed by Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the "Sesame Street" cast with lots of children), and this tape is lighter than "Elmopalooza", in which everything goes wrong and the characters freak out. My son is 14 months old, and has watched this tape more times than the Count can count.


What happened to Sesame Street?   September 9, 2001
Roberta Cameron (Medford, MA United States)
20 out of 32 found this review helpful

Personally, I hated this video. It was not at all the Sesame Street I was expecting. For one thing, given its retrospective theme, I would have liked seeing it take place on the Sesame Street set, and include more classic cast members and old Sesame Street cuts. I enjoyed the old songs, but not really the new ones. (Meanwhile my 2 year old son didn't enjoy the old songs as much because they are all unfamiliar to him and the old Sesame Street personalities aren't quite the same as what he knows.) If I want to introduce him to the Sesame Street songs I grew up with, I'd rather get a CD.
I know that it is meant to have a multicultural flair, but all of the non-puppet star performers are black, singing or dancing to rap, R&B, drums, or African music. All of the non-black people have big hair. So much plastic cheesy smiling, and kids rambunctiously playing in the background of every shot was too unnatural. The finalle was painfully cheesy and smacked of cultural "fishbowling". I must say, I am not entirely against the new Sesame Street. I think they have some great things, and my son loves it. I did enjoy the "Let's Make Music" video, which I feel works much better, even though it contains many of the same ingredients. This video doesn't cut it.