Toy Room Mural

Six years ago we moved from apartment life into our first house. One of the things I wanted to do was have a toy room for our two sons that was fun and colorful. Our new home had a small bedroom with a low ceiling that we wouldn't be needing for something else, so we decided that it could be the Toy Room.

After several years of "Trading Spaces" with no creative outlet for painting on walls, I was pretty confident that I could just whip something up that would be worthy of a Toy Room. In my head, it would be a big branching tree on a hillside, with favorite children's characters all coming to visit and play with the boys. That's pretty much how it turned out, so I guess it worked okay.

R2-D2, Tutter, Winnie the Pooh, Marlon, Nemo and Dory, Poky Little Puppy

The collection of characters ended up being a mix of the ones that I loved when I was a pup and the ones that my older son was already getting into. I painted the mural when my older son was about three years old, and my younger son was about six months old. Between the two of them, they did end up loving most of the characters there--and still do. Originally I think my idea was that I would add new characters to it over time, but once the mural was finished, I haven't gone back.

Snoopy, Elmo, Kermit the Frog

If I had gone back and added characters, they would probably include the boys' new favorites, like Thomas the Train and WALL-E and Lightning McQueen and Batman and Robin and Darth Vader...but we'd get into some bloody carnage at some point. So maybe it's best that we stayed in the safely preschool area.

Curious George

One of the things I'm glad I did was that I made the leaves of the tree from stencils I made of the boys' hands. At first I thought I would just dip their hands in paint and use them like stamps all over the tree...I'm glad I had the stencil idea instead. As they've grown, they like comparing their bigger hands to their younger versions, and it's been a warm reminder to us that they won't be that size forever.

Slimy the Worm and Woodstock



Luna from "Bear in the Big Blue House"

Super Grover and Buzz Lightyear

The entire mural

My seven year old turns eight next week, and he was just looking over my shoulder and saying, "the Poky Little Puppy is still my favorite! Sometimes I still play with him in my imagination...but soon you're going to take that down." And he's right. Soon we're going to paint over it and make a new Toy Room for them. The new version will have framed pictures of old fashioned toys, and I'm thinking a painted grouping of Pixar characters on a canvas, so I won't have to paint over it again. It's been a good room. It'll still be a good room. But I think I'll miss the mural.

Sesame Street Fisher Price Little People

(Sesame Street Little People Playset, mid-1970s)

The Sesame Street Little People are to be blamed for my psychosis. I grew out of the Fisher Price Little People in the late seventies when I was supposed to, just like the other people in my Gen-X-ish cohort. We moved on to Star Wars figures and G.I. Joe and blowing things up with firecrackers and torturing ants and other wholesome activities. So I "grew up," started college, and went into the real world.

I was innocently working at my job at the newspaper in downtown Salt Lake City, when a friend named Janet brought in a handful of the old Sesame Street Fisher Price Little People to show me. I was known around the office for my love of Sesame Street and Muppets, and she just thought she'd show them to me. Well, at the time, being unattached and not having any children, and with eBay just hitting its stride, I decided I needed to Collect Them All. There was no big "twang" sound of something inside my brain snapping, no wide-eyed bloodlust across my youthful countenance...but something certainly changed that day.

In between eBay and a local swap meet with a startlingly scratchy-voiced woman who was very sweet, I started picking up Sesame Street and other Little People. And soon I had, indeed, collected them all. The Sesame Street Playset, which recreated the famous apartment building at 123 Sesame Street plus the courtyard, Hooper's Store, the Fix-It Shop and Big Bird's nest was mine. Produced more than thirty years ago, I still think it's the best representation of Sesame Street in toy form...someone needs to step up. Fisher Price? Hasbro? Anyone?

I also picked up the Sesame Street Clubhouse, which was never seen on the show, but has a lot of play features like a revolving door, tire swing, slide, and trapdoor. Plus scandalous grafitti, like "David Loves Maria" and "Bert Loves Pigeons" and "Cookie Monster for President." Coming out of the Nixon years, we would have elected pretty much anybody.

Ernie and Bert with updated stripes

Super Grover

Mr. Johnson and Waiter Grover (poor guy never got a decent meal...)

My old Little Bird (circa 1997) and my new Little Bird (circa this morning)

Grungetta, Oscar the Grouch, and Slimey the Worm


Of course the real appeal of these toys for me wasn't the buildings, but the Little People themselves. Bert, Ernie, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Grover, Count Von Count, Oscar the Grouch, Mr. Hooper, Gordon and Susan were all pretty easy to find...the more obscure ones, like Snuffleupagus, Roosevelt Franklin, Prairie Dawn, Sherlock Hemlock and Herry Monster all took more time and money. It's amazing today to think that Fisher Price even made those characters, but the seventies were a magical time. For everything but music. Anyway, back to the Little People. Within about two months of Janet showing me her collection, I had equaled it. It wasn't enough.

The Amazing Mumford, Barkley, Betty Lou, Farley, and Guy Smiley, with Lefty and Little Bird on the stairs.

Forgetful Jones, Telly, Count (with updated tux), "Yip-Yip" Martians, Kermit the Frog

This was roughly the same time the Tickle Me Elmo craze hit stores, and even though I wasn't Elmo's Number One Fan, I liked the little guy. So I made him. And then Zoe. And then Kermit the Frog and Telly and the Amazing Mumford and...a lot more. I tripled the number of the original Sesame Street Fisher Price Little People.

Rosita, Big Bird, Abby Cadabby, Elmo, Zoe, Baby Natasha, Baby Bear


This first foray into customizing Little People wouldn't stop for several years, and by the end of it, I had made over 700 Fisher Price Little People into my own creations. There was a bit of a learning curve, and in many ways the Sesame Street Little People I made were some of the worst. I hadn't ever used Sculpey or any other kind of modeling clay since elementary school, and I was learning how to sculpt at the same time I was learning to paint. So there are some pretty crude renditions of characters there. But I was having a great time doing it. Hopefully you'll enjoy seeing what else I've created; I've certainly had fun making them.

The whole Sesame Street Gang, with the exception of a few MIAs (Cookie Monster, Snuffleupagus, a few others). I blame children. They'll turn up. Right? You get bonus imaginary points if you spot the Twiddlebugs in that photo.