Have You Joined The Stikins ® Labels School Fundraising Scheme?

Did you know that today is the 48th anniversary of the first broadcast of Sesame Street? The show was developed specifically to use the power of television to prepare young children for school and for life in general. Today, Sesame Street is shown in more than 140 countries (with around 20 international versions), is the longest running American children’s show (last month saw the debut of its 48th season), and it backs around 50 charitable initiatives worldwide to help children follow the Sesame Street motto – to be smarter, stronger, and kinder.

School Fundraising with Stikins ® Name Labels

We have our own (much smaller) initiative, which offers school fundraising via sales of our school name labels. The scheme is completely free to join and we provide our school fundraisers with free leaflets, posters, and samples to help them promote the scheme to parents.

To join, you simply need to give us a call or fill in our online form; you’ll be assigned a unique school fundraising number and ANY order we receive for stick on name labels that quotes your fundraising number will count towards your commission total. We keep track of your commission and send you a cheque in November.

We also recommend adding a fundraising link on the school or PTA website. This makes it really easy for parents to order school labels – whether they need school uniform labels, stick on labels for lunch bottles and P.E. equipment, or general purpose name stickers and name labels for those “essentials” that their children refuse to leave at home. The link can even automatically add your school fundraising number to any order placed by following that link – so even if a parent forgets, their name label order will still count towards your fundraising total.

Our fundraising scheme is also a really easy way to encourage parents to use name labels and name labels on all of the school uniform, equipment, and personal items that their children bring to school each day – which can significantly reduce the amount of lost property that you have to deal with each year.

Join Our School Fundraising Scheme and Request Free Fundraising Resources

Our school fundraising pages include a school fundraising guide, a request form, FAQs, a guide to adding a link to your website, downloads and useful links, and our school fundraising portal (where you can login and keep track of how much commission you’ve earned so far).

Fun Facts About Sesame Street

To celebrate our thirteenth year of running a school fundraising scheme, we’ve put together our favourite thirteen facts about Sesame Street!

Fact One (that’s ONE fascinating fact)
All the main characters have four fingers except Cookie Monster who has five. Most Sesame Street characters are also left handed.

Fact Two (that’s TWO fascinating facts)
Some characters have undergone drastic changes over the years. Oscar the Grouch was originally orange, Mr Snuffleupagus was deemed too scary (with his bright yellow eyes and eyelashes plus immobile eyelids), Cookie Monster had big pointy teeth, Telly Monster had antennae coming out of his head (and his eyes spun when he watched television), and Count von Count had some seriously sinister powers including the ability to hypnotise and stun people.

Fact Three (that’s THREE fascinating facts)
Sesame Street takes its name from the famous Arabian Nights quote – “Open, Sesame!”. Various alternatives were considered, including “123 Avenue B” – which had to be dropped because it was a real address in New York City. While the true location of Sesame Street is shrouded in mystery, anyone can visit “Sesame Place” – a Sesame Street theme park based just outside of Philadelphia.

Fact Four (that’s FOUR fascinating facts)
There have been at least 10 versions of the theme song ("Can You Tell Me How To Get To Sesame Street"). However, the show originally used “Sing A Song” as its theme. The most successful song from the show has to be Ernie’s “Rubber Duckie” song, which was released as a single in 1970 and reached number 16 in the American music charts.

Fact Five (that’s FIVE fascinating facts)
While many celebrities have appeared on Sesame Street, the first was James Earl Jones. He dropped by the street to perform a dramatic recitation of the alphabet.

Fact Six (that’s SIX fascinating facts)
“Cookie Monster” is just a nickname that stuck (his original name is Sidney or Sid). The Television Monster’s nickname “Telly” comes from British slang, while Mr Snuffleupagus is actually named Aloysius – although he is usually referred to simply as “Snuffy”.

Fact Seven (that’s SEVEN fascinating facts)
Big Bird is 8 feet and 2 inches tall (that’s 249 cm) and has variously been identified as a lark, part homing pigeon, a golden condor, and part emu – although he is generally assumed to be a canary (or “bigus canarius” to use his own words).

Fact Eight (that’s EIGHT fascinating facts)
Bert and Ernie were the first muppet characters to appear in the Sesame Street pilots (proving to be extremely popular with test audiences). The Cookie Monster, however, predates Sesame Street by three years, having featured in a television advert (albeit one that didn’t air) as “The Wheel-Steeler”, in an IBM training film (where he ate the Coffee Break Machine), as well as in a potato chip advert (as “Arnold”). While international versions of Sesame Street feature characters from the original version, they also have their own unique characters, including a giant polar bear named Basil (Canada), a giant pink turtle named Pong Pagong (Philippines), a hedgehog named Kippi Kippod (Israel), and a camel named No’Man (Kuwait).

Fact Nine (that’s NINE fascinating facts)
While Sesame Street has successfully addressed a variety of tricky topics, they famously struggled with the topic of divorce. A 1992 episode featuring the divorce of Mr Snuffleupagus’ parents upset children so much during testing that the episode was never aired.

Fact Ten (that’s TEN fascinating facts)
Bert wears vertical stripes (to reflect his more “uptight” personality), while Ernie wears horizontal stripes (to reflect his more relaxed personality). Bert has an identical twin brother named Bart and, between them, Bert and Ernie have just one eyebrow.

Fact Eleven (that’s ELEVEN fascinating facts)
Count von Count’s love of counting comes from vampire lore, which suggests that vampires have “arithmomania” (a strong need to count the objects around them) and advises throwing small seeds, rice or wheat, or even handfuls of sand to escape from a vampire – the idea being that the vampire will stop to count each individual item, giving you time to get away! Interestingly, it has never been officially confirmed whether the Count himself is a vampire or not.

Fact Twelve (that’s TWELVE fascinating facts)
Among the muppets featured on Sesame Street, there are “human muppets” (like Bert and Ernie), “animal muppets” (like Big Bird and the Three Bears), “monster muppets” (like Cookie Monster, Elmo, and Grover), and other unique groups including the grouches (like Oscar the Grouch), fairies (like Abby Cadabby), and snuffleupaguses/snuffleupagi (like Mr Snuffleupagus).

Fact Thirteen (that’s THIRTEEN fascinating facts)
Elmo was the first non-human to testify before Congress (in defence of funding for school music programs). During his appearance, Elmo was referred to as “Mr Monster”, wore an elegant Armani suit (from Barney’s), and attempted to eat his microphone. Elmo is related to the Furchester-Fuzz family who run The Furchester Hotel in the UK (assisted by the Cookie Monster who is occasionally visited by his British cousin, the Biscuit Monster).

Remember, you can find out more, sign up, or request fundraising leaflets by visiting the school fundraising & PTA fundraising section of our website OR by contacting our Customer Service Team.