The Yip Yips! MakerBot Adds New Sesame Street Characters to Digital Store – More coming soon

Sesame Street. If you were a child growing up in America, or for that matter, anywhere on this planet, during the past 45 years, you are certainly familiar with this hit TV show. Educational, yet entertaining, for the last 45 years parents everywhere have been sitting their children down to watch their favorite characters such as Big Bird, Snuffleupagus, Bert and Ernie. The Sesame Street brand extends much farther than just a TV show though. There are amusement parks, books, movies, ice shows, and more.

Back in May, MakerBot announced a partnership with Sesame Street, where they would be bringing characters from the popular children’s show to the MakerBot Digital Store. In doing so, anyone with a MakerBot 3D printer would have the ability to download these characters and 3D print them at home for only $1.29 each. Upon the launch of this partnership, MakerBot and Sesame Street released the digital files for one the most popular characters from the show, Snuffleupagus. Since this launch back in May, many people have been wondering just when the next character(s) would be released for download.

Today is the day! Well, actually yesterday was. MakerBot has announced, that in celebration of Sesame Street’s 45th anniversary season, they will be releasing a new character to the MakerBot Digital Store each Tuesday for the next four weeks, leading up to the show’s premiere on September 15, 2014. Yesterday, the first of these characters was released, and you will never guess who it was. No, it wasn’t Big Bird, or Oscar the Grouch, or even Cookie Monster. It was….. don’t hold your breath…. the YIP-YIPS!

Not exactly the most popular characters on the hit TV show, but they are well known for some of the funniest skits ever put on. Also known as the Martians or Aliens, they came to Sesame Street from the planet Mars and are known for their famous catch phrase, “Yip-yip-yip-yip…. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

“We wanted our first Sesame Street collection to be memorable, so we searched for characters that no longer appear regularly on the show but have remained fan favorites,” said MakerBot on their blog. “We know that just because you can’t find these cherished characters in a department store doesn’t mean you love them any less.”

To go along with this exciting launch, MakerBot is also planning to give away a giant 3D printed version of each week’s character to one lucky winner. To participate, you can answer their weekly question, which will be posted on their blog, Twitter, and Instagram. A random winner will be selected after 24 hours, and the winner will be announced each Friday. This week’s question is, “What would the Yip Yips print on a #MakerBot?”

It should be interesting to see which new characters are released in the coming weeks. What do you think? Who would you like to see added to the MakerBot Digital Store? Discuss in the 3D Printable Sesame Street Characters forum thread on 3DPB.com. If you don’t remember the Yip Yips, take a look at the video below: