User talk:Merrystar

Various stuff
Hi, Wendy! Well, I've found a bunch of ISBN's for Golden book and tapes, and they're all on my sandbox page. Golden is very interesting, because if you have the ISBN, you can figure out the catalog number. You can't do that with Sony Wonder, but those are newer, and I have other sources for those. Anyway, I'm just letting you know in case you have any other numbers, or if you find any more on the web. I'm finding that there may be multiple numbers for certain titles, and it gets kind of confusing, so let me know if you need help figuring something out. Also, I saw a General Education filmstrip and record at a record show last week. Those are the "Show and Tell" sets for schools. It wasn't a Sesame title, but it was packaged just like a Show and Tell, with a record pocket, and the filmstrip in another pocket. It was fun to finally see one in person! Maybe someday we'll find more Sesame stuff!

Oh yeah, I've been thinking about something. How do you feel about pulling out the Sesame Street Live albums, and putting them in their own Sesame Street Live section? I've been thinking that since those were put out by the company that put on the show, and they weren't sold in stores, that they should be treated separately from the main Columbia/Warner Brothers/Sesame Street/Golden/Sony Wonder/Koch catalog. How do you feel about it? -- Ken (talk ) 05:57, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey Wendy
I saw the new Sesame Street Live album. That is so cool! Do you happen to have it? If so could i get a copy from you? If not it's still cool to see a new album out of the show. -- Kyle (talk ) 11:46 May 02, 2008 (UTC)

Question
Hi, Wendy! Can you take a look at the top section of Talk:Japanese Sesame Street Discography and tell me what you think? Thanks! -- Ken (talk ) 04:17, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the Japanese SS reissues should go on the album pages, like we do with Foreign Muppet stuff, but still all be listed on the Discography for anybody who wants to find all of them. I don't know that they need their own pages.  -- Wendy  (talk ) 03:23, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I was torn, but now that I think about it, I feel the same way you do.  Those are kind of unique in that they were made years later, and the funny thing is that Sony Japan reissued a bunch of LP's from the SS label, but then Sony US never made them here in their original form (except for Alphabet)!  I wonder whose decision that was?  Anyway, it's cool to see the whole series in one place, and I know there are more, but they're really hard to find. -- Ken  (talk ) 03:36, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Parker Brothers
Hey, Wendy, I've discovered that Parker Brothers made some book and tape sets in the 80's. But we don't have a Parker Brothers page, because it redirects to Hasbro. Were we going to make a Parker Brothers page eventually? For now, I mentioned it on each book's page. Thanks! -- Ken (talk) 16:35, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * That's a tough one. Isn't/Wasn't Parker Bros. owned by Hasbro or something?  I assume that's why there's a redirect.  Perhaps we should just have a Parker Brothers merchandise page as a link of the Hasbro?  -- Wendy  (talk ) 04:18, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * It's kind of tricky because when these sets were made, Hasbro hadn't bought them yet. So I think if we have separate pages for Fisher-Price stuff before they got bought by Mattel, we should do the same for the companies that made Muppet stuff before they got bought by Hasbro.  Anyway, I don't really know much about Parker Brothers stuff, except for the records that I've run into recently.  I didn't know if anybody else was interested in making a bigger toy section for them, because if nobody has anything right now, I'll just leave things the way they are.  I'm up to my ears in figuring out Golden ISBN numbers right now (Amazon shows ISBN numbers for the book and tape sets, and I think I can figure out the catalog numbers from that), but I wanted to mention the other brands of audio stuff, because it's really getting confusing sometimes, but I'm getting there!  Oh, and thanks for your additions to my sandbox page! -- Ken  (talk ) 04:33, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Wow!
Hi, Wendy! Are you ready to pull out your hair some more? Take a look at something that I've been suspecting for a while: This! We finally have some large clear pictures that prove that Fisher-Price records were put inside the original Sesame Street Records books, and they didn't even care if the numbers were different! The number on the back cover, and the numbers on the red flap are all from the BR/BT series from the original Sesame Street records! The good news is that I needed that Fisher-Price number. And did you see that note at the bottom about more to come? Well, after the original 24, there weren't any more on the Sesame Street label, and it's even funnier that only 12 of the 24 were reissued on Fisher-Price. The "more to come" wouldn't happen until about 3 years later, when Golden began to reissue stuff from SS Records, and then they started making new ones. I hope all that made sense. We're closing in on forming some coherent guide to the book and record sets, and all subsequent permutations! -- Ken (talk ) 05:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Hah! funnily enough I thought the books with the LISTEN! READ! whatever slogan were entirely from the FP sets until I found one with an SSR record in it. Mishmash every which way.  Anyhow I grabbed that back cover thinking you might want it to illustrate the article/guide.   -- <font color="Blue">Wendy  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 16:04, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I think we're going to find the first pressings don't have anything on them, and then later pressings will have the "Hear the Record" slogan, which I'll bet was an attempt to make them look more like the Disney ones.  Sort of off topic, I've always wondered why there were never 12" book and records like the Disney ones.  It's always seemed to me that they got into the book and record market quite late, and they didn't really make that many, compared to Disney.  I also wonder why they chose the books they did to make records out of.  I would have loved to have had What Ernie and Bert Did on Their Summer Vacation, with the original voices!  Years ago, I attempted a tape read-along of my own with that book (I must have been about 9), but I erased it a long time ago.  I can do Ernie, but I can never do Bert, and doing Grover always makes my throat hurt.  I don't know how Frank did him! -- <font color="Blue">Ken  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 05:17, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

S&S SS Update
Just a brief update. I took the Sandbox designation off of the S&S page, since it now has all known numbers and titles, and I put the boxed sets at the bottom. By the way, I found the other one I was thinking of. It was a 2 tape set, with an entire album on each side of each tape! So I put that there, too. -- <font color="Blue">Ken (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 07:26, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Also, I thought I'd share this just for reference. We can't use the pictures, but there's a ton of information on here, so I'll mess with it in a while.  Sorry I'm burying you with information (and there are some more Sony Wonder numbers on my user page that I don't know what to do with yet), but I've just been lucky with book and tape stuff lately. -- <font color="Blue">Ken  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 16:18, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry to add to this, but I just thought of something else. Should we put book and tape stuff on the Western Publishing page, or on the Golden Music page?  As you can see on the set of pictures linked above, there was just a "Golden" logo on the tapes and books, but this also overlaps the "Golden Music" period, which had a different logo.  So I'm guessing that Golden treated these as two distinct divisions, kind of like the Columbia "pop" singles of SS songs, and their book and record sets.  What do you think? -- <font color="Blue">Ken  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 03:35, 13 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry I didn't answer before -- I was so tired last night I couldn't think straight. I think go ahead and include them with Western Publishing, if that's the logo that's on them.  If the Golden Music was happening at the same time, but they didn't use that logo, then I think it wasn't Golden Music.  Which makes sense, as Western probably owned all the book/story rights, which is what these were, even though they were tapes also.  -- <font color="Blue">Wendy  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 01:33, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi! I just got home a few days ago from a plane trip to a friend's house, so I'm still getting back to normal stuff.  Anyway, I wanted to mention that using Worldcat, I'm starting to find a whole bunch of titles that were book and audio, but we don't have them on here at all.  So to avoid confusion, I'm going to create rough pages for them, but I'm just going to mention the book and audio information, and I'm just going to use the book's titles as the name of the page, like we have for books that are also book and audio sets.  That way, if somebody finds the book-only version, it'll all go on the same page like the ones that we have now.  Does that make sense?  I'm going to be keeping my own notes as I gather more information.  By the way, nice food wiki!  I don't know where you find all your time! -- <font color="Blue">Ken  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:17, 19 April 2008 (UTC)


 * P.S. We now have 100 book and audio titles, and there's more to come! --<font color="Blue">Ken (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 05:00, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

LT book and tape sets
Hi, Wendy! I just stumbled across a whole bunch of numbers for the Sony Wonder book and tape sets. They're the ones that are on a big card, and they're covered in hard plastic. I was wondering if they would get a record box since they have Sony Wonder catalog numbers. For now, I'm just going to put the numbers on the page like we've been doing for the other ones. -- <font color="Blue">Ken (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 16:43, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
 * We don't usually do record books for book&tape, do we? I thought we did book boxes and/or galleries when the book had been released both by itself and with the tape. I think I'd stick with the normal format.  But maybe they should get a discography page?  -- <font color="Blue">Wendy  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 02:51, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how we should do this. I'm starting to see some titles coming out up to 4 or 5 times and it's really getting confusing until I can make some numerical lists by label.  I know that we try not to duplicate information, but I think some label pages will help to cross-reference reissues.  By the way, on the Sesame Street Book and Record Sets Discography page, do you only want the first editions that actually were on S&S Records?  Last night, I went through and put whatever we had in the galleries on the big page, just to get familiar with what they look like.  But then I noticed that they may have been the reissues from other companies, since some of them added the "Hear the record" stuff across the bottom.  I'll move them back if you want, but I'm getting so confused, I can't even tell if the reissues were the same from company to company.  I hope this makes sense.  I'll write more later after I go find my notes. -- <font color="Blue">Ken  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 03:05, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually you might as well put all the versions on that discography, and all the numbers too. I had thought the "Hear the record" stuff was associated with the FP versions, but I know that some of those don't have that on them.  And then I found an auction with that on the cover, but clearly a S&S record.  <Wendy throws her hands up in defeat>.  So I say, we use that page to keep track of an image and the title, and make it alphabetical (ie not by SS record number).  Then either put all the various releases on it, or put none and leave them all on the pages.  What do you think?  -- <font color="Blue">Wendy  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 03:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I hadn't thought of doing it that way until you said it, but that makes the most sense.  I'm still keeping my own paperwork as I figure all this out.  I'd like to eventually make gallery pages for each company that made read-alongs, but right now we're missing a lot of information.  I might make some sandbox pages to see what we've got so far, because trying to remember how many times a book and record came out, and if we have a number and/or a picture just makes me more confused.  I'll mess with the discography chart tonight, and we can add to it.  Thanks! -- <font color="Blue">Ken  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 05:38, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

The Saga of Sight & Sound
Okay, I don't know if you've run across any of this, but I just wanted to share what I've learned so far. Sight & Sound seems to have the same trouble that Sesame Street Records/Children's Records of America/Distingushed Productions has: tons of items that show up used (in this case mostly in libraries), but no current or historical company info on the Web. So I'm assuming that they're out of business. Also, S&S is variously credited as S&S Music Software, and S&S International. They also seem to have been tied up with music publishing, and some tapes may have come with song books or small sheet music books, so people could play or sing along with the tape. That means we might start finding these in places that sell used sheet music. I also had a question for you. Do we still have that multi-tape set somewhere? I think it was in a plastic case, and we saved it for reference, but I can't remember if you made a page, and I forgot if the whole set had a title. I'm asking because I think I found references to another S&S multi-tape set, and I wanted to see if it had the same tapes. I'll have some time next week to really dig into this era, and as you can tell, it's really been bugging me! I've been putting off writing a letter to CTW to see if I can talk to anybody about the history of the record division, but I'm just about going to have to. Just getting a complete list of titles would be nice, and any historical information would be even better! -- <font color="Blue">Ken (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 21:53, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Hey Ken -- I uploaded the images I had for the set and put them in Sandbox: Sight & Sound. I had pictures for the back of the case and the lyrics book that came with it also.  So hopefully that will help you.  I never did make a page for it because I didn't know what to call it -- there's no title given!  Good luck with your digging; you've made some great progress with the MARC records and everything the last couple of days :).  -- <font color="Blue">Wendy  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 01:36, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Those pictures are great! Now we have a bar code, and an address!  I also noticed that sometimes they use GNL- and sometimes they don't, so I'll have to fix some of my information, which might be inaccurate, or titles might have come out both ways.  I've also run across some ISBN's, which should help generate more titles and numbers.  Thanks for the pictures!  I might have some more to tell you about book and record/tape sets soon, too! -- <font color="Blue">Ken  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:42, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Christmas picture
Hi, Wendy! I noticed eBay has a picture of that "lost" Christmas album, Christmas on Sesame Street. The only trouble is that it's got a big bar code sticker right over Big Bird's face! Did you want to grab it just for future reference, or do you not want it? Thanks! -- <font color="Blue">Ken (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 18:47, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I just found the number! -- <font color="Blue">Ken (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 19:21, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Wow. yeah. Between the fuzziness, the contrast issues and the barcode that really isn't much of a picture. I think I'll wait; somebody will have a better shot.  Good deal on finding the number though!  -- <font color="Blue">Wendy  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 21:44, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that was a total accident. One of the libraries had a link on the catalog page to go to a more detailed item record.  Then I saw something called a MARC record, and inside that was a whole bunch of columns and coding, but I noticed that every single facet of the album was broken down into a separate line: every song title, the album title, the year, etc.  Well, one line said "BQT 19644 CBS Special Products", but that number wasn't on the main page.  I've never seen a BQT before, but 19644 would be around 1986, so I typed BQT into Google, and got a Weird Al tape from 1986, so that's a good prefix.  My hunch is that it's a prefix for things that were budget tapes only, but you never know!  So now I'm thinking that if we can search by MARC records, we might find hidden information that we don't normally see on the regular Worldcat page, and that might help us learn more about Sight & Sound, which is one of the things I'm going to do next. -- <font color="Blue">Ken  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:56, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry to keep adding to this, but I was right! If we're lucky enough to get from a Worldcat page to the library's page, and if the item is still in their system, and if there is a "MARC record" link, the catalog number will be there, even if it's nowhere else up to that point!  I've already found another number I didn't have, so now I know what I'm doing tonight! -- <font color="Blue">Ken  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 01:30, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Archive

 * Muppet Wiki Talk Archives