U.S. stamps for Sesame Street, Tyrannosaurus rex, Halloween

By Michael Baadke

The United States stamp program for 2019 just grew by 24 stamps with the surprise addition of three new sets.

Sixteen stamps will celebrate Muppet characters from Sesame Street, four will pay tribute to the thunderous dinosaur tyrannosaurus rex, and four more will feature “Spooky Silhouettes” in time for Halloween.

Issue dates and locations for the new stamps were not immediately available, according to a March 12 announcement from the U.S. Postal Service, but “will be coming soon.”

All 24 stamps will be issued as nondenominated (55¢) forever stamps.

The honors for the Sesame Street characters come as the children’s television show celebrates its 50th year of production.

Since premiering on Nov. 10, 1969, the show has aired on the National Educational Television network and PBS. First-run episodes are now aired on HBO.

With a mixture of live action, puppetry and animation, the show provides educational programming and entertainment for preschool and older children. Its popularity has spread around the globe, and its Muppet characters, many originally developed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz, have become household names.

The characters featured on the upcoming stamps are Big Bird, Ernie, Bert, Cookie Monster, Rosita, Count von Count (the Count), Oscar the Grouch, Abby Cadabby, Herry Monster, Julia, Guy Smiley, Snuffleupagus, Elmo, Telly, Grover and Zoe.

USPS art director Derry Noyes designed the stamps.

Another pane of 16 stamps will celebrate tyrannosaurus rex in four designs labeled “T.rex” on each stamp.

The original artwork by scientist Julius T. Csotonyi shows a newly hatched T. rex covered with downy feathers and admiring a flying insect, a young adult T. rex approaching through a forest clearing, fossil skeletons of that same young adult T. rex and a young triceratops, and a juvenile T. rex chasing a primitive mammal.

“The ‘Nation’s T. rex,’ the young adult depicted on two of the stamps, was discovered on federal land in Montana and is one of the most studied and important specimens ever found,” according to the Postal Service. “Its remains will soon be on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.”

USPS art director Greg Breeding designed the Tyrannosaurus Rex stamps.

Breeding also designed the Spooky Silhouettes stamps, using artwork by Tyler Lang.

The four designs “will offer fun, frightful scenes” that symbolize the annual Halloween celebration, according to the Postal Service.

Each backlit scene is depicted as viewed through a window, with a creeping cat and perched raven against a yellow background, two swirling ghosts against dark orange, a massive spider and its web with a dark red background, and a purple night sky filled with flapping bats and twinkling stars.

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