KAWS x Sesame Street Vinyls: Elmo Gets X-eyes

When KAWS and AllRightsReserved decided to bring back their Sesame Street vinyl collection, they didn’t just resurrect Elmo—they resurrected every millennial’s inner child who once thought PBS was punk. The 2025 collab drops like a love letter to anyone who grew up on juice boxes and now collects $600 figurines to feel something again. Five iconic faces. One big question: what happens when childhood goes designer?

Elmo Got a Glow-Up

KAWS—aka Brian Donnelly—has spent his whole career blurring the line between streetwear, sculpture, and sentimentality. This new drop, featuring Elmo, Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, and Oscar, proves he’s still the reigning god of melancholic pop. Those X-eyes? They’re not dead—they’re wistful. Like your favorite muppet just read Camus.

Each figure is a tiny therapy session in vinyl: bright colors, soft nostalgia, and that eerie emotional detachment only KAWS can pull off. Elmo’s red fur glows like heartbreak. Big Bird’s feathers scream sunshine with an existential edge. Even Oscar looks less grumpy and more like he’s questioning late-stage capitalism from his trash can.

The craftsmanship, of course, is insane. Premium vinyl. Hand-painted precision. The kind of attention to detail that makes you feel guilty for keeping them in their box but terrified to take them out. Pre-orders hit DDT Store October 16 at 11 a.m. Hong Kong time—because nothing says art elitism like setting an alarm for a toy drop halfway across the world.

Where Street Meets Sesame

KAWS has always been the master of high-low tension—Dior suits one minute, cartoon characters the next. His collab with AllRightsReserved hits that sweet spot again: somewhere between fine art and fever dream. It’s drag for design nerds, capitalism dressed in cuteness. The figures are priced like luxury handbags, but the payoff isn’t function—it’s feeling.

And Hong Kong’s the perfect stage. The Water Parade event will debut the line with Big Bird as the centerpiece—because of course the eight-foot canary gets top billing. The city’s obsession with collectible culture makes it a living museum of controlled chaos, and KAWS is its curator. Designer toys aren’t toys anymore. They’re relics of emotion—half sculpture, half souvenir from your own childhood.

Childhood, Rebranded

Sesame Street was built on teaching kids empathy and math. KAWS retools that innocence into something moodier, more self-aware. The X-eyes say, “I grew up. I pay rent. But I still want to believe.” It’s like watching Big Bird go to therapy and start journaling.

This collection bridges generations. For boomers, it’s memory lane. For Gen Z, it’s post-ironic cool. For millennials, it’s the only kind of comfort capitalism allows. KAWS’s work always hovers between sincerity and satire—and this one lands squarely in that uncanny middle.

Nostalgia as Luxury

At $1,300 for the full set, this is less a toy drop and more a designer drug for the emotionally fluent. But that’s the genius of KAWS: he turns sentiment into sculpture, comfort into commodity. He gives you permission to mourn your childhood while flexing it on your bookshelf.

In the end, this isn’t just Elmo with X-eyes. It’s older, glossier, still clutching the soft parts of your past. KAWS rebranded Memory Lane.