Sesame Street Season 40 Complete 13-Disc Box Set DVD

Sesame Street Season 40 is the 2009-2010 anniversary season of the long-running PBS preschool series, marking four decades of the show's specific brand of educational broadcasting and bringing the Muppet residents of Sesame Street through a fresh round of letter-and-number lessons, songs, and small neighborhood adventures. The season ran on PBS and HBO with 24 full-length episodes, in the era's modern segmented format that paired the classic street stories with recurring features like Abby's Flying Fairy School and Elmo's World.

What stands out is the way this anniversary season layers four decades of Sesame Street tradition into modern preschool broadcasting. The street stories retain the show's signature live-action-and-Muppet hybrid sensibility, the animated segments handle the literacy and numeracy concepts, and the writing keeps Big Bird, Elmo, Abby, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie, and the rest of the cast in their established roles. The puppet performances stay deeply expressive, the music is acoustic and singable, and the runtime trusts very young viewers to follow real story arcs.

It belongs to the long, defining lineage of Sesame Street as PBS's anchor preschool program, the same series that has built mornings, classroom lessons, and bedtime VHS rotations for an entire arc of preschool households. For households whose Sesame Street memory is built across generations, Season 40 is the anniversary chapter.

Highlights in the set include "Frankly, It's Becoming a Habitat," "Baby Bear is Afraid of Bees," "Abby Makes the Seasons Change," "Elmo Finds a Baby Bird," "The Cookie Tree," "The Rainbow Show," "Camping Show," "Squirmadega Car Race," "Jack's Big Jump," and "Princess Show," episodes that capture both the show's quietest neighborhood moments and its biggest themed productions. This 13-DVD collection gathers all 24 episodes from Season 40, the complete anniversary run in one place.