I absolutely adored the psychedelic stylings of the pinball number count as a kid and still do. The kids tv stuff from that era even in conservative Ireland was well weird and funky. Check out the into to this mainstay of children’s tv I grew up with:
I believe this look traces back to the work of Push Pin Studios[1], an influential graphic design studio founded in the mid-sixties. It is hard to underestimate how much this style dominated the time; as a kid in the seventies these psychedelic stylized chrome reflections were everywhere.
I mostly think of it by association with artists who were well-known for it, such as the Pushpin guys, or Peter Max.
Worth looking at: the catalog from this exhibition of some of Push Pin's work. [2]
Maybe. I never got the impression Jim Henson needed psychedelics though. It was certainly in the zeitgeist of the time if you were counter culture which I think sesame street was certainly trying to be at the time.
But now Big Bird is making a whole lot more sense.