Hard to believe this show is soon coming up on 40 years! I realize it's best days are far behind. I was fortunate to see the first episode from November of 1969 a few years back, and it was great!

I watched it back them but I don't know if I saw the very first episode or not. I especially watched it when I was home from school. I remember this girl on the bus who used to always sing the theme song.



Cat

Well, THAT may be a bit too much!  ;D

You can see the first episode and other old ones on 'Sesame Street: Old School' DVD Vol. 1.  Time will tell if they release other volumes.

There are also lots of clips on YouTube, just type in Sesame Street and you'll come across all kinds of old clips. My favorite is the one with Ernie when he sings I Don't Want to Live on the Moon and also Ernie singing the Rubber Ducky song and The Pinball Song.

Yep, I've seen them, I just wish they would post more from the first season, '69-'70, which I think are classic. I hope they do come out with another DVD volume.

There are also lots of clips on YouTube, just type in Sesame Street and you'll come across all kinds of old clips. My favorite is the one with Ernie when he sings I Don't Want to Live on the Moon and also Ernie singing the Rubber Ducky song and The Pinball Song.



Rubber Ducky is a classic.

Other songs I remember:

Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood
One of These Things is Not Like the Other
The Number Song (5, 5, 5 Let's sing a song about 5. How many is 5?-or whatever number)
Manumanum

I remember one time hearing them sing Octopus' Garden on there.  ;D ;D ;D



Cat

I remember one time hearing them sing Octopus' Garden on there

It's still there. They even had the 'Yellow Submarine' skit, but it was in German!

It's still there. They even had the 'Yellow Submarine' skit, but it was in German!



I don't remember them doing Yellow Submarine-English or German. They must have done that one when I wasn't watching.  :D ;D ;D


So Octopus' Garden was on in the first year? Wow! I can't believe that I can remember that!



Cat

So Octopus' Garden was on in the first year? Wow! I can't believe that I can remember that!


I believe it was yes, 'Yellow Submarine' was an excellent one, that was the 1st season as well. They have to put these on DVD, would be a sin not to  :(

When I was a little kid, I used to like that one segment with the muppet baby in her highchair.  The lights would darken, a disco ball would drop, and she'd sing this disco song that went: "I'm a baby, ga-ga goo-goo bop-bop" ;D

Heh! I do remember 'The Pinball Song'...

Garish, sometimes surreal animation combined with a psych-funk workout that Sly Stone would have been proud of...

We in Britain had the more genteel charms of 'Play School' as an antidote...

pinball song you mean with the pinball  1 2 3 4 5, 6 7 8 9 10, 11 12 ?  Put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxaphone.  There was a song called Birdland There was a somg with Bert and Ernie: well I don't like any of those things but I love you.  Count sang batty bat and Ernie sang I dance myself to sleep complete with tap dancing sheep. Guess I miss this stuff; I'm going youtube looking. 

My favourite segment was with Eernie watching the Doodle-Bugs in his small garden under his window.





AN

I found a clip of that muppet baby that sang disco about being a baby.  Maria (ktelqueen) asked me once if it was actually real, cause she didn't remember it.  Come back Maria, I found it ...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eazMxg-DvBE

Here's another late 70s one I hadn't seen in years.  What a blast from the past 8)

Dancin' IN and OUT at the Monster Disco ...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fd-MWlCQvH8

Grover was my favorite, he was so funny!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0GOGNE0nWHk

Heck, I remember some skits from season 1 where Grover was green and had a much rougher voice, this before they made the monsters all cute and cuddily.

Does anyone have that skit where Cookie Monster has a nightmare about cookies?

I think the best ever was the skit with a character named "Fred". Back around 72/73 my son, then about 3 years old, watched it every morning and I remeber this Kyle Wagner type muppet would come on and try to sing ryming stories and would screw-up the punch lines and the kids would fill in the obvious words.

Fred would chant things like this; (This one sticks in my head)

"My name is Fred,
they call me Fred,
when I wake up,
I get out of my....DUHHH!" 

and my son would yell out a punch line...you know what this one is, don't you? 

Here's one I haven't seen in years.  Total blast from the past ...

Typewriter guy.  Noo-nee-noo-nee-noo ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3tgrEvpPck

Remember the Falling Baker?  He'd always hold something at the end and then drop it.  Jim Henson does not play the baker, but that is his voice dubbed in ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-_m2_wolek

I think the best ever was the skit with a character named "Fred". Back around 72/73 my son, then about 3 years old, watched it every morning and I remeber this Kyle Wagner type muppet would come on and try to sing ryming stories and would screw-up the punch lines and the kids would fill in the obvious words.

Fred would chant things like this; (This one sticks in my head)

"My name is Fred,
they call me Fred,
when I wake up,
I get out of my....DUHHH!" 

and my son would yell out a punch line...you know what this one is, don't you? 


My Mom use to call me "Fred" when I was little and I think she named me after this skit. I don't really remember it except I think it was a red-black-white cartoon of this tallish clumsy-looking fellow who would chant, "My name is Fred. I go to bed in my head..." or something like that as he would shower and get ready to go out. Am I right?

Anyway, the old Sesame Street rocked. My favorite skit was the Roller Coaster where a red ball would roll down through all these traps and then turn into a cherries at the end.

My Mom use to call me "Fred" when I was little and I think she named me after this skit. I don't really remember it except I think it was a red-black-white cartoon of this tallish clumsy-looking fellow who would chant, "My name is Fred. I go to bed in my head..." or something like that as he would shower and get ready to go out. Am I right?

Anyway, the old Sesame Street rocked. My favorite skit was the Roller Coaster where a red ball would roll down through all these traps and then turn into a cherries at the end.


Yeah! that's Fred, you remember the skit too! It still can hear his deep melodic voice in my head chanting those rhymes and his ending...DUHHH! I liked it more than my son did! I don't remember that cherry skit.

I was never able to get into Sesame Street.

I always thought Cookie Monster was cute, though.

I remember so many things from Sesame Street...
Roosevelt Franklin Elementary School
Kermit's News Flash
"A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter"
"Who is it?" "It's the plumber, I've come to fix the sink"

Bert and Ernie eating pizza and  drinking grape juice...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to1QTsDMMxI


This is one of my all time favorite clips...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWrUykkc-bs


Heck, I remember some skits from season 1 where Grover was green and had a much rougher voice, this before they made the monsters all cute and cuddily.


Oscar used to be orange.

Sesame street went down the tubes big time!!!

ELMO has taken over the show and it is disgusting in many's opinion!

I loved the original series from 1969 to 1992..

Alot of youtube clips,etc can be found on the muppet site :)

http://forum.muppetcentral.com

Best thing about YouTube is that you can find old Sesame Street clips.

I always liked the short films of the "Mad Painter" guy, I'd seen a few clips on YouTube and was going to post one as an example, but I never could find this one until just now, it was my favorite one of all and I swear I haven't seen this since I was like 6 years old, and it made me laugh my ass off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi-ODZ3ING0

(I guess the Painter was the same guy who played Mr. Bentley on The Jeffersons.)

"Who is it?" "It's the plumber, I've come to fix the sink"





I always thought that one was from The Electric Company. I still go around saying that one.



Cat

I always thought that one was from The Electric Company. I still go around saying that one.



Cat


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLywD77KBT0

;)

Sesame street went down the tubes big time!!!

ELMO has taken over the show and it is disgusting in many's opinion!

I loved the original series from 1969 to 1992..


ELMO is dreadful and so is Mr. Noodle!!!  My niece went through an ELMO phase, which my sister suffered for 18 months, then the kid grew out of it! 

General consensus is Sesame Street "jumped the shark" with Elmo.  They might as well just put Barney up there and get it over with. 

Perhaps Sesame Street is just at the end of its lifespan.  Nothing lasts forever. 

Sesame was controversial among educators right from the start.  Its critics accused the Children's Television Workshop of promoting limited fantasy and short attention span.  Some claimed the segments focusing on letters, numbers, and other elementary subjects lacked meaningful context.  My father was a school curriculum administrator in Boston at the time of Sesame's inception.  He was right up there with the nay-sayers.  The truth about education wonks such as my dad in the late '60s/early '70s is that they were anti-television from the start. They stuck to a dogmatic assertion that television was the "idiot box" and could serve no positive purpose in society. 

I'm more pragmatic. Television was here to stay by the '60s.  Every home was going to have one, and every kid was going to watch it.  Certainly, there were TV refuseniks who forbade sets in the home (again, my dad was one), but they were far too few in number to hinder the television revolution.  In fact, it was so rare for a home not to have a TV that the Boston Globe once interviewed my dad about it!  No, indeed, television would reign supreme.  Question:  Would you rather have your child watching Sesame Street or the Flintstones?  Sure, Sesame wasn't an ideal educational tool; it was never meant to be a child's sole source of learning in the first place.  However, it was staffed by creative programmers whose goal it was to provide some basic education in an entertaining fashion.  I say they succeeded.  They also promoted decent liberal ideals of tolerance, inclusiveness, compromise, and forgiveness.  The cast and guests were racially and culturally diverse, which was still quite novel in 1970. 

Oh, one thing I especially liked about Sesame Street is it wasn't all candyass like Romper Room or Barney.  They demonstrated to children that life could sometimes be hard and quite unfair, and there would not always be a happy ending.  For example, when Big Bird's house burned down or when Mr. Hooper died.  Will Lee (Mr. Hooper) died in 1982.  Rather than hiring a new Mr. Hooper and playing like nothing happened, the cast worked Mr. Hooper's death into the program and discussed how when a person dies he never comes back, and you have to cope with grief.  Sesame did have a magical make-believe world, but they kept gritty reality close by.  I liked that. 

Of course, Children's Television Workshop produced "The Electric Company," which was geared towards older children, and PBS also had "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."  Mister Rogers, in contrast to Sesame Street, was paced more slowly and focused on a single topic for a longer period.  Not that anything would make the TV refuseniks happy!
8)

The Count is a real horndog.  :o :o :o

http://www.break.com/index/count-the-fcc-violations.html

pinball song you mean with the pinball  1 2 3 4 5, 6 7 8 9 10, 11 12 ?   Put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxaphone.  There was a song called Birdland There was a somg with Bert and Ernie: well I don't like any of those things but I love you.  Count sang batty bat and Ernie sang I dance myself to sleep complete with tap dancing sheep. Guess I miss this stuff; I'm going youtube looking. 


The Pointer Sisters sang that song.

To think...the Sesame Street that we grew up with is now not for children under 6. Well, I'm having my kids (If I have any) the 1969-1992 Sesame Street.

Yippie! It's Cowboy X!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChahP31qh9k

I just found out that this CD of classic sesame street episodes has a disclaimer on it!!

"Welcome to Sesame Street Nostalgia. I am Bob, your host, and I want you to know that these early Sesame Street episodes are intended for grown-ups and may not meet the needs of today's pre-school child."

I think that is TOTALLY OBSURD!

This world is beyond help!

YA WANNA HELP KIDS?

TAKE AWAY THE GARBAGE VIDEO GAMES THEY PLAY DAY IN AND DAY OUT! http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/6356/icon04gh0.gif

"Sesame street not for kids" YA OK,whats different about the kids of TODAY compared to when we watched it in the 80s?

Ill tell you what: THE TRASH THEY ARE SUBJECTED TO WHICH IS OVERLOOKED AND INSTEAD INNOCENT THINGS LIKE THIS ARE COMPROMISED! http://www.myfilestash.com/userfiles/thedude/xtreme%20anger.gif



Lots of classic sesame street clips here :)

And if you miss the original show (Some do really like it (OR DID (Pre 1992))) you can get the OLD SCHOOL VOL 2 SET!

1974 thru 1979 -- The BEST 5 yr period for sesame street!!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000UNYJTK

Sadly it is NOT 100% OF WHAT WAS SEEN DURING THIS TIME (Some edits,etc)

I always loved the jazzy music in this bit, it still gives me goosebumps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRizPAydpW8