Monday, February 06, 2012

ridiculousness.




"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." 
 
Excuse me what now? We bought Widdle and Puke Sesame Street Old School for Christmas. Little did we know that it wasn't suitable for children. It seems obvious now, I mean, Sesame Street is all about the alphabet and the numbers and they've clearly changed beyond all recognition since 1969. 
Or maybe it's the fact that Oscar the Grouch STARTS OUT ORANGE. That freaked me the hell out so god only knows what it would do to today's pre-school child.

15 comments:

  1. Is it weird that one of my parenting fantasies involves getting Old episodes of Sesame Street for my children. It's good to know that I'm not alone in the world.

    Though orange Oscar - I never knew.

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    1. it was one of the things I was looking forward to most about parenthood.

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  2. Does Bob really come on and say this? ARRRRGGGHHH

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  3. Wait 'til they get to nursery school and you're told not to teach them the alphabet, just the sounds of letters.

    We're proud watchers of old sesame street, even though W thinks my the Count impression sucks, the cookie monster will never not be awesome.

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  4. Oooh! I won a copy of Sesame Street Old School when I was in my early twenties. I got SO excited about having it to show my future children, so much so that I started to worry that DVD technology would be outdated when I got around to having children.

    It's still waiting on the shelf... though I do get it down to check it's still working every now and then.

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  5. Orange? whoa. weird.

    I need to get a copy of Sesame Street. It was a daily highlight of my no-cable-no-satellite childhood TV days. But what needs won't they meet? I learned my alphabet and all that and I can read and write rather well. Perhaps that question will be answered once I start my teaching program...hm...

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  6. A bit like saying that we should bundle antiques, museums and old people onto a space ship and blast orbit them off the planet!!?? Seems like we need a disclaimer for EVERYTHING these days. Imagine: Small print on baby's bottom when born.... "Please note - you may, or may not, like this child if you do, or do not, raise it properly"

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  7. my husband and i are OBSESSED with the 'Pinball Number Count' bits done by the Pointer Sisters. there's one where the pinball zips under a zebra and it's skin comes off ! FREAKY !

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12!

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    1. We watch that all the time on YouTube -- I had no idea it was the Pointer Sisters! Those psychedelic pinball animations are amazing. (And now I'm singing the song, ha.)

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  8. We got the Old School DVDs for our daughter last year and laughed so hard at the warnings. She didn't really get interested in them until she was about 18-20 months but after watching max one episode per day for about 6 months, she knew all her letters and could count to 10.

    Having seen some of the "new school" Sesame Street (now produced by Disney), I'm pretty confident that all she'd have learned watching that crap was how to demand that we buy her everything Elmo.

    I'm just bummed that they didn't release more episodes. We're all pretty sick of re-runs now and I've had no luck finding any other decent toddler shows. Sadly, not all the stuff we watched as kids was as great as Sesame Street (in fact, some of it was pretty creepy/lame) and most of the newer stuff drives me insane.

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    1. YouTube! There's an official Sesame Street channel with a ton of clips going waaaaay back to the day. Tons of Elmo, but if you know what you're looking for or do a lot of clicking around you can find great stuff all the way back to the 70s. IPad or iPhone plus YouTube app plus Sesame Street videos = hours and hours of happy toddlers!

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  9. Old Sesame Street beats the pants off today's Sesame Street, even with an orange Oscar.

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  10. Oscar the Grouch starts off orange??! Woah, I did not know that!! I don't remember it from when I was a kid but I do remember watching it with my little sis... and her being obsessed with the (new) muppet that was called Zoe! (Yup, I am literally a muppet!!)

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  11. Three comments -- clearly I watch way too much Sesame Street. (Ask me what's going on in the adult world, and sadly I wouldn't have a clue.) But I know how you feel about Oscar: Last Hannukah they showed a special episode from Israeli Sesame Street, and their Oscar lives in one of those newfangled plastic garbage cans with wheels. Freaked out is the only word for it!

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play nice.