REALITY STREET

SESAME STREET
1969-present PBS

I don't think there's anyone under 60 unfamiliar with Sesame Street, which started out in a multicultural urban environment and became increasingly gentrified over the years, but since you never know who sees things on the internet, I'll talk as if nobody knows anything anyway. MAD has done several versions of it over the years, and it helps that artist Jack Davis did work for the actual show, which we'll get to tomorrow.

REALITY STREET
MAD #146, October 1971
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Jack Davis

The first Gordon (Matt Robinson) started as one of the creative directors of the show, and even was a voice for some of the Muppets. And of course there were Ernie and Bert (Jim Henson, Frank Oz)

Grover and Cookie Monster (both Frank Oz) were two other Muppets.

And there was Oscar the Grouch (Carroll Spinney)

And Big Bird (Carroll Spinney) and Herry (Jerry Nelson)

IF SESAME STREET BRANCHED OUT INTO SPECIALIZED AVENUES OF EDUCATION
MAD #203, December 1978
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Jack Davis

Mr. Hooper (Will Lee) ran the corner store, and the end every show was “sponsored” by letters and numbers as part of the way the show used the tropes of commercial TV.

As a really small kid, I didn't know Sherlock Hemlock (Jerry Nelson) was a parody of Sherlock Holmes. Kermit (Jim Henson) was the one Muppet that was a character on several of Henson's different shows. On Sesame Street he was a news reporter.

The Gordon caricatured here had left by then. Maybe this was an inventory article. I didn't realize Count Von Count (Jerry Nelson) was supposed to be someone either. Olivia (Alaina Reed) was one of the human characters.

From MAD Looks at Public Television by Larry Siegel and Harry North, in MAD #232, July 1982

From the German version of MAD. Like MAD, Sesame Street has different versions in other countries that use the name but have a lot of their own material. The furry creature must be exclusive to their version.

SESAME STREET THEN AND SESAME STREET NOW
Cracked #304, December 1995
w: Rob Weske
a: Walter Brogan

There are compilation CDs and YouTube clips of the show as it originally was compared to how it is now, showing how attitudes and child-rearing have changed over the years. Cracked picked up on this.

Cookie Monster actually did become nutritionally correct eventually, only eating cookies occasionally, which kind of ruins the point. Snuffleupagus, Big Bird's imaginary friend, was visible to everyone by this point.

Miss Piggy was not a Sesame Street character.

SESAME BLVD.
International Insanity #1, July 1976
w & a: Jim Geoghan

Here's a weird one. Parodying the 1950 movie Sunset Boulevard with Big Bird in the Gloria Swanson role. A film noir about a struggling writer (William Holden) trying to escape bill collectors and finding himself in the mansion of an aging silent film star and stuck living in her world and writing a screenplay for her.

More Sesame Street to come tomorrow, including the intersection of parody and reality.