The producers of Sesame Street have slapped volumes 1 & 2 of the eternally running children’s show with the following warning: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” Why? Cookie Monster carries a pipe in one recurring parody—and then eats it. Oscar the Grouch is too grouchy and mean. And in the first episode, a grown man—Gordon—asks a little girl to come home with him for milk and cookies… and she does!
Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times tries to get to the bottom of the warning label, but the executive producer’s response seems kind of underwhelming:
I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior”—smoking, eating pipes—”so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.”
Hmm, we wonder if the producers of Sesame Street have ever seen Wonder Showzen?
“Sweeping the Clouds Away” [New York Times via Slashdot]
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What is more sad? Thinking that today’s small children cannot handle the content of old Sesame Street episodes? Or adults purchasing old Sesame Street episodes to watch by themselves?
that adults would not believe them if they had something important to tell them.
@maddypilar: Why not send that message? It’s true!
@DrGirlfriend: Haven’t they already made Cookie Monster stop eating cookies?
@Rectilinear Propagation: I don’t know. I don’t watch Sesame Street anymore.
@DrGirlfriend: I think that now he still eats cookies, but not that often, and also eats apples and carrots, etc.
I need to pick these up along with some of the original Looney Toons episodes. Kids shows these days are just weak.
It’s now just a vehicle to sell shit to kids.
The Corporation For Public Broadcasting (a private corporation funded with public money- what kind of bullshit is that?) doesn’t get a dime from Sesame Street sales.
No more Monsterpiece Theater?!?! That was one of my favorite sketches!
@l951b951: I don’t smoke either, but Monsterpiece Theater is probably the reason I tried to inhale my bubbles pipe…
@frugalchick: the “Adults only” language is from the NY Times critic, not from the box. The Times quotes the packaging: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”
And not to defend CTW too much, because I, too, am subjectively nostalgic about my own childhood watching, but the “suit the needs” part is a reference to the accumulated body of child behavior research that has informed changes to the show over the years.
I remember reading about Don Music that they found kids were modeling behavior they saw on TV; i.e., the show was teaching kids to pound their head on furniture when they were frustrated. In the absence of positive role models or proactive parents, such as in the “slum” families The Street was originally intended for, that’s the only message they got.
Now let’s resume our collective self-praise for making it into the top half of society.
@lim:
Ah the miracle of life was a Nova documentery, I think?
This is absurd and insane. It’s as if every day I find a new reason to be even more libertarian.
@Rectilinear Propagation:
“Mommy, the priest is touching me in a bad way.”
“He couldn’t possibly be doing that, he’s a good christian man!”
@dotorg greg:
Uh, the “accumulated body of child behavior research that has informed changes to the show over the years” is the same “research” that brought us the “Baby Einstein” videos. And we know how well those have worked.
Penn & Teller and Levitt/Dubner tackled this. Your kids do well if you pay attention to them and demonstrate that you value education. Television, school, and “peer pressure” have very little to do with how your children are raised.
Freakonomics also points out that numbers are frequently crap, and that people aren’t clones – they learn and act according to their unique brains. What’s appropriate for one child could be useless for another.