Vintage Sesame Street clips

[dougo]

jtemperance linked to a classic Sesame Street bit on YouTube, funky shapes dude. Which led me to find a bunch of other psychedelic/surreal animated bits about counting that I remember from childhood:

• pinball montage
• king of 8
• 12 rocks
• 11 squares
• 10 spies
• Indian yogi counts to 20
• 9-armed martian chick

Also, the famous loaf of bread, container of milk, stick of butter. My memory had been conflating this with another animated short that was much more psychedelic, though, which I can't find. It was a kid traveling through the city alone, encountering various bizarre things on his odyssey. Does that ring any bells for anyone?

Edit: one more: Count To Ten With Nobody.

Edit 2: OK, I could go on forever, but just one more: queen of 6

Comments

[twistjusty.livejournal.com]

I remember Jughead (from Archie Comics) listing words that began with the letter J, the Queen of Six, and a live action skit where the camera has the perspective of someone riding on the firetruck and there's some song that goes something like "... who is there to help? The firemaaaaan, the firemaaaan."

tombking and I caught the last five minutes of the 35th Anniversary special with the orignal "Mahna Mahna" and we were excited for days from the nostalgia.

[twistjusty.livejournal.com]

You know the Pointer Sisters did the pinball montage (reminiscent of Peter Max) song, right?

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I hadn't known it until I saw the comments on YouTube. I love that funky music.

I edited to add the queen of 6 link. The "original" mahna mahna is there too. (Wasn't it originally originally from a Swedish porn movie?)

Someone should make a hip-hop version of "King of 8". "I'm the king of 8 and I'm here to state that everything here has to total 8. BEE-YOTCH!"

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Italian, not Swedish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahna_Mahna).

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Ah, but the movie was about Sweden. Thanks for the link.

[rosminah.livejournal.com]

oooh, I love the indian yogi counting to 20. I had this little hand-crank video machine as a kid and that was one of the videos.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

Whoa! Cool! Flashback time!
In a demographically-similar note, but twenty years on, happyfunpaul has just posted a pointer to hundreds of 1980's music videos.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, VH1 Classic is almost worth the price of cable alone. I still haven't found the video for Tenpole Tudor's "Wunderbar", though. YouTube has a Top of the Pops performance, but I remember the video had wacky Vikings and stuff.

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

My two favorite Sesame Street animations:

the Ladybugs' Picnic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSYyGsKEz1k
and
Ten Tiny Turtles On the Telephone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egk7-m1lwsA

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

I definitely remember the one you're talking about. It included the strange guy with the yoyo - he'd step out from behind the yoyo string, which really stuck with me. Yoyo guy also did an "over, under, around, and through" bit IIRC.

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

Yo-yo guy was from a short in which a kid got lost in an increasingly surreal landscape, and he helped the kid get home by suggesting remembering the places he'd passed and reverse the order.

It was discussed on alt.religion.kibology, here:
http://www.kibo.com/rawdata/2000/2000-03-04.txt

[dougo.livejournal.com]

That's the one. Now how do we find the video?

[dkuznick.livejournal.com]

I still see it once in a while, usually on the "old" episodes shown on Noggin. That was one of my all-time favorites also. That and the (non-animated) Rube Goldberg-like thing with the ball that went all around some weird contraption. I still remember seeing the first Seasame Street episode on channel 13 in NY. IIRC, it replaced Pocket Full of Rhymes in that time slot, though I can't seem to find any erferences to that. And I was like WTF? (well, not really since I was 3 at the time, but still... :-)

Random fact: J used to work at Sesame Street in the research department.

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

Apparently those of us with TiVos need to start recording Sesame Street ... and watch ... and wait ...

[twistjusty.livejournal.com]

I miss Roosevelt Franklin. (http://www.sesame-encyclopedia.com/Alphabet/SesameR/RooseveltFranklin.html)

Bonus skit link (http://www.toughpigs.com/anthhipster02.htm).

[jtemperance.livejournal.com]

I had totally forgotten about Queen of 6! It's funny how these look so trippy now but they didn't when I was a kid.

[mshonle.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I suppose I'll be the lone anti-retro voice here and say I'm glad we've outgrown these mostly empty-calorie forms of children entertainment.

Not that we don't have empty-calorie shows today, but there exist some today that are much better-- even the equivalent of trail mix.

[reddig.livejournal.com]

Griffin and I just watched the pinball counting one and I was taken way back while Griffin wouldn't stop dancing.

thank you