70s Sesame Street shorts that freaked you out

Cafe Society
1

Crap, there were so many, and they’re all ingrained on my mind, even at the age of 30.

Seriously, these writers and animators were on some serious shrooms. I don’t doubt their good intentions, but still…

“We all live in a capital I, a capital I, capital I.” OK that was just freakin weird. All these muppet things climbing ladders into a capital I, having cleaned it an all. I get it: ‘I’ is a letter of the alphabet. Do I need some monotone drone to drill it into me?

The weird-ass pinball machine. One two three FOUR FIVE six seven eight NINE TWELVE eleven TWEEEE-LLVE! Followed by a selected number and some pointless journey around an animated pinball machine. “Eight!” (Me: “Whoo! Eight!”) “Eight!” (Me: “Still eight?”) Then finished up with the ubiquitous “One two three FOUR FIVE six seven eign NINE TWELVE eleven TWEEEEL-VE!!!”

OK, look, by that point, I could count. I didn’t need some journey into the psychedelic stratosphere to ram it into my head.

“Yip yip yip yip yipyipyipyipyipyipyipyip uh huh huh huh telephone!” - those aliens. Crap, that freaked me out.

And the most freaky that I can remember:

“A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of buttahh.” So some mother sends her little kid out onto the streets (!) to get her friggin groceries, then said kid wanders into acid-land and has this major trip with weird creatures around her and crap like that, then eventually comes down, having somehow remembered to pick up the groceries during her acid trip. “I remembered, Mommy, I remembered!” OK, yeah, you remembered, but how long were you actually gone?

My God, what were they trying to convey? I’m sure their intentions were honorable, but really, looking back, it’s seriously f***ked up.

There are more, I’m sure. Share.

That show traumatized me.

2

What’s funny is I knew exactly what you were talking about when I read the thread title, but couldn’t remember anything specifically, but now the trippy horrors of 70s television for children has resurfaced clear in my mind. I remember all of those things now in vivid detail. I think I’m going to pop a couple of Xanax and wash 'em back with some 151 proof rum. :slight_smile:

3

What freaked me out was the Electric Company’s homages to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Does anybody else remember those?

4

Apparently you were too traumatized to learn anything. :slight_smile:

I hope you don’t have Noggin, which shows two old-school episodes (and four episodes of Electric Company) every Friday and Saturday night. A couple of weeks ago they showed a cartoon about “five purple conkers”, three of which died horrible deaths, with the remaining two getting married. Unfortunately their attempt to preserve the species failed; their child was a yellow honker.

There was another counting cartoon which I used to have on one of those Fisher-Price movie camera cartridges. It had an elderly guru who counted 1-10 on his fingers, he then raised two more arms to count to 20, and then he…disintegrated…into a kaleidoscope-like hallucination.

5

Ever catch it nowadays? The Elmo segment isn’t much better.

6

I can list several Sesame Street skits that freaked me out:

There was a skit where Harry (one of the big, blue monsters) got up close to the camera and he roared and fogged up the lens (the whole screen turned white and you could still see his eyes through the fog). Every time this skit came on I’d either run out of the room, change the channel and wait a few seconds, or cover up my eyes and wait until it was over, it scared me that much. I was four at the time.

Then there was another skit which I believe was a spoof of the Six Million Dollar Man with something called the “Six Dollar Robot” (my memory is sketchy on this one). The robot goes berserk, its head (I think it was a bowling ball) comes off, smoke starts spewing out of its body, it starts making erratic beeping noises and it’s chasing everyone around the lab. This one freaked me out, too, for some reason.

Lastly, there was one where they were inflating the letter G. I’d watch it up to where I knew it was about to burst and then I’d close my eyes and cover my ears since watching it pop scared me.

7

The only one which freaked me out was the pinball machine. I swear, that was probably the reason why I’ve never wanted to try drugs. Never needed to, after watching that.

8

I was a teenager when Sesame first came to TV. Someone told me that Grace Slick was one of the ‘counters’ who did the one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-NINE-ten bit. I dunno.
Anyway, the shorts that always grabbed my attention were the ones with Teeny Little Super Guy, the little plastic cup guy who lived in the kitchen. I remember he could sort of sink into the kitchen counter, and slide along from place to place. And wasn’t a toothbrush sort of his pet dog? “Don’t look in the sky, don’t look in the sea, he’s inside of you and me…”

9

Just have to say that this thread is giving me flashbacks…

10

Wow, someone else remembers the “Capital I” song.

None of those really scared me. In fact, I really thought the pinball ones were cool.

11

Like Legomancer, I really liked the pinball ones.

1 2 3 …4…5…6 7 8 9 10

12

I totally forgot about Teeny Little Super Guy, but I am now hearing the song in my head!

It’s so weird that I saw this thread today, for some reason I woke up this morning and had “Would you like to buy an ‘O’?” in my head. As I thought about it, it’s awfully reminiscent of a drug deal…man in overcoat pushing his ‘o’ on Ernie, on a corner, shushing him.

"Just buy the ‘O’ and take it home tonight,
Don’t ask any questions,
Just buy the ‘O’ and take it home tonight!

It’ll cost you just a nickel…"

What if they made that song about ‘E’?:eek:

anyone else remember “Abierto, cerrado?”

Guy Smilie always kind of freaked me out.

13

There was a number that they did teaching kids to use words that end with “-ly.”

The number consisted of different scenarios that a person may find him or herself in. The song then says how you should respond (cheerfully, etc.)

The last one involved you finding a vampire in your closet. How do you run away “Quickly, quickly, quickly, -L-Y.”

Scared me then and may have contributed to the irrational fear of vampires that I still have.

Zev Steinhardt

14

Well they didn’t make the song about E to sound like it was laden with drug references. They did make “Silent E” though.

Who can turn a can into a cane,
Who can turn a man into a mane,
It’s not to hard to see for Silent E!

Tim Lehrer sang that one. I think he also sang Poisoning Pigeons in the Park

15

Two of my three recurring childhood nightmares involved Sesame Street characters.

One was of Super Grover taking off and then crash-landing haphazardly – but without fail – right onto me.

The other put me in the path of Cookie Monster’s gastronomic orgy of destruction and being mistaken for biscotti.

In my early teens, I had one of these dreams again and woke up angry: “What the f***? Shouldn’t there be women in these things?”

16

That song – along with “Silent E”, “O-U (The Hound Song)”, “S-N (Sniff, Snore & Sneeze)” and “N Apostrophe T” – was written & performed by Tom Lehrer and can be found on the Remains of Tom Lehrer
PS: I’m pretty sure these were all on Electric Company…

17

There’s a counting song they play on Sesame Street with some cute kids running through the town & a park singing and dancing.

Uno, dos, tres! Quatro, cinco, seis! Siete, ocho, nueve, and one more makes diez!

And what about the one about it being hot?

Hace calor! Si, si, senor! Could fry an egg on the cement, it’s so caliente! Hace calor! Mucho calor. How about this weather, it’s so dang hot!

:slight_smile:

No Sesame Street-induced nightmares, however. My nightmares usually involved the 7 dwarves trying to bury me alive.

18

What about that Damned chef and the Pies. You know
“ten deliciouas coconut cream pies ooops ah crash!!”

I used to always hope the poor guy would make it to the bottom of the steps but he never did. Say didn’t the pinball machine occure later in the series? Like the eighties.

19

YESS!! I remember that one. Terrified me as a kid.
This thread is bringing back a lot of memories.

Does anyone remember the cartoon skit about “Fred”? He sang a goofy song that went something like,
“My name is FRED
I eat BREAD.
I sleep in a BED”

Or something like that.

The little boy going out to get groceries freaked me out too. I always wondered why his mother would let him go out by himself when the town was so obviously overrun with monsters and bizarre creatures.

20

There was also a song about words ending in “-gry”. A verse about “hungry”, a verse about “angry”, and one about…
…damn, can’t remember the last verse.