Can’t find it, but I remember some SS animation of a baby climbing a ladder to reach the top of a pillar. When he reaches the top the ladder falls away.
Now what’s he gonna do?
He imagines himself jumping off the pillar, and also imagines broken-off pieces of body parts lying on the ground.
:eek:
"HELP!"
All of a sudden, a giant clown gently lowers him to the ground, then fades away. 
The video that freaked me out was the kid lost in a trippy, pseudo-“Yellow Submarine” land. Presumably the point is to teach kids about retracing their steps:
I remember and loved all of these, and have bought DVDs of the early Sesame Street and Electric Company shows for my daughter.
Sung by the Pointer Sisters, IIRC.
Indeed - it’s called something like “Jazz Counting” and it’s manic. The bit I remember is at the end where all the “spies” in trenchcoats reveal their numbers which all merge together.
More famous voices - The Adventures of Letterman featured Gene Wilder as Letterman, Zero Mostel as Spell Binder and Joan Rivers as the narrator.
I tried that once. Only once though. It hurts.
Mary had a bicycle
Its paint was red as fire
And whenever she wanted to take a ride
The bicycle had a flat tire
The only sketch that freaked me out was the Electric Company one with the sinister candy stalker:
Golly, this lollypop is following me
And I really don’t know what to do
You may think it’s silly
To run willy-nilly
When a lollypop follows you
When a big yellow lollypop - golly! - follows you
We don’t know why it was following her. We only know that at the end it catches her. :eek:
Didn’t have time to go through the entire thread this morning, so if this has been mentioned forgive me.
First there was the problem of what to call the show.
But the reason early seasons of SS were so weird is because Jim Henson didn’t start out doing childrens stuff and he had a dark and strange sense of humor.
Check out some of these Wilkins Coffee commercials he did. They were just 10 second blips that played between station identifications. Pretty out there when considering the era. He also did some stuff for SNL.
I was a little old for Sesame Street when it first came on, but I always loved this one.
For a time, I tried to be a songwriter for Sesame Street. I had to stop because slamming my head down in frustration was bloodying the ivory.
I loved that! Here it is!
The only skit that really freaked me out as a kid was this one:
Kermit Talks About Feet
I’m still not sure why but it was most likely that monstrous laugh at the end
The “O” song was the one I came here to mention. For some reason I have had that song stuck in my head (meaning I still remember the words!) for the last…oh, 40 years or so.
I barely remember anything else about Sesame Street except for that and the Mahna-Manha guys and “Rubber Duckie,” but I’m sure that song is stuck in my brain for the rest of my life.
I was never alive to see the old Electric Company, but these segments from the 2009 revival freaked me out a bit as a kid. The blue dog is just creepy. I always wanted him to die.
Surprised this one hasn’t surfaced in the fourteen or so years this thread has existed. Something about the texture of that elevator shaft and the scream of that poor elevator operator plunging ten stories to his death just freaked toddler me right the hell out.
Can’t say that it freaked me out, but this one is pretty weird.
What I do remember freaking me out as a kid was a plot element in a Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood episode, where in The Land of Make Believe there was a giant cow (purple?) that was approaching for some reason, and was visible on the horizon like a four-legged Godzilla. Anyone remember any details about that story arc?
Looking back, The Letter People are pretty freaky, too.
Go check out the Conflict arc, then. NUCLEAR WAR!
There was a ‘sequel’ of sorts to the Nobody sketch, this time he counted to four. Thankfully, he was offscreen, there were kids with him this time, and there was no ‘music’ at the beginning, nor anywhere in the skit, unlike last time. There were just sound effects.