Not being allowed to watch 'Sesame Street'

[bandit957]

Was anyone else here not allowed to watch 'Sesame Street'? Usually, it wasn't because of any objectionable content, but because we were too old for it.

When I was 10, some cartoons and other shows that I regularly watched kept getting preempted by a local station. So I kept saying I was going to watch 'Sesame Street' instead, even though I was too old for it. I kept saying, "I'll go back to Sesame Street!" And I was serious about it too. Even when my cartoons weren't preempted, I would wait until a commercial break and change the channel over to PBS for a few moments and catch a few seconds of 'Sesame Street'. I'd turn the volume down and snicker about it.

I talked so much about trying to watch 'Sesame Street' that my mom said I was expressly forbidden from watching it. In fact, for a long time, I was forbidden from even mentioning 'Sesame Street'. It became a very strict taboo.

This prohibition was lifted just for one day so I could see the episode about Mr. Hooper's death. Even then, I wasn't allowed watching it on the big TV in the living room that had cable. I had to watch it on the little set in the den with no cable.

Someone on another board I read said they taped a hilarious Bert and Ernie segment off 'Sesame Street' and kept watching it over and over and laughing uncontrollably about it. Finally, their mom took the tape away and never let them watch 'Sesame Street' again.

I've also heard of several people having sibling squabbles where they wanted to watch 'Sesame Street' but their older brother or sister wanted to watch something else instead. In every story like this, the older sibling relented when the episode about Mr. Hooper's death was at stake.

[Max Rockatansky]

There was some uber religious neighbors in Connecticut that didn't let their kids watch Sesame Street.  Considering how nutty the parents were they didn't really let their kids do much of anything.  I recall they went to public school basically in gray 1930s era clothes and got made fun of constantly.

[Rothman]

No.

[Scott5114]

I could have watched Sesame Street if I wanted to, but as a kid I consistently favored The Price is Right, which comes on at the same time in our market.

[JayhawkCO]

No.

X2.

Also watched a lot of Price is Right.

[Max Rockatansky]

I could have watched Sesame Street if I wanted to, but as a kid I consistently favored The Price is Right, which comes on at the same time in our market.

I don't know why, but I loved watching the Price as Right in elementary school.  The crap thing was they rarely even played Plinko which happened to be my favorite contestant game.

[Rothman]

I watched a ton of Price Is Right and got pretty good at it when I was a kid.  I'd fail miserably now.

[Scott5114]

I could have watched Sesame Street if I wanted to, but as a kid I consistently favored The Price is Right, which comes on at the same time in our market.

I don't know why, but I loved watching the Price as Right in elementary school.  The crap thing was they rarely even played Plinko which happened to be my favorite contestant game.

Plinko is the US-66 of The Price is Right.

It gets played at least once a week, which is far above the median. About the only games that get played more, statistically, are the "quickie" games like Double Prices, 1 Right Price, etc. (all of these games are easy to slot in and not go over time, and usually have no electronic components so they can be easily subbed in should a more complex game experience an equipment failure the day of taping). Someone on Golden-Road.net has a spreadsheet showing play frequency, I'm sure.

Plinko is also pretty overrated as far as pricing games go, because $50,000 isn't a particularly large prize these days to begin with, and to date nobody has ever actually managed to hit the $10,000 slot with all five chips. Plinko is also one of the few pricing games where you can know the exact prices of everything presented, and yet win nothing (other than the coffee makers and vacuums you correctly priced, that is). The only thing it has going for it is the neat game mechanic and iconic set.

As a kid I got more of a thrill out of seeing the obscure, rarely-played games like Credit Card, Poker Game, and Check Out than I did Plinko.

[jgb191]

I could have watched Sesame Street if I wanted to, but as a kid I consistently favored The Price is Right, which comes on at the same time in our market.

Something else I add to that:  As a small child growing up in the 1980's my morning routine was: $25,000 Pyramid, Press Your Luck, and The Price is Right on CBS; then I would change the channel to NBC and watch Scrabble, Super Password, and Chain Reaction.

I am quite relieved to hear that I'm not the only game show fanatic on there.

[Scott5114]

There's actually a fairly large overlap between roadgeeks and game show fans for whatever reason. You see some of the same usernames here and on the Price is Right fan forums (the aforementioned Golden-Road.net).

I unfortunately was born late enough that most network TV when I was a kid was boring soap operas; the 70/80s daytime game show blocks were a thing of the past. After Price there was nothing good on other than maybe the noon news. Here and there, there would be syndicated shows like Wink Martindale's Debt or Match Game 98 (which many people felt sullied the name of Match Game, but I was 8 so I didn't know any better), but it wasn't consistent from summer to summer. So usually I'd turn off the TV and play video games or go outside or whatever.

[US 89]

I was never allowed to watch The Price Is Right unless it was during the school year and I was home sick from school. Even today every time it just happens to be on I feel like I'm lying on the couch with a fever.

[lepidopteran]

Back in the First Grade, we had "centers" in reading class, one of which was to write a short story based on a given picture and title.  In one story, I included the line "...they watched The Price is Right...".  This was less than a year after the "new" series premiered.

[Stephane Dumas]

Plinko is the US-66 of The Price is Right.

I thought it was the Mountain Climber aka Cliffhanger who was the US-66 of the Price is Right and that part was parodied often.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDIRDt3eGRs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwURD8IHuwk

[Takumi]

Mountain Climber doesn't involve as large a structure to do a parody as Plinko does. I imagine that's why. Plinko definitely has the name recognition of US 66.

Also I like how a thread about Sesame Street turned into a thread about TPIR.

[bandit957]

Mountain Climber doesn't involve as large a structure to do a parody as Plinko does. I imagine that's why. Plinko definitely has the name recognition of US 66.

Also I like how a thread about Sesame Street turned into a thread about TPIR.

'The Price Is Right' once gave away 'Sesame Street' View-Master reels.

[zzcarp]

Mountain Climber doesn't involve as large a structure to do a parody as Plinko does. I imagine that's why. Plinko definitely has the name recognition of US 66.

Also I like how a thread about Sesame Street turned into a thread about TPIR.

Bringing both together, I'd watch Sesame Street as a kid, then my mom (who didn't like The Price Is Right) would change over to Channel 8 for the noon news (the only news at that time in Cleveland IIRC) and we'd see the end of the showcase showdown.

[Scott5114]

Plinko is the US-66 of The Price is Right.

I thought it was the Mountain Climber aka Cliffhanger who was the US-66 of the Price is Right and that part was parodied often.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDIRDt3eGRs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwURD8IHuwk

The name of the game is "Cliff Hangers". It is a technically better game than Plinko, because the amount the mountain climber travels is just the difference between their guess and the actual retail price. Thus, if one knows the three prices, they can win the game every time.

Actually, for a while there, you didn't even need to know the prices–regular viewers could pick up on the fact that the prizes offered were always about the same prices, such that guessing $20-$30-$40 would nearly always result in a win. I don't know if that's still the case, as I haven't watched it in about a decade. TPIR used to have a lot of little "tricks" like that which would reward a regular viewer who became a contestant. I think after the perfect Showcase bid, they got scared and got rid of a lot of them.

The name of the song played during "Cliff Hangers" is called "On the Franches Mountains", which was taken from a vinyl album of actual Swiss yodeling songs.

Mountain Climber doesn't involve as large a structure to do a parody as Plinko does. I imagine that's why. Plinko definitely has the name recognition of US 66.

Also I like how a thread about Sesame Street turned into a thread about TPIR.

Bringing both together, I'd watch Sesame Street as a kid, then my mom (who didn't like The Price Is Right) would change over to Channel 8 for the noon news (the only news at that time in Cleveland IIRC) and we'd see the end of the showcase showdown.

You probably saw the end of the Showcases–the Showcase Showdown is the part where they spin the wheel (because it's a "showdown" to see who can get into the Showcase round, you see).

[Stephane Dumas]

Back to Sesame Street, Don Music won't be see in new episodes due to his constant headbanging on the piano because it gived some bad influences to kids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEO-DN4_8uE

[bandit957]

All this 'Sesame Street' stuff when I was 9 or 10 got started all because I saw an Ernie and Bert puzzle in a waiting room, and I recalled how cool it was when I used to regularly watch 'Sesame Street' when I was younger (like before I was 6).

After I wasn't allowed mentioning 'Sesame Street' anymore, I went through a brief phase where I'd use the word 'curator' as code for 'Sesame Street', because apparently Crank from 'The Electric Company' was the curator of something. Also, in 5th grade, we watched 'The Electric Company' at school, even though we were really too old for it.

Around that time, my big goal in life was to hear Casey Kasem mention 'Sesame Street'. When I somehow discovered "Rubber Duckie" by Ernie had made the top 40 many years earlier, I figured there was some hope.

[Henry]

I remember watching Sesame Street on WTTW (the Chicago PBS affiliate) up to the day I graduated from elementary school, and after that, I moved on to game shows, mainly TPIR. And that show was still giving away fur coats for at least a year before Bob put a ban on them permanently (of course, he would do the same thing with foreign cars a decade later, at the height of the Persian Gulf War).

[ethanhopkin14]

The opposite happened for me.  My mom was sad the day my sister and I stopped watching Sesame Street, because we said we were too old to watch it.

I also loved game shows when I was young and when I was an older kid during summer break.  If I wasn't playing baseball, I was inside watching, The Price is Right, 10,000 Dollar Pyrimid and Press Your Luck.  So many sound effects from those games bring back happy memories to this day when I hear them.  After that, that would usually segue into a Cubs day game on WGN.  My day was perfectly timed!!

[thenetwork]

I'm gonna chime in here...

My wife and I were not able to have kids.  But if we did, I would sit them down for any and all Sesame Street PRIOR to 1985, which is still about 16 years worth of episodes.  Why?  Because it's pretty much everything modern day Sesame Street has turned away from.

Old School Sesame Street, as it is commonly known now, was. All the old skits, animated cartoons, and boomer generation diversit that was written for both children and same stuff only adults would get. 

Snuffleupagus was imaginary to everyone except Big Bird, Roosevelt Franklin was a cool dude in school, there were muppet skits based no less than 3 Beatles songs -- all of which were eliminated by 1985.  It. Was a great balance of animation, musical sing-a-longs, living characters, outdoor segments, and Muppet skits that The Muppet Show later capitalized on.

Once you got into the 90s, 30 minutes of each show was Elmos World. Many of the 3-D Muppets are now animated or digitized.  And everything is now PC and seems to be the new education processes.

Yet I grew up on old school Sesame Street and METAL playground equipment and did just fine in the adult world <NARF...Twitch...Twitch..>  I think they have dumbed down the show instead of challenging young minds.

But that's just my 2 cents...

[Rothman]

One of the reasons they killed the "Adults don't believe Snuffy is real" aspect was because they wanted to help kids trust adults if they were in more serious situations.

Snuffy becoming real in the adults' eyes was a key moment in my childhood.

[Scott5114]

And everything is now PC and seems to be the new education processes.

It's PBS; do you really think they can afford Apple products?

[Rothman]

And everything is now PC and seems to be the new education processes.

It's PBS; do you really think they can afford Apple products?

Everything is now PC...It's like the show evolved along with child development science to help kids better cope with difference.  Imagine that.