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.
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.
No.
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.
Quote from: Scott5114 on June 29, 2022, 06:56:12 PM
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.
I watched a ton of Price Is Right and got pretty good at it when I was a kid. I'd fail miserably now.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on June 29, 2022, 07:16:58 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on June 29, 2022, 06:56:12 PM
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.
Quote from: Scott5114 on June 29, 2022, 06:56:12 PM
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.
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.
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.
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.
Quote from: Scott5114 on June 29, 2022, 08:11:16 PM
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
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.
Quote from: Takumi on July 01, 2022, 10:21:04 AM
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.
Quote from: Takumi on July 01, 2022, 10:21:04 AM
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.
Quote from: Stephane Dumas on July 01, 2022, 07:40:52 AM
Quote from: Scott5114 on June 29, 2022, 08:11:16 PM
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.
Quote from: zzcarp on July 01, 2022, 10:27:57 AM
Quote from: Takumi on July 01, 2022, 10:21:04 AM
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).
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
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.
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).
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!!
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...
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.
Quote from: thenetwork on July 06, 2022, 08:03:14 PM
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?
Quote from: Scott5114 on July 06, 2022, 09:12:15 PM
Quote from: thenetwork on July 06, 2022, 08:03:14 PM
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.
Quote from: Rothman on July 06, 2022, 11:44:09 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on July 06, 2022, 09:12:15 PM
Quote from: thenetwork on July 06, 2022, 08:03:14 PM
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.
No shit. Nobody can compete with the economy of scale that the 386 architecture began to provide in the mid-1980s.
Quote from: thenetwork on July 06, 2022, 08:03:14 PM
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...
I like what you said here. I grew up with those same era of shows being the ones that were the current shows (meaning the pre 1985 era I was watching as they aired for the first time). In many ways, everything you described is the way I still think Sesame Street is, because I am "caught" in that time warp.
At the risk of sounding like an old man yelling at clouds, I will say I agree with what you said. My brother is 10 years younger than me so I got to dabble in kids shows past my kid life, so I do know what you are talking about when you reference the 90's Elmo phenomenon, and of course everything since then when they try to force every agenda down the kids throat. I don't know why there has to be so many PC issues thrown down a kid's throat. I don't understand why any adult issue needs to be addressed. They are kids. They will have two reactions to it. They either don't understand and it falls flat, or they understand and they don't care. Remember, children see the world very black and white. It is or it isn't with them. There are really no grey areas to a child. It's right or it's wrong, or the answer is yes or no. It's adults that introduce the grey areas in their adult lives, and mostly try to manipulate the grey area so it can fit around whatever they are doing so they can justify doing it. A child, frankly, doesn't have that developed a thought process to be that manipulative, nor have they reached a mature enough age to act on it.
This to say, yes, the old episodes dealt with letters, numbers, objects. This is how you spell, this is how you count and these are some repetitive shapes. This is what you do to be a good person. If you are a bad person there is a price to pay.
Like other lessons that were taught before: To your playground example, we had solid steel playgrounds with lead paint that were 257 degrees in the Texas summer sun, and when you fell off, there were lots of rocks to catch you. Its funny, but I honestly think there was a life lesson that I learned with it. The world is not cruel or nice. The world is indifferent. It doesn't care if you succeed or fail. There are no prizes for just showing up. There is no entitlement. No one gets praise for just being born. You are another person like all the other people. This isn't saying you aren't unique in your own special way, but an indifferent world doesn't care. You fall off the monkey bars, it will hurt just like it will hurt for every child. No one is immune. You want to not get hurt? Learn how to do the monkey bars without falling off. Don't wait around for the playscape to build a fall free harness and soft padding where the rocks used to be. It's funny I know for me to say these things, but the older I get, the more I look back on my childhood, particularly the stuff that was outlawed later (in favor of safer things), and think I did learn a lesson or two from them. I am not saying I am not grateful for more safety in today's buildings and playgrounds, but I do think stuff like that has allowed an entire generation to skip many tough lessons and is part of the reason so many people have a sense of entitlement. They never fell off the monkey bars in front of everybody and got humbled and bloody. Maybe the better example is, they never got punched in the face.
I am not going to say life was better when I was a kid. It wasn't. Instead of cyber bullying, you had face to face bullying which was far worse and painful. You had less TV to watch, less information and less to no accessibility to things you did see on TV. I always use the example of watching baseball as a kid and seeing the players with flip shades and eye black, which I thought was so cool. I just had to watch it, I couldn't do it because my local sporting good store didn't carry either product. When I was a kid, that was the end of the line. If the local retailer didn't have it, you weren't getting it. I know there were catalogs, but my parents didn't get them. What I learned from it? I wasn't entitled to anything I could think up in my head. I then thought I had to work hard to make it to the majors so I could have flip shades and eye black. It's corny I know, but that's what it taught me. If I missed my favorite TV shows newest episode, I just missed it. There was no recording it, or later playing it because it's streaming. The current world has a lot of great new gadgets, but it has also made so many people impatient and the PC angle has taught everyone they need a parade just for showing up.
Now, I am not saying this applies to all of my generation. I might have gotten lessons out of things that weren't supposed to teach me anything, and brought home the lessons the things that were supposed to teach me something. I also was famous for learning the wrong lesson when my parents would punish me.
I am one of the very few people that the D.A.R.E. program worked for (although I think the backlash from D.A.R.E. now stems from a bunch of people who got hooked on drugs and needed a scape goat to justify why they did it in the first place..."I didn't know anything about those drugs until D.A.R.E. told me what they were")
Quote from: ethanhopkin14 on July 06, 2022, 01:13:32 PM
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!!
I totally forgot about that one! Watching the Cubs on WGN was a very fun experience for me too, even when they were losing.
Quote from: Henry on July 07, 2022, 01:42:55 PM
Quote from: ethanhopkin14 on July 06, 2022, 01:13:32 PM
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!!
I totally forgot about that one! Watching the Cubs on WGN was a very fun experience for me too, especially when they were losing.
FTFY because they did it so frequently I really didn't know what winning was.
If this thread is going to be a bitchfest where we whine about "agendas", thread's done.