New Sesame Street DVD Of Early Episodes Contains Parental Warning

The New York Times:

Sunny days! The earliest episodes of "Sesame Street" are available on digital video! Break out some Keebler products, fire up the DVD player and prepare for the exquisite pleasure-pain of top-shelf nostalgia.

Just don't bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, "Sesame Street: Old School" is adults-only: "These early 'Sesame Street' episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today's preschool child."

Read the whole story: The New York Times

Comments

[tombollocks]

I was in 1st grade when it premiered. Not once, I repeat, NOT ONCE did I ever try to smoke a pipe, let alone eat one, and Cookie Monster was always my favorite!

We (kids) were smart and inquisitive. We (adults) are now dumb and bored. We've stopped thinking....

[fahrenheit451]

Are the kids who grew up on Sesame Street, the Electric Company and Zoom! so messed up that they need to "sanitize" our beloved muppets?!

Someday, our decendants will wonder how in the hell we managed to make it out of the 21at century.

[Thinkahead]

Oh NO,
Are they going to take me away. "old school Vol 2" is playing as I type.
My child is learning about the evil alphabet as taught by a hispanic man. And then, there are all those multi-cultural people doing a follow the leader game. They are stretching and moving, they have no game boy yet.
Could it be that the reality of what our world was like when I was a small child, is too offensive to the corporations now.
No game boy, milk that comes from the farm, and all those great non-digital cartoons.
Save the children; they are too important as the little dumb protected slaves of the future.

[kwright]

well at least now i can tell my kids, don't blame me and dad if your screwed up! finally a goat. cookie monster.

[psk]

I grew up on Seseame Street, so did my older kids. I don't let my littlest one watch now, it has gotten far to PC and just plain icky.

I don't like the dumbing down of our young people. Kids are not stupid by a long shot. They are in fact pretty darned quick on the up-take. Kids are supposed to be "action-packed" explorers and full of 100 million questions about everything.

The old Seseame Street encouraged learning. Now it is so sugary sweet and PC correct I can feel the cavities developing just watching an episode. Yuck!

[Jonathanc]

I going to buy the videos and show them to my daughter. I thought they were amusing, I don't she why she wouldn't also.

[Widmerpool]

Monsterpiece Theatre was great. I thought it was funny because my parents actually watched that boring Masterpiece Theatre (back when they brought classic pieces of literature to the small screen).

Culturally, the kids of the seventies were the luckiest bunch of kids. Television programs sought to educate us. Films were never better. And those first few seasons of SNL were brilliant. Everything is dumbed down now so that no one has to be challenged intellectually (cuz that can hurt yer feelins if sumpin sez sumpin you dint no or unnerstan).

Dumbing down smart and interesting media of the past for audiences that can't think critically is, well, just dumb. Challenge them! Make them angry that they are treated in such a condescending manner and deprieved of entertainment that doesn't solely involve explosions, farts and groin kicks.

(Full disclosure; I was laughing my head off at "The 40 Year Old Virgin" last night. In my defense I saw "C.R.A.Z.Y." the other night and can't stop thinking about it.)

[iswearington]

now we've heard it all! is there anyone on this planet that really believes we black folk are too dumb not to know that ronald reagan and his wife were running dog racists.all white americans except a tiny minority are racists. but to really stand out lkike the reagans...you have to really be a genuine racist.but don't worry...ron reagan jr. a bright shining spirit and real human being...makes up for his parents and his older brother "career racist"...­michael.in the future..if white folk really want to know who the racists are...ask a black person.

[Geoffreys]

From the article:
I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.”
----------

...Because, as a child, I didn't know that eating a pipe wasn't something real people did and just supposed to be funny. I didn't know the word parody back then but I understood the concept.

We're so worried about 'protecting' our children that somewhere along the way we decided they are all idiots.

[ThomasDoubting]

Jim Henson created these characters just as they should be. None of them need to be updated! When these characters were developed children were treated with more respect, and so were adults. In today's politically correct world, Americans are afraid to listen to a different drum, and if they do, then they are afraid to admit it. Even presidential candidates are being ridiculed, if they do not share the approved viewpoint.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I always thought Sesame Street was the work of
the Devil...talking puppets...they're possessed!
It is the work of Lucifer! Burn them! LOL

[drkazmd65]

I have long felt that I was emotionally scarred by something,... now I know what,...

Who could imagine a world where ONLY Big Bird could see the Suffalupagus,......

Who could imagine a world where ANYBODY living in a trash can on a city street could be justifiably Grouchy,...

Who could imagine a world where two grown (closeted?) men could live in a downstairs apartment on an city street in NY and occasionally get on each other's nerves,...

I am a 42 Year-old Victim of Sesame Street,....

I am emotionally scarred by the experience,....

Jesus,.... we all really need to get over ourselves,.... It's friggin' Sesame Street for crying out loud.

I love old Marx Brothers movies, and cringe at some of the old 'Happy Negro' song & dance scenes in them,... but would rail against their being removed from those movies.

Revisionist history will bite us all in the ass at some point.

*gets off soap-box*

[Wilburrr]

When I read this piece to my kids, now 20 and 21, they broke into an immediate parody of the parody; "Thank you, thank you.... Thank you!" in unmistakable cookie monster voices. Boy! Are they are screwed up kids...

[godlessclif]

I have taken down the "Bert is Evil!"site from my server. I would like to thank Sesame Workshop for their patience and restraint all these years. I implore all fans and mirror site hosts of "Bert is Evil" to stop the spread of this site too.

This is not selling out. I was not bullied. I am not being a pussy.

I am doing this because I feel this has gotten too close to reality and I choose to be responsible enough to stop it right here.

[godlessclif]

http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/Q/F/osama_bert.jpg

Bert joins the Jihad.