Ever since the start of the Old School DVDs, I've often noticed how The Count seems to have been under-represented in the bonus segments included, not to mention being under-represented in 40 Years of Sunny Days. With the first Old School, there's only two seasons where he was on the show, so it's a little excusable. But then volumes 2 and 3 don't have any bonus features with The Count (aside from him appearing in scenes before the credits crawls). On Volume 2 at least he does appear in most of the episodes included, while on volume 3 he's hardly in any of the episodes, with one segment having to be cut, and another just being his voice. In 40 Years of Sunny Days, he does get a minor role introducing the various five-year periods, but the set only has two segments where he's a featured character, and a handful of additional background appearances.
But then I've been looking at track listings for a number of Sesame Street albums, mainly the more comprehensive "best of the best" sets, and even not-quite'comprehensive "best of the best", and in those he tends to get underused as well. The track listings I looked at were for 25 Greatest Hits, 10th Anniversary Album, Sesame Street Platinum, Platinum Too, Sesame Street Best, and Songs from the Street. And for the most part, all of those just have one segment where he's the main singer, a few have two, in addition to a few where he's just part of the gang and doesn't have much dialogue (in fact, on Sesame Street Best it looks like the only song with The Count is Do Dee Rubber Duck, where he only gets one line). I should have looked at the track listing for Sesame Street Celebrates, but there's probably not much of The Count on there, either.
It's also similar with the 25th and 35th anniversary videos. They both have only one song segment starring the Count, as well as him being in a handful of other songs (and both include Do Dee Rubber Duck). Of course in the 25th anniversary video he is in a lot of linking footage. While I was looking at the song listings, I've found that What's the Name of That Song? has a lot less songs. I thought they were both the same length, but the 25th anniversary has 23 song segments (counting the three-parts of Feel the Beat and the songs in the Rubber Duckie medley as separate songs) while the 35th has only 13 segments (17 if you count the bonus clips). Of course that's not counting songs that appear in the linking footage.
The Count is one of the shows most popular characters and yet it's odd that he seems to get the shaft when it comes to releases celebrating the anniversary or aimed at older fans or generally provide the best of the best. Big Bird, Ernie, Bert, Cookie Monster, Grover, Oscar, and Elmo all tend to get featured a lot more than The Count in these, so it's not like they're not allowed to have too much of the same character. Maybe Ernie, Bert, Cookie Monster, and Grover have a lot more well-known songs and sketches that need to be featured on albums and videos (if I was in charge I'd probably include them the most but I'd still include more of The Count than what these have been including). And The Count isn't the most-underused main Muppet in things like this - it seems like Telly, Mr. Snuffleupagus, Baby Bear, and Rosita get similar under-representations in such things, and Zoe gets included a lot in these kinds of videos but not albums (as Zoe wasn't around for too much longer before they pretty much stopped making new Sesame Street albums). Kermit is a similar case, as most albums celebrating Sesame Street or focusing on the best of the best have just one, maybe two, Kermit songs (and Bein' Green is almost always among them), while the 25th and 35th anniversary videos each have one Kermit song plus Do Dee Rubber Duck, but then the Old School releases have plenty of Kermit in the bonus features (on volume 2 he's among the characters featured in the highest number of bonus clips, and on volume 3 he's tied with Big Bird for appearing in the most bonus clips). As I've said many times (and a few others have as well), The Count hasn't even gotten his own character spotlight video.
Of course I wouldn't say that The Count is one of my top ten favorite characters. I wouldn't include him in a list of my top ten favorite Sesame Street characters, and I think he'd barely even make my list of top ten Jerry Nelson characters (now if it were a list of top ten Sesame Street characters performed by Jerry Nelson it'd be better). There are a lot of great sketches with The Count, as well as a lot of rare skits I really want to see. It's not like the majority of his appearances were in street scenes (like Big Bird, Oscar, and Snuffy) that would be hard to include on compilations of inserts.
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