The Classic Electric Company Memories Thread

[Lucas Kablookas]

In a similar skit, Rita is the customer in a sandwich shop. The special is an "and" sandwich, featuring every ingredient under the sun. It takes both Luis and Jim to lug it out (foam rubber gets heavy, you know). Rita looks the sandwich over and asks for the salami.
Jim (with toothpick hanging out of his mouth): "Lady, there ain't no salami!"
Rita: "Well, forget it!"
Meanwhile the sandwich falls on Jim and buries him.

Meanwhile, Judy was writing a letter to her family. "Dear Mom and Dad and Homer and Beth and Philip and Jonathan and Amy and..." Then Skip made his way into the house. "Are you writing another letter to that crazy family of yours?" "Yes, as a matter of fact, I am," she replied. "Well, don't bother." "Why?" "They're here," answered Skip, as Judy's family was waiting just outside the door!

 

[Lucas Kablookas]

Jim and Luis (those two could shake the walls with their screaming) were at it again, arguing over who knows what.
Jim: "I was!"
Luis: "I was!"
Back and forth we go. When the shouting escalates to a fever pitch, Morgan Freeman as a cop shows up, asking who was yelling.
Jim: "He was!"
Luis: "He was!"
Round we go again, till Morgan rolls his eyes and leaves them be.
I hope Jim and Luis don't spend eternity in Heaven yelling their heads off.

They've had a long history of doing that. Even way back in the old West, those two were getting into arguments.
J: "Rat!"
L: "Snake!"
J: "Worm!"
L: "Weasel!"
J: "Skunk!"
L: "Dirty dog!"
J: "Pussycat! ... Pussycat?"
Fittingly, that sketch was about exclamation marks!

 

[YellowYahooey]

I remember there being a song segment in which Easy Reader sits on a rocking chair on the edge of a dock by the bay, and illustrates several words ending with "AY" (I believe the words are "bay", "day", "say" and "way"). That sketch has yet to appear on YouTube after all those years.

I also remember there being a Letterman sketch in which the hero slow dances with a royalty figure at a ball, and Spell Binder turns "feat" into "feet" - transforming his normal sized feet in shoes to large bare feet! That is another elusive segment that has yet to appear.

Another segment I remember is one that I saw in the fifth season, involving a guy bringing his eyeglasses to Glen's Glasses, and it ends to the owner pouring water over the eyeglasses. I believe the episode this segment was aired, started off with the "Glad Gladys" cartoon segment. I remember seeing this episode in September 1982 (not long after the repeat of Episode 1659 of Sesame Street).

I also remember there being a Spidey sketch in which he tries to foil the Sandman. Two things I remember from that sketch is the party scene which has the "R Car" music from Sesame Street being used as background music, and the end panel which shows Spidey's eyes being a solid black instead of white with a thick black outline. If memory serves correctly, only the audio is available on YT.

There is a letter P sketch I remember in which Morgan Freeman refuses to have his groceries in bags, and prefers to use his pockets instead. In the end, he ultimately accepts a paper bag but puts it over his head. Wouldn't that sketch influence shoplifting to its viewers?

 

[Lucas Kablookas]

I remember there being a song segment in which Easy Reader sits on a rocking chair on the edge of a dock by the bay, and illustrates several words ending with "AY" (I believe the words are "bay", "day", "say" and "way"). That sketch has yet to appear on YouTube after all those years.

I also remember there being a Letterman sketch in which the hero slow dances with a royalty figure at a ball, and Spell Binder turns "feat" into "feat" - transforming his normal sized feet in shoes to large bare feet! That is another elusive segment that has yet to appear.

Another segment I remember is one that I saw in the fifth season, involving a guy bringing his eyeglasses to Glen's Glasses, and it ends to the owner pouring water over the eyeglasses. I believe the episode this segment was aired, started off with the "Glad Gladys" cartoon segment. I remember seeing this episode in September 1982 (not long after the repeat of Episode 1659 of Sesame Street).

I also remember there being a Spidey sketch in which he tries to foil the Sandman. Two things I remember from that sketch is the party scene which has the "R Car" music from Sesame Street being used as background music, and the end panel which shows Spidey's eyes being a solid black instead of white with a thick black outline. If memory serves correctly, only the audio is available on YT.

There is another sketch I remember in which Morgan Freeman refuses to have his groceries in bags, and prefers to use his pockets. In the end, he accepts a paper bag but puts it over his head. Wouldn't that sketch influence shoplifting to its viewers?

Well, at least that’s not as bad as encouraging littering - remember when four guys spelled out the word “litter” on their newspapers and then threw them on the ground? Lucky for them the fourth one was Officer Morgan Freeman, who made them pick the newspapers up.

 

[Lucas Kablookas]

SAY WHEN: Does anyone remember this cartoon by Fred Garbers? We see a huge teenage football player in a soda shop ordering one strawberry soda. The waitress goes to the soda machine and says, "Say when." But the football player goes WH WH, WHAT, uh WHALE, er WHY?" And the waitress keeps pouring out soda until it floods the entire shop in a sea of strawberry soda. And the football player keeps gurgling stuff like WHICH, WHERE, no wait, WHEN!" And the football player slurps the entire sea of soda dry making the shop clean. Then he asks the waitress for another, and she faints.

Here’s another one by Fred Garbers featuring two animated machines made from real photographs. The bigger one asked the smaller one, “What has four wheels and flies?” The small machine pondered this for a while before answering, “A purple grape.” “No,” replies the big one, and asks the question again. After a little more thinking, the small one realized the answer: “A garbage truck.” “He gets them when he tries,” chuckled the big one.

In episode 227, Crank brought up that previous segment to remind the viewers that “garbage” contains two G’s making two different sounds.

 

[Lucas Kablookas]

Say, you should check this out. I found it on the Internet Archive. On pages 12 to 14 it contains little synopses of every Electric Company episode from 25 to 60! Tell me if any of those sketches ring a bell.

ERIC ED126862: Verbal Response to "The Electric Company": Qualities of Program Material and the Viewing Conditions Which Affect Verbalization. : ERIC : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Since verbal responses are a salient and easily documented index of acquisition of learning skills, a project was undertaken in 1972 to collect and analyze the...

archive.org

 

[YellowYahooey]

Say, you should check this out. I found it on the Internet Archive. On pages 12 to 14 it contains little synopses of every Electric Company episode from 25 to 60! Tell me if any of those sketches ring a bell.

ERIC ED126862: Verbal Response to "The Electric Company": Qualities of Program Material and the Viewing Conditions Which Affect Verbalization. : ERIC : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Since verbal responses are a salient and easily documented index of acquisition of learning skills, a project was undertaken in 1972 to collect and analyze the...

archive.org

You know, it kind of makes me wonder if someday, we may see a document of The Electric Company segment lists - just like when someone had access to the Sesame Street outlines which helped in the development of the Muppet Wiki. If we get any documents of outlines for The Electric Company, that will pave the way for developing a full comprehensive episode guide. There are only 780 episodes of The Electric Company in total, and some episode guides are already taken care of - but it is a start.

The Electric Company is perhaps my second most favorite educational show of all time (many of you likely know that Sesame Street has been my #1 favorite). I also found The Electric Company, overall, more hilarious than Sesame Street (the latter had far fewer segments that made me laugh). And the Spidey segments were perhaps the only Spider-Man series that involved more comedy than action. I especially recall the Mr. Measles segment in which the villain plotted to cause a global pandemic, but after Spidey captures the villain he ends up getting measles in the end! And I remember The Bookworm segment - based on the closing similar to "The Spoiler" in the end, implies that "The Bookworm" was one of the first Spidey segments ever produced.

I don't hear tell of measles in any current media nor in the news these days. Has the measles disappeared due to vaccines?

 

[Lucas Kablookas]

No

You know, it kind of makes me wonder if someday, we may see a document of The Electric Company segment lists - just like when someone had access to the Sesame Street outlines which helped in the development of the Muppet Wiki. If we get any documents of outlines for The Electric Company, that will pave the way for developing a full comprehensive episode guide. There are only 780 episodes of The Electric Company in total, and some episode guides are already taken care of - but it is a start.

The Electric Company is perhaps my second most favorite educational show of all time (many of you likely know that Sesame Street has been my #1 favorite). I also found The Electric Company, overall, more hilarious than Sesame Street (the latter had far fewer segments that made me laugh). And the Spidey segments were perhaps the only Spider-Man series that involved more comedy than action. I especially recall the Mr. Measles segment in which the villain plotted to cause a global pandemic, but after Spidey captures the villain he ends up getting measles in the end! And I remember The Bookworm segment - based on the closing similar to "The Spoiler" in the end, implies that "The Bookworm" was one of the first Spidey segments ever produced.

I don't hear tell of measles in any current media nor in the news these days. Has the measles disappeared due to vaccines?

Not sure about that, but show 491 sees a sick Steven Gustaferson in bed shouting out, “Measles!” as the word appears over his head.

By the way, the words “ale”, “rum”, and “wine” have all been featured on The Electric Company.

 

[YellowYahooey]

I did download Show 18A (Season 5) before it was later taken down supposedly by the powers that be. I did contribute images from segments and summaries for segments that were never seen before on the Wiki. Particularly the "UE" segments from later in the show, including the "how to get to Compton Avenue" sketch, the scanimate "argue" segment, the police officer and two male cast members singing the "Argue" song, the cartoon in which a guy has a surefire way to stick an elephant to the ceiling ("the clue is glue"), and the "True Blue Sue" parody "I lost my cue, cue, cue". I even captured screenshots of some of the punctuation segments, particularly the "strike/ball/foul/out" sketch, and Julie (June Angela) discovering books each with a differnet punctuation mark on each cover and the exclamation mark book showed black-and-white stock film footage of cars crashing after she opened the book, and Valerie the librarian scolded her, telling her not to read books aloud.

I even contributed to the Single Consonant sketches (old) page, for the hard and soft C section, an image of Easy Reader and Valerie singing "Soft C, Hard C" with each of the characters holding a lowercase c. I did download that segment well before it was taken down from YouTube.

I also downloaded the Letterman sketch "His Just Desserts" before it was taken down - and I may be able to contribute a screenshot from that sketch to the Electric Company Wiki, even though the video I downloaded was in black and white.

 

[YellowYahooey]

Also, I did view two issues of The Electric Company Magazine on the Internet Archive today (one from September 1984, and another from 1976 or 1977). They were supposedly later issues, as I did not see anything involving cast members (it was definitely during a time when non-CTW properties, such as Hanna-Barbera and comic strip characters, and even Miss Piggy, and celebrities such as Michael Jackson, appeared on covers, which occurred in the late 1970s through the changeover to the publication's rebranding to Kid City in 1988. I did discover Spidey Super Stories comic stories in such publications, but they did not feature any of the show's cast - in fact, Peter Parker's girlfriend, Mary Jane, did appear, and the stories (which were only four or five pages long) were more true to Marvel Comics style - I wonder if many were recycled in later issues?

I certainly hope that someday, more issues of The Electric Company Magazine will see the light of day on the Internet Archive.

Back to the show, I remember the final segment of the series, "That's All", which featured the entire cast and the Short Circus, but Rita Moreno never appeared in that closing number. Was Rita Moreno on maternity leave at the time?