Are there Season 1 shows floating around?

[Drtooth]

Before and After
The Anything Muppets refer to this as "Silly Song Time", but I don't see (hear?) anything funny about the lyrics. But the actions are funny, with Buddy doing some demonstrations during the song. The first season show content had "RE-DO" intructions for this because of Buddy (it actually listed Buddy and Jim though Jim isn't in it), I don't think the whole song would need to be redone (I wonder if they replaced Buddy's parts with Wally or Ralph, I couldn't see Larry or Phyllis being featured for that). For the past decade I've been wondering how hats stay on Muppets, as many look like they couldn't stay on too well without something sticking on them, and in this the pumpkin AM's hat seems to barely stay on, flying to the sides as if it's sewn on, then we stop seeing it as if it had fallen off (or maybe it's hanging behind his head).

The lyrics are intentionally goofy and redundant. I guess that's supposed to be silly. First season weirdness is an understatement. This seems like it was supposed to be a series of skits or something, and the only singing part of the actual song is wrap-around for the "too dumb to live" human comedy characters. So the song part is completely unnecessary. They could have done the entire sketch without the music and it could have been exactly the same. Maybe punchier.

Frank Oz's voice of God is the only thing really interesting to me. It makes the skit funnier than it should be, especially the annoyed, yet never breaking tone "You're on your own" comment. Now, I know the way to teach and entertain kids is to give them goofy, incompetent adults, but come on. This is very much abusing that trope. Sure, a 5 year old might think an adult that doesn't know how to eat is hilarious, as an adult you wonder why he didn't drown with his head in the bowl trying to drop a deuce.

Never been a fan of Buddy and Jim (or any of these humans to be replaced by Muppets), but I have to admit this one was easily the funniest (if eye rollingest) one of their skits. Though you can totally eat a freaking piece of cake with a coat on! Somehow I think it should have been "Take the cake out of the box first" instead. or even instead of opening/closing his mouth. Yeah, him trying to chomp down on a cardboard box would have been funnier.

 

[minor muppetz]

One thing about the "All Together Now" bit that I forgot to mention: It feels like when an uncool person (especially a lame parent) trying and failing to be cool, except it's not quite cringe-worthy, nor is it a "so bad it's good"/"so unfunny it's hilarious" quality (which is the usual result in comedy when lame characters try and fail to be hip). I doubt they intended on it being "squares trying and failing to be cool", but wouldn't it be funny if they did and yet made a lame attempt at being lame?

 

[Drtooth]

Not exactly first season, but I noticed the wiki has this photo from a rare early season episode.

I'm fascinated by how nonstandard this character's design is. It hardly looks like anything Sesame Streetish at all. A holdout from Great Santa Claus Switch or a later Ed Sullivan skit. But definitely not a Sesame Street monster as we know and love.

Don't think this episode is available on YT, someone has to have gotten that from somewhere. But it's just strange how some of these early Muppets looked.

 

[fuzzygobo]

Not exactly first season, but I noticed the wiki has this photo from a rare early season episode.

I'm fascinated by how nonstandard this character's design is. It hardly looks like anything Sesame Streetish at all. A holdout from Great Santa Claus Switch or a later Ed Sullivan skit. But definitely not a Sesame Street monster as we know and love.

Don't think this episode is available on YT, someone has to have gotten that from somewhere. But it's just strange how some of these early Muppets looked.

It shows how different monsters on the street became after Jim's death. While Jim was alive (especially in the early years) he had no reservations about bringing scary ugly creatures before the cameras. And if a few kids get the pants scared off them? Cool! Chalk up another one. Sometimes I would question how something as creepy as the guy above would be allowed any screen time.

In the picture above, he's (he never even had a name) demonstrating subtraction with apples. He'd start with four, take one away each time, and zip off, until we reached zero. These clips only lasted ten seconds, interspersed with other cartoons. He also did a series like this with whistles. Then we never saw him again. Not even as an extra in a crowd scene.

But during the first 10 years of Sesame, creepy guys like this were a regular fixture. After Jim's death (also after Don Sahlin wasn't around either) all the monsters lost their teeth, all got brighter colors, until the most threatening thing you could find was...Monsters Clubhouse. How's that for evolution?

 

[Drtooth]

I appreciate the creepy monster thing though it was clearly abandoned earlier than that. Cookie and Grover became staples early on in the series, and while creepier, meaner monsters were still about, they were slowly phased out in favor of gruff but lovable types like Herry and Harvey. Heck, the Sesame Street album "Monsters" features a creepy photo with a creepy font (and Cookie and Grover looking far more out of place than the little AM boy). The first song on it? A song about not being afraid because they're all loveable and want to have fun.

Still, it's not so much the creepy factor so much as the weirdness factor for me. The character does not look like something from Sesame Street. Things were a lot less uniform the first 2 seasons. Look at how sloppy the AM's were put together (I chose to think the proto Richard was walleyed on purpose in that Silly Song segment). Seems like most monsters from the 70's had some sort of AM base and just had different amounts of fur put on them. Most of them looked pretty uniform. You put Harry, Harvey, and Maurice together, especially with Cookie and Grover, and they all look like they're from the same show and aesthetically similar. Then you look at season 1 skits where they didn't have any major Muppet characters outside of Big Bird, Oscar, Ernie and Bert and they have leftover Ed Sullivan and Santa Claus Switch characters that sort of look like they go together for the most part (Fred the dragon being a huge exception, looking too Muppet Show/SNL like to fit in). Somehow Whistle Snatcher is inbetween the two. He looks too dissimilar yet almost the same. Plus, frankly, if the puppet character were a little more polished, it would have looked absolutely perfect.

Not saying he's poorly put together, just awkwardly. I dig the look, but it seems the purple fur isn't really conforming to the shape of the AM base.

 

[cjd874]

I appreciate the creepy monster thing though it was clearly abandoned earlier than that. Cookie and Grover became staples early on in the series, and while creepier, meaner monsters were still about, they were slowly phased out in favor of gruff but lovable types like Herry and Harvey. Heck, the Sesame Street album "Monsters" features a creepy photo with a creepy font (and Cookie and Grover looking far more out of place than the little AM boy). The first song on it? A song about not being afraid because they're all loveable and want to have fun.

Still, it's not so much the creepy factor so much as the weirdness factor for me. The character does not look like something from Sesame Street. Things were a lot less uniform the first 2 seasons. Look at how sloppy the AM's were put together (I chose to think the proto Richard was walleyed on purpose in that Silly Song segment). Seems like most monsters from the 70's had some sort of AM base and just had different amounts of fur put on them. Most of them looked pretty uniform. You put Harry, Harvey, and Maurice together, especially with Cookie and Grover, and they all look like they're from the same show and aesthetically similar. Then you look at season 1 skits where they didn't have any major Muppet characters outside of Big Bird, Oscar, Ernie and Bert and they have leftover Ed Sullivan and Santa Claus Switch characters that sort of look like they go together for the most part (Fred the dragon being a huge exception, looking too Muppet Show/SNL like to fit in). Somehow Whistle Snatcher is inbetween the two. He looks too dissimilar yet almost the same. Plus, frankly, if the puppet character were a little more polished, it would have looked absolutely perfect.

Not saying he's poorly put together, just awkwardly. I dig the look, but it seems the purple fur isn't really conforming to the shape of the AM base.

I'd be interested to hear what this creature's voice sounded like. All the info we've got is here:
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Snitch_Whistle
To me it looks like a season 4 bit, just by the look of the puppet and Hooper's Store checkered front. Additionally, that picture doesn't show that he's got a pointy blue nose, thus adding to the weird factor you mentioned. And if you look on the page for episode 1291 (in which this skit appears), it appears that the fur only covers his head and arms. He's got a bare purple AM torso, which is pretty awkward. So even after four seasons, the Sesame staff still seemed to be testing things out with their audience.

 

[Drtooth]

It's strange that they'd have a non-standard puppet designs that late in the game. Season 2 always looked like a sharp improvement over the first one in terms of puppet design. By season 4 everything had that unmistakable Sesame Street look.

I really do like how they were still able to experiment with what characters should look like past the first couple of seasons when it was more established. This is a very funky character design. I really like the use of glove hands instead of being completely covered in fur, and that long nose is pretty unique. But it has more of a season 1 Muppet Show look to it.

 

[cjd874]

It's strange that they'd have a non-standard puppet designs that late in the game. Season 2 always looked like a sharp improvement over the first one in terms of puppet design. By season 4 everything had that unmistakable Sesame Street look.

I really do like how they were still able to experiment with what characters should look like past the first couple of seasons when it was more established. This is a very funky character design. I really like the use of glove hands instead of being completely covered in fur, and that long nose is pretty unique. But it has more of a season 1 Muppet Show look to it.

Yes, it does remind me of Miss Kitty...I wonder if the MS puppet builders took a page from the SS crew?

And look at some of the Sesame skits from 1973-1974: "Dialing for Prizes Movie," "Grover's Empty Telephone Booth," and "Bip's Some-None-All Song" feature some pretty non-standard monsters, even after five years on the air. For example, the green one with the beak and the noseless purple one with fangs. The green one looks like a Frackle from Santa Claus Switch, while the purple one is rather awkwardly put together.

 

[cjd874]

Posted to YouTube by MarshalGrover @Drtooth
Here's the Snitch Whistle subtraction bit

 

[minor muppetz]

First time I saw a picture of that "Snitch Whistle" monster, it looked to me like his head and body were the same, with his face over his body and arms coming out the ears or whatever.

I wonder if that's the only time a live-hand Anything Muppet was made into a monster.