Sesame skit with balls on chrome tracks

[BipBippadotta]

Oh by the way, I don't know if you have seen this but on Comedy Central they do an homage to that skit with a very similar skit with very similar music as a promo for the new season of South Park (what is with that skits' music anyway?). I think there are a lot of Sesame Street fans working for that network just look at Crank Yankers. If that is not Muppets on crack I don't know what is. Come to think of it the idea of Muppets must have come from a lot of dope smoking hippies. Anyway on a side note (DON'T DO CRACK! just watch Muppets).

 

[eeaddio]

Does anyone remember the skits on Sesame Street where a small ball rolls though a chrome track, like a roller coaster, with a black background. Sometimes there would be little triangular flags on spinners and other things.....

Man oh man!!! How could I forget about this...at first I thought you were talking about the 1-2-3-4........12 pinball thingy...but then I read on. This was probably my all time favourite Sesame Street clip when I was a little kid...that orange powder stuff just looked so cool at the end...and the whole ball thing...I NEED TO SEE THIS AGAIN!!! Is this the one on the "Learning about Numbers" VHS...I sure hope so. i just ordered it from ebay!!!

 

[BipBippadotta]

Man oh man!!! How could I forget about this...at first I thought you were talking about the 1-2-3-4........12 pinball thingy...but then I read on. This was probably my all time favourite Sesame Street clip when I was a little kid...that orange powder stuff just looked so cool at the end...and the whole ball thing...I NEED TO SEE THIS AGAIN!!! Is this the one on the "Learning about Numbers" VHS...I sure hope so. i just ordered it from ebay!!!

Did they make two of those skits? I have one that is brought to you by the number 3 but in the end the ball bounces into a container and 3 cherries come out. I think there was one brought to us by the number 5 which is the one I think you are making reference to.

 

[The Count]

To answer some questions.
1 Eeaddio, yes this is the sketch on the Learning About Numbers VHS tape. DanteCat reported it's the one used on the Learning About Numbers DVD also.
2 BipBippadotta, check out the post I posted above. There were two sketches with the orange ball on chrome tracks for the number 3, they just switched the endings from time to time.
Hope this helps and have a good weekend.

 

[Larcen Tyler]

I don't suppose he has that movement group thing that I'm looking for on that website?

 

[Convincing John]

If my understanding is right, Frank Oz and Jim Henson are responsible for those.

Frank Oz? You bet! I visited "The Vision of Jim Henson" exhibit a while back, and they had a photo of that Doozer construction-like roller coaster sculpture that the ball rolled on. According to the caption under the photo, the "chrome roller coaster" was constructed by none other than Frank Oz!

They also had photos of Jim Henson putting some rocks in sand for a stop-motion animation sequence about "12", and also some "King of 8" photos. Really cool stuff!

Convincing John

 

[Ziffel]

Was just thinking of this ball segment and going through various threads and posts about it. Truly a SS classic. I really loved every time this came on. The beginning parts (prior to when the voice comes in to say, "1,2,3") was my favorite, though the entire sketch is good. Just love that music. dih dih dihdih dih dihdihdihdihdih. dih dih dih DIH dih. dih dih dihdih dih dihdih dih dihdih dih dihdih 1 2 3! Sometimes as a little child if I couldn't sleep at night or if I was a little afraid of the dark or something, it would be soothing to think about some pleasant SS stuff. This was one of them.

 

[Rosewood]

ball on track for # 3

This is another one of my all-time favorites! The ball goes through several sets of 3 things - 3 swinging doors, 3 flags on axels that spin, 3 twirling bars, 3 dropping slatts that show 1, 2, & 3 as each one drops ect. and a childs voice counts each as it happens. It also does other things, like go through a wire chute to a little coal mine-like car to be dumped into another chute onto another track, droping into a counter-balanced box on the end of a swinging bar, that swings down to drop it into another box, that tips to drop it to another box, that drops it to another chute, which places it back on track. At the end it free falls from the end of the track, bounces from a drum, and into the box with the handle, which gets turned 3 times by a childs hand. In my day it put out the hand full of sand, but the version on the SS "Learning about Numbers" DVD that I just got shows 3 gumballs / cherries dropping onto 3 ice cream sundaes, and a little girl starting to eat one at the end. (IMO the sundae version is cuter!) And I recognize the music as old billows organ music! What a great memorie!