Unearthing previously "lost" Sesame Street episodes

[scarecroe]

There's no evidence that tapes were wiped in the way you've described.

 

[minor muppetz]

Wow, most of those lost episodes come from the second and third seasons (I counted 20 from season 2, 30 from season 3). And so many back-to-back (or close enough to it) episodes.

at first I thought it looked like none of the lost episodes are particularly notable, but then I noticed some that seem real notable (I know, Sesame Workshop didn’t intentionally destroy/lose episodes). Like Slimey’s first appearance and the often-talked-about episode where Big Bird believes that Snuffy is just imaginary. Also a few less notable introductions. But also Linda’s debut (I should have known that’d be one of them, as I saw Scott recently say he didn’t expect to get that one soon).

and I noticed a few more things lost that I had really wanted to see someday (some of which I hadn’t realized the wiki had fully guided), like Oscar’s postal service, Snuffy being afraid of fruits, And Snuffy wanting to surprise Big Bird. Not to mention a season three episode with “What Makes Music” (it’s such a great track on Sesame Disco, I’d like to see the original non-disco version), and two episodes with “The Sound of the Letter A”, sounds like they were all different performances as opposed to an insert (at least one of them remains).

Guess the first 16 episodes leaked back in 2014 really WERE from the vaults if 12 was skipped over..... bummer..... but, what can you do?

Even if they weren’t from the vault, what would be the chances that somebody would have had all of the first 16 episodes?

 

[datman24]

There's no evidence that tapes were wiped in the way you've described.

Well, I'm only just speculating. Maybe the tapes were just misplaced by an employee or something. I would imagine it's not easy to keep track of the thousands of hours of footage that have been taped in the last 50 years. Not just the master tapes of the more than 4,500 episodes, but also of the thousands of inserts that have been put together over the years.

 

[MuppetHistory]

I actually do wonder if possibly someone has Slimy’s first appearance. Which is weird that they don’t have because they seem to care about every character’s debut

I hope someone does. That is probably the greatest casualty of them all. Heck, I'd give up on restoring episode 0847 if it meant we got this one.

 

[minor muppetz]

I actually do wonder if possibly someone has Slimy’s first appearance. Which is weird that they don’t have because they seem to care about every character’s debut

Really? Because there are a lot of debuts that haven’t been seen in years. Sesame Workshop hasn’t put out the debuts of Uncle Wally, Mr. Handford, Buffy, Biff and Sully, Gina, Placedo Flamingo, Barkley, or Irvine.

 

[MuppetSpot]

Really? Because there are a lot of debuts that haven’t been seen in years. Sesame Workshop hasn’t put out the debuts of Uncle Wally, Mr. Handford, Buffy, Biff and Sully, Gina, Placedo Flamingo, Barkley, or Irvine.

Well a majority of the characters, I wasn’t thinking about every character

 

[gravy]

Maybe the tapes were just misplaced by an employee or something.

iiiiiiit literally states various reasons of why theyd be lost


i dont know why but just the idea of SS actually having lost episodes is kinda cool to me... getting sorta doctor who vibes, imagine if one (or more) of those episodes was found, would it make the news and be as big?

 

[Oscarfan]

I think regardless of whether or not these episodes can be obtained through alternate channels, and considering how many shows from that era have lost material, 60 episodes out over 4,5000 is pretty good. Sure, at a certain point, they were much more careful, but it's amazing how much has survived.

And who knows, maybe the raw footage for those episodes exists in their archive, just not as a complete show.

 

[scarecroe]

i dont know why but just the idea of SS actually having lost episodes is kinda cool to me... getting sorta doctor who vibes, imagine if one (or more) of those episodes was found, would it make the news and be as big?

Or, like fans have done with lost Doctor Who episodes, imagine someone remaking Episode 0239 where Oscar builds a wall around his trash can to keep out undesirables, but soon discovers its drawbacks.

 

[minor muppetz]

I think the best chances of the episodes being found is through raw footage than the other possibilities. Of course it doesn’t look like there’s many inserts that only appear in these (and they probably have separate copies of the inserts, outside of the episode master tapes).

I was going to ask how it was known for sure that these are lost/missing from the vaults, but then figured it’s probably the same suppliers of the scripts and episode tapes that were able to confirm it.

The page on lost Sesame Street episodes led to me wondering if it’d be good to have other lost Henson works. I wonder if there’s enough that are just not in Henson’s archives (or other appropriate archives or storage). I know there’s most of the ‘50s stuff (most episodes of Sam and Friends, likely all episodes of the other local Washington, DC shows), I recently read that NBC doesn’t have a copy of the Muppets first performance on Today in their archives, probably most Tonight Show appearances from two decades (including the historic first national appearance by the Muppets). I remember hearing about a television guest appearance that screened some commercials that otherwise don’t exist in the Henson archives.

Any word on whether Sesame Workshop has copies of all five of the test pilots or if some/all of the ones past the first are missing (I know that the Bert and Ernie D segment from one of them has surfaced online somehow)?

As I was reading about episode 1814 likely not being the final aired script, I foolishly thought it had a full guide page (Even though I know episode 2806 also only has the street scenes for the same reason). I clicked on the page, saw that recent icon to turn on/off inserts, and kept pressing it, wondering why it was still only showing street scenes. I should have known better.

I wonder if any of these street stories were repeated later. The page currently doesn’t Nite any of the street stories being repeated, but I guess it’s possible that those with the trusted scripts just haven’t looked at those scripts yet.