Unearthing previously "lost" Sesame Street episodes

[mariolover]

I still have the phone number of the guy that works at the indoor flea market. I told him to look for VHS tapes of home recorded Sesame Street episodes. So far he found none. If he ever calls me and tells me he has any I will let you know.

I'm sure if he found one he'd tell me.

He looks for VHS tapes for people who request him to search for them.

Those must be so rare if they haven't showed up yet!

It's been over 2 years since I requested them and he still hasn't found any. I guess most people didn't record Sesame Street back in the day, except for some of you guys that were actually smart enough to record those gems

 

[GonzoLeaper]

I have seen VHS tapes with recordings of Sesame Street before. There very well still could be some floating around. Home recordings are how the BBC recovered many episodes of Doctor Who. Sesame Workshop could conceivably do the same for Sesame Street.

 

[mariolover]

I have seen VHS tapes with recordings of Sesame Street before. There very well still could be some floating around. Home recordings are how the BBC recovered many episodes of Doctor Who. Sesame Workshop could conceivably do the same for Sesame Street.

They are probably rare though. The majority of people probably never recorded it, and probably even fewer kept them.

There are a lot of recordings on the internet, but it's still a minority of people who have them. And most of them were avid Sesame Street fans who actually knew these episodes may never be publicly available again otherwise.

Most people don't pay attention to how rare stuff is. Just like most people don't pay attention to movie logos and which companies made certain movies like people with autism tend to do. Kudos to the few that did and cared enough to record these gems!

I find that people with autism and other disabilities are a lot more aware of the small holes of many worldly topics that most people don't even notice (Which companies made certain movies, how rare certain VHS tapes are, which year certain VHS tapes were released, how rare certain Sesame Street episodes are, the YouTube vs. Viacom deal, etc.)

I am lucky to have autism because one of my strengths is noticing these small holes. I bet a billion dollars I could ask any of my friends without autism these questions and they would be clueless, except for maybe which company made Disney movies. Most people know who made Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, etc.

Except for a few rare individuals like my stepdad. When I asked him if he knew Toy Story was a Disney movie he said "No." I was literally so shocked. He saw Toy Story, but he never knew it was Disney.

 

[datman24]

I still have the phone number of the guy that works at the indoor flea market. I told him to look for VHS tapes of home recorded Sesame Street episodes. So far he found none. If he ever calls me and tells me he has any I will let you know.

I'm sure if he found one he'd tell me.

He looks for VHS tapes for people who request him to search for them.

Those must be so rare if they haven't showed up yet!

It's been over 2 years since I requested them and he still hasn't found any. I guess most people didn't record Sesame Street back in the day, except for some of you guys that were actually smart enough to record those gems

You have to understand something, any existing children’s television broadcast recordings are far and few in comparison to regular television broadcast recordings. Most of them were either A. Taped over, B. Thrown out, or C. Sold at garage/estate sales. The odds of finding Sesame Street recordings from one specific place or person is extremely slim. You just have to get lucky and search elsewhere. The only way you would get lucky is if you find someone who actually kept the recordings they made for their children all these years, and not many did.

 

[minor muppetz]

With all this talk about how rare recordings of Sesame Street are or might be, it makes me wonder what episodes were recorded off PBS by the most people. Would be hard to determine. And I'm not counting recordings off Noggin or later cable broadcasts (where more of us would want to record). I'm sure many of the more important/heavily promoted ones (like Maria and Luis' wedding, Gabbi's birth, Slimey landing on the moon, the hurricane episodes) got recorded by a lot of people during their original broadcasts (though I don't think anybody recorded episodes 1839 or 2096 when they premiered, but fan recordings from that era are a little more scarce than in the late-1980s and later). With uneventful episodes, fans were likely just recording at random, or maybe they were trying to record as much as possible, but I'm sure that a lot of the episodes in tape trading circles were only recorded by one or two people who happened to be able to make copies for other fans and/or uploaded online in some compacity.

For the last few years, I've noticed that while fan recordings of late-1970s/early-1980s Sesame Street is scarce, there seems to be plenty of fan recordings of other television programming at the time, particularly specials and guest appearances (including A Special Sesame Street Christmas and A Walking Tour of Sesame Street). Perhaps people with VCRs in the early days of VCRs were more likely to record specials (that may or may not have a chance of rebroadcast) than a daily children's television show (since tape was expensive back then and there were so many episodes).

And would the kids watching, and maybe wanting to record episodes, have an understanding that the episodes they are watching might not be rebroadcast many times after? I feel like I sensed it by the time I was ten, I noticed after season 25 that they weren't rerunning episodes with the older opening and closing (though I thought they just replaced the opening, didn't think they would replace the end credits since the new ones had a regular scene of Big Bird saying "Sesame Street is a production of the Children's Television Workshop", when before the characters would say it after the credits in episode-specific footage) and had noticed that I hadn't seen any episodes with David since his disappearance had been explained.

 

[sesamemuppetfan]

Look what we have here!

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=212374846685137

 

[mariolover]

Episode 2002:

https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Episode_2002

 

[YellowYahooey]

Episode 2002:

https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Episode_2002

It seems as if, with the exception of the milestone episode 2000 and episode 2003, Luis's broken arm was more of a nearly three-week saga.

Here is episode 2001:

Episode 2001

muppet.fandom.com

And here is episode 2009:

Episode 2009

muppet.fandom.com

Considering the plot for episode 2009, I am thinking the saga about Luis's injured arm continues through at least episode 2010. Usually, a story arc wraps up on a Friday, with the excepton of the Puerto Rico and Hawaii arcs.

 

[YellowYahooey]

^ I did not know. I guess that explains why only information on one letter L segment was revealed thus far, plus no images of street scenes and the opening with the episode number posted as yet.

I deleted the link to episode 2004, due to being incomplete. You may delete your post, and then I will delete this one.

 

[scarecroe]

Considering the plot for episode 2009, I am thinking the saga about Luis's injured arm continues through at least episode 2010. Usually, a story arc wraps up on a Friday, with the excepton of the Puerto Rico and Hawaii arcs.

Here's the "Luis breaks his arm" story arc:

Sesame Street Story Arcs

muppet.fandom.com