The One Episode of Sesame Street That Was Banned From TV
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- Almost everyone at one point grew up watching Sesame Street. Learning our ABC's and Numbers from the likes of Elmo, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and countless others. Sesame Street was the best educational show for children on TV. That was until one episode of Sesame Street that was scaring kids so much, parents wrote into the network to get the episode pulled from syndication.
#sesamestreet #thewizardofoz #nerdstalgic
Written by Chris Teregis
Edited by Nick Murphy
What I find so cool about this is that shortly after this controversy, Mr. Rogers invited Margaret Hamilton onto his show to show kids that not only was the witch not real, but that Margaret was a kind and nice person.
Cause Mr. Rogers kept it real.
Actually, she was on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood the year before she was on Sesame Street.
I think she was a Kindergarten teacher too. And unfortunately playing the Wicked Witch allegedly ruined her teaching career.
@@tvtimetravel you're right, 1975 is when she appeared on Mr. Rogers, and 1976 was Sesame Street
Speaking of 'witch', her Mister Rogers'Neighborhood appearance is on RUclips.
The thing I love about classic Sesame Street is that they never "talked down" to kids. They understood that children were still people and respected that children still faced real challenges & struggles, despite being "young".
People love acting like kids don't have problems just because kids don't pay bills, but [being a kid] trying to navigate social environments with potential bullies, abusers, and toxic home environments still affect children deeply. I hate how out-of-touch people are with kids.
Apparently hbo didn't feel that way since they removed more than 200 episodes of sesame Street from their platform.
@@GothPaoki unfortunately I think a lot of great programming, including Sesame Street is going to suffer because of the Discovery merger
I think nowadays many people just have children because it's a social norm, not because they really care about raising a child. And that's why more and more people see them as little retardet beings.
They did an awesome job depicting the struggles of divorce from the kids' perspective. Children usually aren't--and never should be--regularly kept up-to-date with the marital problems of their parents, so it often comes as a devastating shock that they were unprepared for.
I think what makes Sesame Street different from other educational kid programs is that the characters representing children are often the ones who explain things, instead of adult characters spoon-feeding the message
When Jim Henson was there he had Kermit on the show and it wasn’t so dumbed down that adults didn’t want to watch it like a lot of toddler shows nowadays like Dora The Explorer for example.
Sesame Street: “Face your fears.”
Everyone: **CONFUSED SCREECHING NOISES**
Mister Rogers had Margaret Hamilton on as a guest star around the same time, and did a much better job of keeping it wholesome and assuaging children's fears. It would be nice to see a video comparing how the two shows handled the character since they tended to air in a block on the same channels.
Ehh I wouldnt say "better", it was just different.
He actually did that episode specifically because of the Sesame Street situation
@@Bajaprod01 Would make sense. He liked to respond to what was impacting kids in the present moment like when he talked about one of the Kennedy's being assiainated.
@@Bajaprod01 No he didn’t. The Mr Rogers episode with Margaret aired a year before the Sesame Street episode
@@Bajaprod01 same place looks like 50th birthday party anniversary celebration of life live in line life story ture life movie all about new DVD more than most more than the best TV show
"Kids these days are so soft and offended by everything!!!"
Parents in the 70s: "The wicked witch is too scary for my little baby!!! 😱"
Maybe the take is that ALL KIDS from ANY TIME are soft and offended by everything until they learn not to? Idk...
Some things never change
these days it would be more, I'm offended on behalf of the Green-Skinned, this is cultural appropriation and racist
It's fine to be scared as a 5 year old, 15-25 year olds is the "kids" the first quote is talking about
Amazing how kids in the 50's and '60's were able to play with toys based on the Universal Pictures _Monster_ franchise and _nobody_ lost their shit, yet parents of the '70's lost their shit over the not as frightening Wicked Witch Of The West from _The Wizard Of Oz_ , *_which these same parents saw as kids_* !🙄
Such a good actor she got her episode of Sesame street banned from circulation 😂
The funniest thing about this episode is Big Bird dual wielding and ready to throw down with the Wicked Witch.
they could have done this concept with a muppet witch. if the witch had been a muppet, i think the whole thing would have been salvageable. i realize the whole point is "it's margaret hamilton," but the story itself would have worked the way they wanted it to if the witch character hadn't been a real person.
Margeret could’ve voice acted it, too.
@@Blueshandle Now I'm picturing the Wicked Witch turning herself INTO a muppet in order to terrorize Sesame Street.
This episode definitely scared parents more than the kids
That's the truth...most parents project their fears onto their kids...though I'm sure there's some kids who are irrationally fearful...(which makes me wonder if this is also triggered by their parents) most of the time. It's the parents who end up vilifying things like this.
I'm just saying, the same generation calling the youths snowflakes and soft couldn't handle the wicked witch on sesame street
It's amazing that this footage was only recently discovered/recovered after years of investigation by Internet sleuths who dedicate themselves to find lost/hidden/banned material.
Credit where it is due!
You should do the banned Teletubbies episode next. Considering it's a show for even younger audience than Sesame Street, It's far more traumatising!
It's 2002. People get traumatized when they don't get their favourite brand of soda.
@@CordeliaWagner lmao "Marty, we've gotta go back! Back to 2002!"
@@rcube33 I can't believe 2002 was 20 years ago.
@@quinnhouk5369 It was one with a cardboard cut out of a lion.
Dude what episode of teletubbies wasn't traumatising?
I kinda find it really fucking sad that irl a lot of kids were afraid of Margaret because of her role as the wicked witch especially because she was a former teacher 😞
Fun fact: she was also in a league of their own.
@@angelinacamacho8575 Didn’t know that thank you!
@@kingofravens215 yeah she was the woman tom hanks kisses on the bus after claiming she looked like the witch.
I wonder if anyone who saw Margaret Hamilton on "Sesame Street" or on "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" ever said, "Look, it's the old lady from the Maxwell House Coffee commercials on TV!"
@@angelinacamacho8575 I thought that was just a joke he said to her.
I love the aspect ratio/old TV effect, it really adds a lot to the feel of the video.
Funny enough, it actuality matches the rounded corners of my phone screen perfectly
‘The Wicked Witch was, essentially, a monster.’
Not that I don’t get what you meant with that, but so are Cookie Monster, Grover, & Elmo. XD
Don't forget about Telly and the two headed monster who probably has names that I just forgot
@@lavendernightshade5631
Not to mention Herry Monster and the short-lived Beautiful Day Monster.
And Zoe, Rosita, Abby Cadabby
@@jameshoke9054bruh Abby ain’t a monster, she’s a fairy, big difference right?
I love how Oscar's like "How You doin'?"
It is very true that a monster can show up at any time. After all, many horrible crimes are done by people the victims know
Assassis only kill for money, and murderers generally stick to friends and family. But a killer will kill _anyone._
In 95% of cases of sexual violence against children it's the father.
I love Nerstalgic's deep dives into the lost and forgotten. Channels like this inspired me to create an entire channel dedicated to the cult classic Waterworld (1995).
Just subscribed to your channel
@@christopheredwards788 Hey Thanks Christopher!
@@TheAtoll You're welcome!!
After watching the episode, or rather the Wicked Witch storyline, this got me thinking how Sesame Street could have taught the value of facing your fears and standing up to people that want to do kids harm. Seeing the Witch disguise herself as a nice old lady actually provided something of an unspoken lesson for kids- in this case, sometimes the worst of personalities can often be in the form of seemingly nice or trustworthy people. This episode could have been beneficial for kids to help them show that they can be the bigger person and show that the worst of personalities shouldn't hold them down.
The reason why I said this is because, unfortunately, I had to go through a situation like that as a child with a few teachers that seemed nice and trustworthy on the outside, but were truly the nastiest people in reality (one was a first grade teacher, the other two were a couple of daycare teachers). Had I seen this episode when I was a kid, then it would have taught me the opportunity to tell my parents what was going on.
Were you violated or abused and sorry that happened to you and hopefully those bad people were fired and arrested
Isn't Big Bird basically already a feather duster?
4:30-4:35 Why she gotta turn the brother into a basketball 🤔😒
BOUNCE, BOUNCE, BOUNCE 😏
Blameitonjorge made a video covering this as well. While Nerdstolgic covers the cultural impact of the show, Jorge covers the lost media aspect of this episode. Love seeing both your takes back to back.
It's funny to think that boomers are always complaining about kids today being too "soft", when in the 70s, they wrote in to complain about an episode of Sesame Street being too scary.
What do you expect from people who called Sanford & Son "edgy"?
@@KingRandor82
I think other shows like "All In The Family," "Maude," and "Good Times" were a lot more "edgy" than "Sanford And Son."
All those programs, by the way, were produced by Norman Lear.
Not all those "baby boomers" had kids who were scared by that "Sesame Street" wicked witch episode. Remember that the "boomers" were the ones born between 1946 and 1964. That means that while the ones born in the mid to late 1940s were old enough to have children when "Sesame Street" first went on the air in 1969 (and when that witch episode was aired in 1976), the "boomers" born in the 1950s and early to mid-'60s were either children themselves or teenagers at the time. I should know because I was a baby boomer myself. I was born in 1960, so I would have been nine or ten years old when I started watching SS, but I don't remember the episode with the witch. I would have been fifteen to sixteen years old when they broadcast that witch story, so it's more than likely that was about the time I stopped watching it, because I figured I was too old to be watching a children's show.
@@michaelpalmieri7335 my point is it's easy to "out" one generation or the next, until you consider that one *leads* to the next. I'm 40 now. Everything people are complaining about today I've been dealing with from folks since I was 3-4 years old. Maybe they hid it better from everyone else, but I saw it loud and clear.
Movie ratings are different these days though. In the 80s and 90s Disney movies featuring dark themes such as racism, murder, religious damnation and human trafficking got a G rating. Nowadays you’d be hard pressed to find an animated movie with a G rating, they’re all rated PG for much milder content.
I’m glad this episode came out of the vault but yes, it seems now like a horrible idea. To have Big Bird threaten the witch, yeah that just doesn’t scream wholesome to me.
And presenting the witch as a bad person while the history of witchcraft and witches is much more different is also a terrible stereotype.
We had the VHS of The Wizard of Oz when I was a kid and I don’t know if it was the “old timey” feeling of the movie but I was deeply terrified of the wicked witch of the west. She gave me a feeling of dread at that age. This would have ended me.
I was scared by MJ's Thriller lmao
I was kinda scared by the Count tbh.
I was scared by the Beetlejuice cartoon intro.
" I DONT WANT TO BE TURNED INTO A BASKETBALL!!!"
i dont think that should have made me laugh
Try to teach kids to face their fears, get cancelled for being scary 🤔
Parents of the past were super low IQ and way more cancel prone than parents today
I don’t know why telling big bird that he can get turned into a feather duster is so funny to me but I was dying
lol. I understand what the show's creators and performers envisioned, AND I understand what young children, especially those under the age of 5, might have experienced. I think this can be written off as, 'whoops!'
For a moment I thought it would discuss about Katy Perry in Sesame Street, which as I would call it was "Too Hot for Sesame Street."
Yeah, I'm kind of surprised this one was too dark for the series at its time.
Katy Perry? Hot?
The episode was found, and it’s great! I love how David stood up for himself and wouldn’t take any shit from the witch. Peace.
Sesame Street has been a staple of educating children, about life as well as numbers and letters. The episode where they talk about Mr. Hooper's death was my first experience with it. It still resonates with me 40 years later.
The episode about the death of Mr. Hooper was 38 years ago because it was in late 1983.
Margaret Hamilton founded the preschool my daughter attends. She was an incredible woman. Her acting in The Wizard of OZ scared the crap out of 5 year old me; but her appearance on Mr. Rogers undid the "damage."
Watching this on my lunch break at work and it's an interesting video
I’m creating a break that didn’t exist to watch this while “working” from home
thank you for this look into your life
You know there are several episodes banned, right?
ohhh what are the other ones?
There was one about divorce with i think mammoths
Lol “hey Freddy Krueger is big rn. Let’s try that with kids”
And people say that todays kids are soft.
Kids were scared by the weirdest things back then. I think about what scared me as a kid, and it's often things that are still kind of unnerving to a degree as an adult. Take for example King Ramses from Courage the Cowardly Dog. I was so scared of that episode at age 6 that I actively avoided it for 10 years. The music, the eery CGI, etc. The witch is more... silly if anything.
That's from a time where violence against children as a punishment was seen as normal and right...
Parents back then: if it's anyone whose gonna strike fear into the hearts of their kids it's gonna be me not some children's show!
I got spanked when I was little and in elementary school at recess I told my special teacher that my imaginary friend lied to me and that my dad spanked me and she said that she also got spanked when she was little though I'm lucky that my parents only used their hands
Man I swear, a big channel does a story on something, and then here comes 15 other RUclipsrs making a video about the same exact topics not even two weeks later.
I assumed this was going to be the one about Snuffy's parents getting divorced.
Same
They should have switched roles. Everyone on seasame street bullies/is mean to the witch because she’s different and weird. The witch can still have the gruff abruptness, but be overall kind. Witch gets sad, someone on ssleasame street realizes, ding dang doom
Damn... Now parents nowadays scare the shit out of their children by leaving them alone with a monster filter :P
Is that the program where all those puppets live in the barrio? I love that show.
So...it's only millenials that are lazy with their kids huh? It seems to me that these parents should have sat down with their children right after the episode and gently consoled and reminded them, "There are no such things as witches, there is no magic in our world, and people don't just appear out of thin air. The episode is fake, just like the others. But you can learn something from it, such as to always be aware of your surroundings, not to trust those you don't know as some people can be dangerous, and even to give some thought to someone you know before you go along with what they're doing." Simple, a 3 year old's level of understanding, and it helps children walk through their feelings in a thoughtful, logical way. But no, instead, you just message the station to say you're up in arms.
Soccer parents never learn.
She also returned to the role for a Paul Lynn Halloween special- she introduced KISS!
And she played a very similar role in an Abbot & Costello film where she made a voodoo doll of Lou Costello!
Removal of Sesame Street episodes.... Huh... Sounds familiar.
“Ya know millennials, they’re such precious little snowflakes.”
There's a difference between parents being concerned about a kid's show giving their preschoolers nightmares, and 22 year olds being "triggered" by scary words and uncomfortable topics in history courses.
And they say kids these days are too soft
"she was colourful" is this a pun lol
I can see why they made this episode, to teach kids how to overcome their fears. I grew up watching Sesame Street and The Wizard of Oz and had no idea there was such collaboration until I read it in a magazine. I watched this episode on RUclips and it didn’t really scare me. But if I was a child from the mid-70s, then I would probably be scared.
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures through Turner Entertainment (pre-May 1986 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer library, current holder)
Sesame Street
Courtesy of Sesame Workshop.
Both are streamed on HBO Max.
Fun facts: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the same company behind The Wizard of Oz 1939 film, also Co-financed with Warner Bros. Pictures for the upcoming Sesame Street movie, although, Warner Bros. also distributed some of the MGM releases currently.
This was one of those things that wasn't completly bad on paper but that the execution was particularly bad. If they had the Witch being evil and mean and then having Big Bird and Elmo teaching her "How to ask nicely" and how "Wouln't you feel bad if someone was being mean to you?" and other situations of that nature where The Wicked Witch is taught she doesnt have to be wicked to get what she wants THEN it would have created a teaching moment. This as it was done was "Hey, lets scare the crap out of kids to boost our ratings".
There was no Elmo in 1976.
@@Laurelluin There was no me in 76 either so I had to use examples I knew.
1:50 "The Wicked Witch of the West was essentially the Darth Vader of the 1940s"
I can think of another Darth Vader of the 1940s...
I feel like the wicked witch is terrifying the first time you see the Wizard of Oz as a kid.
It is scary, and that is the point. But it's scary in a fantastical way, the world of Oz is clearly fantasy, it's not "our" world. It's also just a single movie (for most people, I liked the strange sequel and I read the books as a kid), so you can watch it and know that that character wont be anywhere else and is not real. Putting the witch in Sesame Street is different as the episode explains. I am not trying to argue with you or anything, just adding to the discussion, have a nice day!
Anyone remember the Paul Lynde Halloween Special?
I don't know why and how, but when I was 4-5 I used to watch courage the cowardly dog, that was truly horror, specially the Mummy episode
I love this channel but the thumbnail is kind of clickbaity.
When I saw this episode when it was brought onto RUclips, I didn't find anything about it scary at all. I even went as far as asking people what they thought was scarier than the Wicked Witch of the West.
I saw many many vids on this exact topic
I always assumed the celebrity guest stars of Sesame Street were there due to some court ordered community service to get out of a DUI or something.
How can a witch become a monster
Waiting for Darth Vader to come and take care of them younglings now.
Big Birds response to danger: I am going to need a weapon! Oh, a stick.
Yeah. Mr Nobody is welcome on Sesame Street, but The Wicked Witch is just too much.
If I saw this I wouldn’t be scared of her. I love the Wizard Of Oz
Yeah as a kid I was never scared of the Wicked Witch. It would’ve been nice to keep that episode and not ban it.
@@jordandutra9029 I never saw that episode. I was born in 99
Same. I don't understand why kids are so scared of her.
I didn’t know Adam Sandler was on this show
Damn..... People were so soft back then.
This is stupid! People thought THAT was so scary?! What about Beautiful Day Monster?! Beautiful Day Monster's B sound?! Fred the Dragon?! Kermit's "more and less" with demon Muppets surrounding him?!!
Wish they’d do this with more horror but that’s my sick preference.
I might be horrible but this sounds hilarious
I've watched about 10 videos on this topic at this point.
And now you've watched 11.
@@michaellyden2580 and I'll watch another one if I find one!
This is the best one. As an adult it's not at all scary for me and I didn't entirely understand the ban. Seemed like a Mary Whitehouse type knee jerk backlash, but he explained why it was scary for kids very well
I swear I thought this page did a video on it already. Must have been another one I follow. That one went into detail how the episode was finally allowed out of the vault after all that time.
Maria was bea 💯
And in 2022 kids in the US are taking the 2nd amendment way too seriously and watching “Happy tree friends” for educational purposes
Yeah I had nightmares of the wicked witch as a kid.
Rubbish. How were kids watching the Wizard of Oz with no problem, then getting scared of this?
Never mind that we had Witchy-poo on Pufnstuf, the Which Witch boardgame, and you want to say Sesame Street was scary with a which, while it had Oscar, Herry, the eyebrow monster, devil monster, the koosbanian aliens, all before Hamilton's appearance.
I remember being freaked out by early appearances of the Count and Snuffy when they first appeared
For some reason I didn't realize it was the actual Wizard of Oz witch until she turned human.
And I always remembered it for her having to say please.
I never knew the episode was so "controversial".
The Wanda the witch cartoon segment with the letter W was creepier than Hamilton's performance.
When I began hearing the episode was pulled, it sounded like these kids shouldn't have been watching the show in the first place, if they got that scared.
Yeah I can get why it was banned, I remember the Wizard of Oz scaring the absolute crap out of me when I was a kid. Everything about that movie was scary af - the wicked witch, the munchkins, the tornado scene (I'm pretty sure this movie contributed to my extreme lilapsophobia). Even the three side characters (scarecrow, lion and tin man) kind of creeped me out, I seriously hated that movie so much. I realize now that it's an amazing, revolutionary film but I still get uncomfortable vibes while watching it
I've worked at an elementary school and kids today are really into horror, watching Friday night at Freddy videos and other stuff I'm not very familiar with but include jumpscares, witches, blood, ect because of the unrestricted internet most have. I wonder how kids would react to the episode today?
Holy shit, I think I remember this. Yeah... it was genuinely nightmarish. I couldn't believe it was real.
David's acting on this episode was absolutely marvelous
Then Mr Rogers had Margaret HAmilton on showing how the witch is just a character she play and how she is really not anything to be scared of
The following video you’re about to see contains scary imagery that maybe too frightening for younger viewers watching the show.
Viewers discretion is advised
The narrative that this episode was scary is BS. That's just the reason they gave so they didn't have to admit the writing was bad. The episode wasn't scary but the lesson is problematic, he just kept his broom from her to teach her a lesson when it was his attitude towards her in the first place that made her behave unpleasantly.
These vide used to have a quirkiness to em, now they just come off as a infomercial
also werent they accused of stealing someone elses script?
Some of these comments don't pass the vibe test. Lol.
Even adult brains (as in, the physical lump of meat in your head) don't know the difference between real and imaginary. Kid meat chunks have an even harder time with this. Therefore, kids get scared MUCH faster and MUCH easier. Around age 7-13, kids begin to see Imagination and Reality the same as adults do.
Great move for Sesame Street to remove The Wicked Witch. You gotta meet kids where they are at cognitively.
Hamilton also did an episode of Mr. Rogers where she did a make-over from herself to the W.W.W.
I often think that parents, therapists and groups of do-gooders often under-estimate the intelligence of children, and read too much into their entertainment.
They used to edit out scenes from Bugs Bunny cartoons of characters being blown up with dynamite.
They used a "Monkey-See, Monkey-Do" justification from it, but to the best of my knowledge there was NEVER a case where a child blew up another child with TNT after seeing the coyote fall victim of one of his own traps.
Children understand "real" and "Not real" when it's explained to them, it's their parents that seem to have trouble grasping the concept, OR they have trouble taking the time and effort to explain it.
What’s the legality on using Sesame Street footage? How does he get the rights to make these videos?
Since this was before the Internet, how did people manage to find the address for Children's Television Workshop (renamed Sesame Workshop in 2000)?
Both "The Wizard of Oz" and "Sesame Street: Follow That Bird" were distributed by Warner Bros.
Christine Weiseth was peak Karen back in her days
It’s mostly because it’s like now like if you show this to your kids then I think you have to like watch it with them but unless they’re like seven or eight then I still suggest like show them that there’s nothing to be afraid of sleep with them for a night because I was never afraid of anything except maybe the vacuum cleaner but that’s like another story mostly entirely And mostly just because I was 5 1/2 and I was always scared of nunu well whenever I was acting 5 1/2 Plus I was always scared of unicorns too well mostly ones that were made out of fire just because of the lava that they could create
I disagree. This episode was not a mistake. Now could the show have built up to this a bit more? Yes, however, these are the same parents who got mad at cookie monster. Let's not forget that Oz is a children's franchise. Parents are......straight up dumb sometimes.
I 100% guarantee you that not one child was upset. Parents, especially in the 70s, were stupid and way too overprotective over stupid shit. Yet, we ran all over town with no cell phones and only came home when the street lights turned on. Stupid.
Witches were the shit back than and also skeletons.
Wow, and the boomers say our generation are sheltered little snowflakes. Literally "my kid can't see conflict or it will destroy him!"
I always liked and still like how the grown ups were always a kid at heart..like i always looked at them and i saw the child within them..always humbling me. While the children always looked in understanding which made virtuous.
This may be what made me rewatch The Wizard of Oz... Don't regret it at all! I even got a favourite character in it, who is, of course, the Tin Man!
One day, Sesame Street, keeps fulling around with the wokeness, they gonna get booted off TV. !
I didn’t know this show had a banned episode