Statue of Liberty dances, Big Bird gets laryngitis ('Sesame Street' Wednesday)

I grew up watching 'Sesame Street' in the '70s. So if I happened to see it in the '80s, I considered its themes and trappings to be not quite as grand as they were previously.

When kids who grew up on it in the '80s saw it in the '90s, they didn't think it was quite what it was in their day.

Now folks who grew up on 'Sesame Street' in the '90s actually long for what it was in that era.

Old schoolers like me never would have predicted that 'Sesame Street' graphics we thought were too cheesily newfangled would now be considered classics, but I guess we were wrong!

'Sesame Street' around 1992 to 1995 featured a bizarre closing sequence. This was the standard closer for only about 3 years, but I happened to catch it once around the time I was in college (possibly because some other students were watching it on the giant TV in the University Center lounge). My heart sank, because I knew things would never be the same as they once were.

Now, however, this closing sequence looks like one of the all-time greats:



Although this theme was mostly retired around 1995, I happened to tune in to 'Sesame Street' one day about 2 years ago, and imagine my surprise when I found that they had brung this sequence back just for one episode!

This actually may well be the most humorous 'Sesame Street' ending ever. It starts off with a cartoon of the Statue of Liberty dancing to the theme music, and it doesn't get much less funny from there.

About 50 seconds into the sequence, a child starts dancing with Big Bird. Throughout this scene, Big Bird repeatedly opens his beak as wide as it will go, but no sound emerges. It reminds me of when my dog chewed a piece of bubble gum. Near the end of the clip though, Big Bird recovers from his laryngitis.

However, this theme misses the funky music bed that previously accompanied the all-text funding credits at the end. For this sequence, that music was replaced by what sounds like an oboe rendition of the 'Sesame Street' theme.

Also, I noticed years ago that the funding credits mention the 'Sesame Street' sign being a registered trademark of Children's Television Workshop. Does that mean that if some town had a road called Sesame Street that it couldn't post a sign for it without risking a lawsuit by CTW?

This '90s outro of 'Sesame Street' is now recalled so fondly that one commenter on YouTube said that "this is one of those things that should be illegal to change."

I'm sure that even the Cincinnati Tea Party crowd would agree. Nah, they hate everything that doesn't involve Glenn Beck.