Sesame Street season one. Not suitable for children.

[napkinz]

31. Elmo ruined Sesame Street!

By 1990 Elmo's position on Sesame Street was equal to or greater than Grover's. In only 5 short years (since the voice operation) he had become a major player on "Sesame", and Grover wasn't the only one who was starting to wonder what was going on. "It seemed like management started to care only about the possibility of making money," said Bert. "Even though the Childrens's Television Workshop was by nature non-profit, they were cleaning up on merchandising. And Elmo was a hot ticket from the start. Some of us started to wonder whether our little red furry friend was greasing the wheels a little bit at the top of the CTW foodchain."

Whether or not Elmo had anything directly to do with it may never be known, but it was one of the biggest children's merchandising phenomenons in modern history that was to change the face of Sesame Street forever. The Tickle Me Elmo doll was released in 1996 and became the hottest item of the year. Parents stampeded into stores to get one for their kids' Christmas gifts, but demand outstripped supply and it was not uncommon to see the little dolls being sold in newspaper classified ads for $100 or more. Overnight, Elmo had become the most popular Sesame Street character of all time. And that hurt the cast that had been with the show for over 25 years. ...

The nineties were Elmo's decade. He starred in several movies, had a hit single with "Elmo's Song" and the merchandising flurry continued unabated (though the success of "Tickle Me Elmo" was never repeated by any toy manufacturer before or since). ... But the final blow was yet to come. In 1998 the CTW made the announcement that Elmo was to get his own segment on "Sesame Street" called "Elmo's World" and that it would take up a full 20 minutes of each broadcast. This was, of course, in addition to the large amount of time already devoted to Elmo and his annoying new friends Zoe and Rosita during the regular part of the show. To the people who had grown up watching Sesame Street in the seventies and early eighties, this was nothing short of a complete and utter sell-out, and "Sesame" would never be the same again.

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