Ernie and the Pumpkin Seed Candy Salesman (found "Sesame Street" sketch; 1971)

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Ernie&Salesman.jpg

Screenshot from Sesamstraße.

Status: Found

Date found: 26 Aug 2017

Found by: JFriendsFan96

Ernie and the Pumpkin Seed Candy Salesman (usually shortened to Ernie and the Candy Salesman) is a sketch that originally aired during Sesame Street "Episode 264" (during Season 2) on May 13th, 1971 (exactly a day after the Tales from Muppetland special "The Frog Prince" premiered).[1]

In this sketch, a candy salesman approaches Ernie and tries to sell him some pumpkin seed candy. Ernie tells the salesman that he doesn't really like pumpkin seed candy, perhaps because it is icky. He goes on to pitch to Ernie the smaller sizes of pumpkin seed candy he has until he finally sells him the tiniest piece of pumpkin seed candy that he even can't see it as if it was invisible. It almost looks like Ernie is looking at the camera in a close-up shot of the tiniest piece of pumpkin seed candy.

Availability

The sketch was known to have aired in two episodes on Sesame Street (#264 and #301) in 1971. Other airings of the segment remain unidentified, other than in foreign co-productions including Folge 2033 of Sesamstraße, Episode 70 of Iftah Ya Simsim, and Episode 35 of Rechov Sumsum so far.

The clip was once uploaded in German, likely circa 2006, and lasted on YouTube for a while before being removed in 2014. An English version of the skit was commercially released for the first time in a Sesame Street compilation on Sesame Street's official YT channel in 2015 but said compilation has been taken down since May 2017. There was also an alternate take of this in DVD quality with a KiKA watermark in 2006, but like the other Sesamstraße clips that were pulled in February 2007 as a result of Viacom at the time, that one was pulled also.

Following its deletion from YouTube, the clip remained missing again throughout the summer until YouTube user JFriendsFan96 finally reuploaded the video for the sketch, in English, on August 26th, 2017.

As of January 5th, 2018, "abuwahab" 3 uploaded an Arabic Iftah Ya Simsim episode containing the sketch in its Arabic dub at 4:49. The video got deleted due to abuwahab 3 closing his account later that year. However, on January 29th, 2019, another copy of the episode was uploaded on YouTube by دبي زمان HD, where it can be seen at 5:06, but that got deleted too, making the Arabic version lost as of currently.

On March 1st, 2019, YouTube user archionir2 uploaded the 35th episode of Rechov Sumsum containing the sketch in its Hebrew dub at 3:38.

On December 8th, 2019 (that same day Caroll Spinney passed away), JFriendsFan96 closed his YouTube account, making the English clip unwatchable. Luckily, the English clip has been mirrored onto archive.org.

Gallery

Ernie and the Pumpkin Seed Candy Salesman

The German dub, re-uploaded by Rohail Hashmi.

External Links

Reference