Nothing, because it’s an educational children’s show.
What in the hell freaked you out enough to make this post? Genuinely curious.
Have you never seen the 1969-1974 episodes? Some of those segments were written after too much acid. And then broadcast to preschoolers.
I heard that it actually scared viewers back then.
Crazy, right?
Those things that snuck into your house and went yupyupyupyupyupyup uh huh uh huh may have freaked me out a little.
That’s funny, I love those guys.
They’re called yip yips and they’re frickin hilarious!
Me too! I had a dream when I was 4 or 5. In the dream I woke up and looked out the window at the backyard. There were a bunch of those things circling the tetherball pole in the yard and a light was shining down on them like a UFO hovered above them or something. But their yips got louder and more terrifying. I tried to hide but it only got worse. That was when I woke up. I couldn’t stand the sound or sight of those things for years.
Those aliens that came through the walls and said “Yuuuuup yup yup yup yup yup”.
To the confused comments, the mind of a pre-schooler (the target demographic) works differently from that of an adult. There were a ton of episodes, and they tried lots of different things, and I’m sure lots of very little kids were frightened by the show now and then. Actually, I got curious and found this Youtube video of some guy’s “top ten scary Sesame Street moments,” and while I remember watching most of those skits as a kid and never found them scary myself, he describes decently well how a very young child could be scared.
However while Sesame Street was never scary for me, there were some segments they did in the 80s/early 90s that were, well, in the style of the 80s/early 90s, and as such they were a bit creepy. Kind of in the same way that the Chuck-E-Cheese animatronics were a bit creepy. Some of the shorts I remember were MTV-parody music videos, or there would be a puppet with disembodied legs walking around, or the segment would use liminal space in an ominous way, things like that. I’m sure if I were to watch them today I wouldn’t see anything off, but there was something I found slightly unsettling about some Sesame Street clips of that era.
TL/DW?
I think you’re confusing that with Nightmare on Elm Street.
Surely: Nightmare On Elmo Street?
I had a nightmare where Guy Smiley’s head popped up between my bed and the wall. So… Guy Smiley.
This is not Sesame Street, but it’s the first thing that popped into my head:
The head of lettuce singing opera whose face disolved at the end.
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Obligatory not Sesame Street, but here’s a horror from my childhood:
Ooh, neat! I’ve been working on learning French and I’d heard that a good way to practice was to watch kids’ TV in the language you’re trying to learn, but hadn’t found much. This fucked-up talking pineapple show looks like just the ticket!
That’s exactly what they showed it to us for. I still retain some French, and horrific memories that haunt me for eternity. Go for it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL7gD1k-Yv0
I don’t know why, but the most ominous, terrifying howling-in-terror nightmare I ever had as a little kid was basically a still from that with an x-ray film over the top of it.
(my dad was a doctor, the things were part of the general clutter round the place)
Nothing about it should have been scary, but sweet jesus.
Mr. Snuffleupagus
Yep. I always found him kind of unsettling.
Big Bird was always unsettling to me, even now it still haunts me sometimes.
Does he scare you on the 1995 CTW/Sesame Workshop logo where he says ‘Toodle-o!”?
The human ears on the ducks, the musical change when the daddy is singing, and the way he sings, the uncertain fate of the tadpoles, the dolly being dizzy in the head because the daddy says so, the fact that the daughter is a doll,… so many reasons: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PWMAYFNIAco
I haven’t seen a single Sesame Street episode ever but what gave me nightmares in my childhood was Morso
That’s because deep down you know that’s exactly what you’re gonna look like when you’re old