Long and Odd Hunt for a Lost (and kind of creepy) Sesame
Apr 22, 2021 1:23:38 GMT
forca84 likes this
Post by hi224 on Apr 22, 2021 1:23:38 GMT
Jon Armond
Jon Armond was a 6-year-old boy in 1977 when he first saw a segment on Sesame Street that both “terrified” and “mesmerized” him. According to him, he had thought about it every day for 30 years. He mentioned it to people he knew, trying to find out if anyone else remembered the bizarre clip. He had apparently even heard urban myths about the short - namely that it was removed from air and destroyed because it was causing mental distress in children. He remembered a black-and-white girl in a horrible old house who starts to imagine animals forming out of the cracks in her wall. She meets a few different animals, but then the music changes. She meets a grotesque figure that Armond remembers as the “Crack Monster,” who yells until he crumbles out of sheer anger.
This is a popular creepy story premise. Reading it for the first time reminded me of creepypastas like Candle Cove and Squidward’s Suicide. But this one was real, Armond hoped.
In 2008, Armond got a lead. He read a post on cartoonist Jennifer Bourne’s blog “Tail o’ the Rat.” He commented on a blog post that she had made titled “The Crack Monster!” She was also terrified by the clip when she was young and could not find anything about it on Google, except for some other people who also remembered the clip (with varying details). Armond dropped his email and a plea for anyone who knew where to find the clip to put him out of his misery.
Armond and Bourne built an online community around finding this clip. The clip’s existence became a popular debated topic between Gen Xers in several forums in the early 2000s (there are even a few threads on Reddit dedicated to finding the video). There was literally nothing known about what most referred to as “The Crack Monster Cartoon.” Armond eventually contacted someone at the CTW Archives at the University of Maryland to ask about the clip. He managed to find out that the clip had aired as part of the 979th episode of Sesame Street on February 10th, 1977, but he didn’t get much else. The investigation had seemingly hit a dead end, until…
The Package
Jon Armond got an untraceable fax at work in late 2008. It was a note stating that “we have the copy” of the short. It also included an agreement for Armond to sign. The agreement said that if he promised not to hold public meetings displaying the short or post it online, they would send the copy to him. Strangely, he also couldn’t reveal the names of anyone involved in the short’s creation, or even the short’s title. Armond signed the agreement and sent it back.
Six months later, the copy arrived on a Sunday. The DVD was in an envelope in his mailbox. The envelope had no return address or postage of any kind, which meant that it was personally delivered. It came with a note that simply read, “We trust this completes your search.”
It was at this time that members of the community dedicated to finding the short became skeptical. They were disappointed that the short had been “found,” but they had no further information after their efforts. Some also really doubted that a shadowy, mysterious “they” had sent the only copy in existence to Armond with the express contractual obligation that he not post it. Furthermore, Armond had said that he was going to post the short in a “documentary” that he was making. He actually did later share with some forum users a 9 minute audio documentary with a word-for-word reading of the script, but it’s since been deleted from Youtube.
However, outside of not posting the clip, Armond did break his agreement to a certain extent. He showed the clip to Bourne in 2009, who corroborated its existence. He’s since allowed certain people to view the clip at his home.
Dycaite
Forum members involved in the search were still horribly disappointed. Lost Media Wiki founder Dycaite (aka Daniel Wilson) was one of these people. He resolved to find the clip himself.
He sent emails, letters, and petitions to CTW. He contacted Cosmo Anzilotti, a prolific animator who was rumored to have been involved with the short (he wasn’t).
In much the same way it happened to Armond, it happened to Dycaite too. On Christmas Eve of 2013, he was sent an anonymous email (it was from a temporary email address). The message field was blank. The attachment was “Cracks.”
The clip can be viewed here. Dycaite received no instructions about not uploading the video, so he did immediately. It’s an animated half-sung, half-narrated story of a girl who jumps into her bedroom wall and meets different animals. She rides on “Crack Camel” and meets “Crack Hen” and “Crack Monkey.” They then all meet the “Crack Master” (not Crack Monster as some, including Armond, had remembered it). The Crack Master is a creepy face that crumbles itself in an attempt to look “mean.” The girl then bids farewell to the animals, as it has stopped raining outside.
“Cracks” was aired 11 times, ending in 1980. It was also aired on the Mexican Spanish version of Sesame Street (Plaza Sesamo) in the mid-1990s. With the context of the clip in its original form, it’s not hard to guess why Sesame Street stopped airing it, and why it had remained hidden all these years. While the “War on Drugs” had already begun by the time of its airing, it really ramped up in the 1980s under Reagan - arrests for drug offenses rose by 126%.”Crack cocaine” and the “crack epidemic” became nationally used terms in the early 1980s. CTW likely did not want their kids show, a show which catered to low-income families that were statistically hit the hardest by crack cocaine, to be associated with these negative connotations. Having characters called “Crack Master” and “Crack Monkey” seemed now a little...questionable. It wasn’t “too scary” for air, it just didn’t age particularly well. Some, including the executive producer of Sesame Street (Ben Lehmann), speculate that, in addition to the drug connection, many homes in low-income areas were not in great condition. Showing a girl in a dilapidated home with huge cracks in the foundation might have been construed as insensitive.
The Two Copies
At this point, there were still a lot of questions that hadn’t been answered by the clip’s publication. Who was involved in the original animation? Who was the “anonymous source” that had sent Armond his copy? Was it different from Dycaite’s “anonymous source?”
Only the last question can be answered: probably. Armond’s copy is a physical DVD. It also opens with a brief snippet of the end of the previous segment featuring Bert and Ernie before “Cracks” plays. This suggests that it is a recording.
Dycaite’s copy is digital. This clip does not have the Bert and Ernie skit. Instead, it opens with a title card that showcases production code and runtime. This suggests that it’s from a digital archive. Many have speculated that the person or people who sent the clip to Dycaite either worked for the CTW archive or otherwise had access to it (which could be any number of CTW employees with access to the database).
The fact that these are two different copies has been confirmed by Jennifer Bourne, who has seen both clips.
This leads to some interesting implications. As some have pointed out, Armond’s source might not be affiliated with Sesame Street at all, considering they didn’t send a digital version (implying that they might not have access to the archives).
Later Findings
Kurt Anderson, on his Studio360 podcast, did some additional research for a 2019 episode on “Cracks.” He found that the short was made by a studio called “P. Imagination.” This name didn’t lead anywhere, except to a defunct animation studio called “Imagination Inc.” No further information on whether this studio was connected to “Cracks” was found.
Anderson did, however, track down the woman who voiced the narrator. She actually turned out to be Dorothy Moskowitz, lead singer of the 1960s experimental rock band The United States of America. She said that recording the narration was itself an odd experience. She was told to improvise the singing parts and to really get into the character of the Crack Master. She doesn’t remember the names of anyone involved, but she does remember a woman dressed in all white linen, possibly the graphic artist.
Conclusions
Thanks for sticking with me through this post! The mystery surrounding this bizarre 1970s Sesame Street clip is so intriguing. The anonymous sources also kind of freak me out, although they’re probably just employees who don’t want their bosses to know that they leaked footage (and also might be messing with these internet sleuths a bit).
The end of this story leaves us with a few questions that, still, nobody knows the answers to:
Who made this animated short? Was it “P. Imagination” or “Imagination Inc?” Who was the lady in white, and was she the graphic designer as Moskowitz thought?
Did the producers of Sesame Street stop airing “Cracks” because of the unfortunate association its title had with drugs, or were there other reasons? Why all the secrecy around an old 1.5 minute long Sesame Street cartoon, even now?
Who are the anonymous sources that sent copies of “Cracks” to Armond and Dycaite? Are they two different people/groups of people? How did they know where Armond lived/worked? Why did Armond have explicit instructions not to release the clip, while Dycaite was sent a blank email with no stipulations? Are the two clips different in content? Why even send copies at all??
Sources and Further Reading/Viewing
This comprehensive video by Youtube user blameitonjorge.
This Slate article which includes the Studio360 episode on “Cracks.”
The Lost Media Wiki page for “Cracks.”
Edit: Thank you so much everyone for your interest and support! I wanted to add - I don't really know what Armond said in his "audio documentary," because it was taken off Youtube before I saw it. But this video by Bedhead Bernie goes into it a bit more: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYXJE11lmvY&t=0s&ab_channel=BedheadBernie. Apparently, according to Armond, his source was a party that had rights to the original clip, possibly an "heir" of the original animator(s).
Jon Armond was a 6-year-old boy in 1977 when he first saw a segment on Sesame Street that both “terrified” and “mesmerized” him. According to him, he had thought about it every day for 30 years. He mentioned it to people he knew, trying to find out if anyone else remembered the bizarre clip. He had apparently even heard urban myths about the short - namely that it was removed from air and destroyed because it was causing mental distress in children. He remembered a black-and-white girl in a horrible old house who starts to imagine animals forming out of the cracks in her wall. She meets a few different animals, but then the music changes. She meets a grotesque figure that Armond remembers as the “Crack Monster,” who yells until he crumbles out of sheer anger.
This is a popular creepy story premise. Reading it for the first time reminded me of creepypastas like Candle Cove and Squidward’s Suicide. But this one was real, Armond hoped.
In 2008, Armond got a lead. He read a post on cartoonist Jennifer Bourne’s blog “Tail o’ the Rat.” He commented on a blog post that she had made titled “The Crack Monster!” She was also terrified by the clip when she was young and could not find anything about it on Google, except for some other people who also remembered the clip (with varying details). Armond dropped his email and a plea for anyone who knew where to find the clip to put him out of his misery.
Armond and Bourne built an online community around finding this clip. The clip’s existence became a popular debated topic between Gen Xers in several forums in the early 2000s (there are even a few threads on Reddit dedicated to finding the video). There was literally nothing known about what most referred to as “The Crack Monster Cartoon.” Armond eventually contacted someone at the CTW Archives at the University of Maryland to ask about the clip. He managed to find out that the clip had aired as part of the 979th episode of Sesame Street on February 10th, 1977, but he didn’t get much else. The investigation had seemingly hit a dead end, until…
The Package
Jon Armond got an untraceable fax at work in late 2008. It was a note stating that “we have the copy” of the short. It also included an agreement for Armond to sign. The agreement said that if he promised not to hold public meetings displaying the short or post it online, they would send the copy to him. Strangely, he also couldn’t reveal the names of anyone involved in the short’s creation, or even the short’s title. Armond signed the agreement and sent it back.
Six months later, the copy arrived on a Sunday. The DVD was in an envelope in his mailbox. The envelope had no return address or postage of any kind, which meant that it was personally delivered. It came with a note that simply read, “We trust this completes your search.”
It was at this time that members of the community dedicated to finding the short became skeptical. They were disappointed that the short had been “found,” but they had no further information after their efforts. Some also really doubted that a shadowy, mysterious “they” had sent the only copy in existence to Armond with the express contractual obligation that he not post it. Furthermore, Armond had said that he was going to post the short in a “documentary” that he was making. He actually did later share with some forum users a 9 minute audio documentary with a word-for-word reading of the script, but it’s since been deleted from Youtube.
However, outside of not posting the clip, Armond did break his agreement to a certain extent. He showed the clip to Bourne in 2009, who corroborated its existence. He’s since allowed certain people to view the clip at his home.
Dycaite
Forum members involved in the search were still horribly disappointed. Lost Media Wiki founder Dycaite (aka Daniel Wilson) was one of these people. He resolved to find the clip himself.
He sent emails, letters, and petitions to CTW. He contacted Cosmo Anzilotti, a prolific animator who was rumored to have been involved with the short (he wasn’t).
In much the same way it happened to Armond, it happened to Dycaite too. On Christmas Eve of 2013, he was sent an anonymous email (it was from a temporary email address). The message field was blank. The attachment was “Cracks.”
The clip can be viewed here. Dycaite received no instructions about not uploading the video, so he did immediately. It’s an animated half-sung, half-narrated story of a girl who jumps into her bedroom wall and meets different animals. She rides on “Crack Camel” and meets “Crack Hen” and “Crack Monkey.” They then all meet the “Crack Master” (not Crack Monster as some, including Armond, had remembered it). The Crack Master is a creepy face that crumbles itself in an attempt to look “mean.” The girl then bids farewell to the animals, as it has stopped raining outside.
“Cracks” was aired 11 times, ending in 1980. It was also aired on the Mexican Spanish version of Sesame Street (Plaza Sesamo) in the mid-1990s. With the context of the clip in its original form, it’s not hard to guess why Sesame Street stopped airing it, and why it had remained hidden all these years. While the “War on Drugs” had already begun by the time of its airing, it really ramped up in the 1980s under Reagan - arrests for drug offenses rose by 126%.”Crack cocaine” and the “crack epidemic” became nationally used terms in the early 1980s. CTW likely did not want their kids show, a show which catered to low-income families that were statistically hit the hardest by crack cocaine, to be associated with these negative connotations. Having characters called “Crack Master” and “Crack Monkey” seemed now a little...questionable. It wasn’t “too scary” for air, it just didn’t age particularly well. Some, including the executive producer of Sesame Street (Ben Lehmann), speculate that, in addition to the drug connection, many homes in low-income areas were not in great condition. Showing a girl in a dilapidated home with huge cracks in the foundation might have been construed as insensitive.
The Two Copies
At this point, there were still a lot of questions that hadn’t been answered by the clip’s publication. Who was involved in the original animation? Who was the “anonymous source” that had sent Armond his copy? Was it different from Dycaite’s “anonymous source?”
Only the last question can be answered: probably. Armond’s copy is a physical DVD. It also opens with a brief snippet of the end of the previous segment featuring Bert and Ernie before “Cracks” plays. This suggests that it is a recording.
Dycaite’s copy is digital. This clip does not have the Bert and Ernie skit. Instead, it opens with a title card that showcases production code and runtime. This suggests that it’s from a digital archive. Many have speculated that the person or people who sent the clip to Dycaite either worked for the CTW archive or otherwise had access to it (which could be any number of CTW employees with access to the database).
The fact that these are two different copies has been confirmed by Jennifer Bourne, who has seen both clips.
This leads to some interesting implications. As some have pointed out, Armond’s source might not be affiliated with Sesame Street at all, considering they didn’t send a digital version (implying that they might not have access to the archives).
Later Findings
Kurt Anderson, on his Studio360 podcast, did some additional research for a 2019 episode on “Cracks.” He found that the short was made by a studio called “P. Imagination.” This name didn’t lead anywhere, except to a defunct animation studio called “Imagination Inc.” No further information on whether this studio was connected to “Cracks” was found.
Anderson did, however, track down the woman who voiced the narrator. She actually turned out to be Dorothy Moskowitz, lead singer of the 1960s experimental rock band The United States of America. She said that recording the narration was itself an odd experience. She was told to improvise the singing parts and to really get into the character of the Crack Master. She doesn’t remember the names of anyone involved, but she does remember a woman dressed in all white linen, possibly the graphic artist.
Conclusions
Thanks for sticking with me through this post! The mystery surrounding this bizarre 1970s Sesame Street clip is so intriguing. The anonymous sources also kind of freak me out, although they’re probably just employees who don’t want their bosses to know that they leaked footage (and also might be messing with these internet sleuths a bit).
The end of this story leaves us with a few questions that, still, nobody knows the answers to:
Who made this animated short? Was it “P. Imagination” or “Imagination Inc?” Who was the lady in white, and was she the graphic designer as Moskowitz thought?
Did the producers of Sesame Street stop airing “Cracks” because of the unfortunate association its title had with drugs, or were there other reasons? Why all the secrecy around an old 1.5 minute long Sesame Street cartoon, even now?
Who are the anonymous sources that sent copies of “Cracks” to Armond and Dycaite? Are they two different people/groups of people? How did they know where Armond lived/worked? Why did Armond have explicit instructions not to release the clip, while Dycaite was sent a blank email with no stipulations? Are the two clips different in content? Why even send copies at all??
Sources and Further Reading/Viewing
This comprehensive video by Youtube user blameitonjorge.
This Slate article which includes the Studio360 episode on “Cracks.”
The Lost Media Wiki page for “Cracks.”
Edit: Thank you so much everyone for your interest and support! I wanted to add - I don't really know what Armond said in his "audio documentary," because it was taken off Youtube before I saw it. But this video by Bedhead Bernie goes into it a bit more: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYXJE11lmvY&t=0s&ab_channel=BedheadBernie. Apparently, according to Armond, his source was a party that had rights to the original clip, possibly an "heir" of the original animator(s).
