Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.
TV URBAN LEGEND: Cookie Monster was originally created as the “Wheel-Stealer” for a cheese snack commercial.
An interesting aspect of Jim Henson’s career is that before the debut of Sesame Street, while Henson made a number of appearances on late night television (and his character Rowlf was a regular on The Jimmy Dean Show during the early 1960s) his Muppets were best known in the country for their appearances in various commercials around the country (in the Washington D.C. area, where Henson got his big break doing the puppet television show Sam and Friends in the 1950s, he did over 300 ads for Wilkins Coffee). These early commercial works helped Henson to develop the style that he would later use on both Sesame Street as well as The Muppet Show. However, as you might imagine, these ads also gave him the freedom to develop new characters and one of the most amusing character developments was the evolution of one puppet called the “Wheel-Stealer” that went from being one of three puppets in an unaired ad campaign for a long-forgotten cheese snack to one of the most famous Muppets of them all, the Cookie Monster.
Continue reading “Was the Cookie Monster Originally Invented for a Cheese Snack Commercial?”
