I’ve reminisced in the past over the crayon factory and a llama at the dentist, but this video of an orange singing Carmen just might be my most vivid Sesame Street memory ever. This despite the fact that in recent years, I was convinced that the food in question was either a tomato or an onion. Idiot! Anyway, check it out:
I remember wanting the beginning part, when the young fruit endures the treacherous process of becoming a woman, to last longer — I loved that the orange (which is WAY bigger than anything else in that fruit bowl, like 4x the normal scale!) inherited human characteristics from household items. The Atari sound effects also help. Once the orange drag queen started her song, I remember cringing and/or going into the kitchen to beg my mom for more snacks. That doesn’t mean I didn’t love the segment as a whole. I could definitely hear it from the other room and imagine in my head what was going on. It’s just something that was hard for me to devour as a whole after seeing it probably 200 times.
So it goes. I’m still obsessed with it and can’t believe it’s online. Who else remembers this?!
I think it’s a grapefruit, hence the 4x bigger than anything else in the fruit bowl.
Oh my god, I haven’t even watched the video yet and I can already hear the song in my head. So many memories of this.
Annie, you never fail to send me flying back to my childhood! I remember all of these things like it was yesterday.
I loved this thing when I was a kid! Still do, actually…
Oh, man. This really takes me back to when Sesame Street was cool, long before Elmo ruined it.
Oh my goodness, that grapefruit needs some diction lessons! (just kidding, people) It’s funny—I think I’ve seen other singers look that way as they attempt to reach their high notes.
Thanks for bringing back great memories, Annie.
i found that about a month ago after weeks and weeks of wishing that it would show up on youtube. the amount of time i have spent on youtube looking up old sesame street awesomeness is really embarassing. this is one of my all-time favorites!!!
Oh my god! I used to love this Sesame Street clip! They used to show this all the time during my Sesame Street years–which was about the early-to-mid nineties. There was another Sesame Street segment I used to like, and I can’t remember the exact details, but I seem to remember singing/dancing kitchen utensils, and the main character was a cup with some sort of cartoon on it. Does this sound familiar to anyone else, or did I clearly ingest too much Play-Doh as a child?
I was born in 1987. So I think I missed this when it originally aired lol. All I remember is the worms who would have a track meet or olympics type thing lol..
I do remember the singing orange, but taking the llama to the dentist is still my biggest Sesame Street memory.
The first two I remember. Not this one…
Good stuff right there. I would kill for lashes like that. Can the next Sesame Street flashback be of Teeny Little Super Guy?
I can’t believe you blogged about this! I posted the link for this clip in my comment to “Who Else Remembers This (Volume 2). It used to scare the crap out of me as a young child, and yet, I felt helplessly drawn to watch it anyway each and every time. Until I found the clip on You Tube, I thought I had dreamt the clip, because NONE of my friends could remember it. Imagine my joy (and residual terror, lol) when I found it online!
This is so great! It’s so funny to watch videos like this, because if I were seeing it for the first time, I’d be like “what pot smoking weirdo thought this up?” Instead, since I remember it so vividly from my childhood, I think it’s the greatest, most beautiful thing ever.
Oh yes, the singing orange. The clips that stick most in my head. though, are: “Me and My Llama”, “A Loaf of Bread, a Quart of Milk, and a Stick of Butter” and this one I can’t seeem find on You Tube–its a trippy cartoon where a kid is going to the store and all these people in bell bottoms (possibly speaking jive?) try to sidetrack him. I remember a lot of orange but my whole memory of the 70s is a whole lot of orange. Can anyone help?!?