I WANT COOKIES!

[Taro Toporific]

[Mulboyne]

Yomiuri: A wrong turn on new 'Sesame Street'

[The] new and not improved version of Sesame Street...opens with the cast shouting: "English Everybody. It's Sesame Street," but it was 20 minutes later before we heard another English phrase.
One of the better decisions NHK made this year was not to get involved with the Japanization of Sesame Street. The show...bears very little resemblance to the original....If anything, the show looks poised to further the scope of Japlish and make the work of the nation's English teachers even more challenging. First, there is the perplexing problem of how to pronounce the names. Since the show is now all in Japanese...bye-bye Big Bird and hello Biggu Baado, Baato and Kukkii Monsutaa..
...Then, at last, came the show's ode to its English-language-education roots--a section called English on Street set in a convenience store. Big Bird wants an "umeboshi ika manju"...The obliging "onii-san"...makes him one and we get the English phrase for the day: "Tastes bad!" No one bothers to add an "It," as in "It tastes bad." Who needs a complete, correct English sentence in a Japanized version of Sesame Street? "Tastes bad" is repeated in an assortment of very bad accents and then we are given the appropriate translation: "mazui." That is definitely the taste the show left with me--mazui, mazui, mazui....Yes, all in all, I'd say this show is a giant six-step leap backward for early childhood education in Japan.

[Taro Toporific]

Yomiuri: A wrong turn on new 'Sesame Street'Big Bird wants an "umeboshi ika manju"...The obliging "onii-san"...makes him one and we get the English phrase for the day: "Tastes bad!" No one bothers to add an "It," as in "It tastes bad." Who needs a complete, correct English sentence in a Japanized version of Sesame Street?

Sesame Street was been a deadend road since the Germans bought it and trashed it. Sesame Street really has lost real control of the classic Muppets as the Muppets are the puppets invented by Jim Henson (and his colleagues). When Henson died, the Muppets and Sesame Street went into a deep decline. Now Mickey Rat owns 'em.

Even the Germans gave up and dumped it. The new Sesame Street "claims" that the ownership of Sesame Street Muppets remains under the direction of Childrens Television Workshop. True but... since the Workshop doesn't even own the classic Muppets themselves, the franchise is a bad joke.bork.bork.bork.

http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~csilvers/muppet-faq.html

Doesn't Disney own the Muppets?

Yes, pretty much. Here's how ownership breaks down, along with the date the relevant company acquired control:

* Sesame Workshop: Sesame Street Muppets (Dec 2000)
* Disney: All other Muppets, Bear in the Big Blue House (Feb 2004)
* Henson family: Everything else, including the Creature Shop, Fraggle Rock, movies like Labyrinth, the Hoobs, etc (May 2003)

Before February 2000, the Henson company was independent. In February 2000, the German company EM.TV bought the Muppets. They turned around and sold the rights to the Sesame Street characters to Sesame Workshop (formerly Children's Television Network). EM.TV proceeded to utterly collapse, and in May 2003 sold the Muppets back to the Henson family, for about the value they bought it. Henson then sold the rights to the Muppets (and Bear in the Big Blue House) to Disney in February 2004.

It's interesting to compare the various press releases as the Henson family lost, gained, and again gave up control: http://www.henson.com/company/press/html/022100.html http://www.henson.com/company/press/html/050703.html http://www.henson.com/company/press/html/021704.html

Disney worked with the Hensons before buying them in 2004. As far back as 1989, the Walt Disney Company entered into negotiations to acquire The Jim Henson Company (then Jim Henson Productions) and the Muppets. Jim Henson died during the negotiations, and the deal eventually fell through. However, the JHC and Disney continnued to work together, such as for the (wonderful) MuppetVision 3-D at Disney/MGM studios in Orlando and at Disney's California Adventure in Anaheim. Presumably, we'll now see even more along these lines.

7. Who runs the Muppets nowadays?

The Henson family now owns the company (having bought it back from EM.TV) and also runs it. Brian Henson and Lisa Henson are co-chairs and co-CEOs. The Board of Directors consists of all five Henson children plus Charles Rivkin (who was President and CEO before and during the EM.TV period). Peter Schube, President and COO, is the other major senior executive not from the Henson clan.

Also see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_characters_from_international_versions_of_Sesame_Street

[Taro Toporific]

'Sesame Street' making waves -- in Japanese
Japan Times, Dec 8
NHK stopped broadcasting the American version of "Sesame Street" in April after more than 30 years on the air. The Japanese version kicked off in October.
Japanese "Sesame Street" is currently being aired every Sunday at 9 a.m. on TV Tokyo network. Almost all of the procedures have been created by Japanese staff, and the program is broadcast mostly in their native tongue, except for brief "English lesson" corners....The Japanese version also features three new characters: Teena, Mojabo and Pierre....Narrator Pierre is a light-blue frog whose partner, Arthur, talks in the Kansai dialect.

Pierre and "partner" Arthur: Is that really a New Gay Gaijin couple on Japanese Sesame Street?

[kotatsuneko]

must be the viral spread of "katakana eigo" started originally i think from an "inspired" japanese teacher years back which became out of fashion, then spread on the net/word of mouth by jet slaves, now gone full circle and now on tv!

i feel sorry for all the younger kids now forced to study english at an earlier age. i mean dammit, 99% of them will never use/want to use english anyhow poor buggers. surely a class teaching them not to kick homeless to death/beat their partners/wear condoms/not to drink cheap whisky out of the bottle in the mornings would be a better use of classtime

[Mulboyne]

Forbes: Elmo Gets More Emotional for Japan
Elmo has undergone something of a metamorphosis in Japan. Sure, he still has his fuzzy red look, falsetto voice and hearty laugh in Japan's first local production of "Sesame Street." But unlike the Elmo loved by generations of American children, this Muppet wastes little time teaching reading or arithmetic. In Japan, known for its reserve, Elmo is all about feelings...Japan's Elmo cries more easily than the U.S. version...more...

[Kuang_Grade]

[AssKissinger]

This is one of the saddest things I've read in a long time. If you can't count on the cookie monster wanting cookies without limit, well, I don't know what to believe in now.

I have this Cookie Monster song on tape where he sings 'The person who puts the cookie closest to my mouth is the winner of the game!'. Funny as Hell. Yall might not believe this but I'm really good at teaching children. A lot of teachers don't seem to understand this but if you take all the fun out of everything kids won't learn anything. Oscar lives in a garbage can and Cookie Monster eats millions and millions of cookies. Kids don't see this and want to move into a dumpster or stop eating vegetables. They just laugh and that helps them learn.

[Mulboyne]

Elmo on the Tokyo Metro

[Ptyx]