Sesame Street

Sesame Street is an educational television program designed for preschoolers, and is recognized as a pioneer of the contemporary standard which combines education and entertainment in children's television shows. Sesame Street also provided the first daily, national television showcase for Jim Henson's Muppets. More than 4100 episodes of the show have been produced in 48 seasons, making it one of the longest-running shows in television history.

In two 1980 episodes, C-3PO and R2-D2 landed on the street in a spacecraft, to deliver a holographic message to Oscar the Grouch (episode 1364) from Lothar the Grouch from the seventh moon of Zircon, and another one to go to the park (episode 1396).

Anthony Daniels came in from London to play C-3PO for these episodes. Rather than have Kenny Baker reprise R2-D2, however, R2-D2 was radio-controlled in all of the episodes. Craig Miller was producer for Lucasfilm on the episodes and also operated R2's head. Also working on the shoot from Lucasfilm were Louis Friedman and Shelly Bobrick. Ed Breed,^[source?] a radio control specialist from Industrial Light and Magic maintained R2-D2 during the three day shoot and was R2's main operator.

Star Wars is also parodied/tributed in a Crumby Pictures parody sketch called Star S'mores.

Behind the scenes

During Anthony Daniels' event at Celebration IV, he showed some clips of his career as C-3PO—ranging from his Sesame Street episodes and The Muppet Show episode, to a C-3POs cereal commercial and The Star Wars Holiday Special. Daniels gave insight into these appearances, and told some stories of his experiences working on them.

A segment filmed for repeat appearances outside of the aforementioned episodes, was released on the 2009 DVD Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days.

Connections

Frank Oz, performer of Yoda, is also the performer of Cookie Monster, Grover and Bert (1969 - present; occasionally since 2001), and Jim Henson's closest collaborator, as well as his best friend.