The Sesame Street we all know and love is typically a gentle, light-hearted affair filled with life lessons and large bumbling animals.
But did you know one episode was actually banned after parents sent in letters of complaint?
First aired in 1976, episode 847 from Season 7 of Sesame Street‘s features The Wizard of Oz icon Margaret Hamilton, guest-starring as the Wicked Witch of the West on a quest to retrieve her broom from Big Bird and David (Northern Calloway) after she falls out of the sky.
Here’s the ep:
The episode itself features some creepy, jangling music whenever the Wicked Witch appears on screen, and includes a scene where she actually threatens to turn poor old Big Bird into a feather duster. It’s not exactly up there with the likes of Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of the Dark?, but given how young the audience of Sesame Street is, we can see why it might have been a tad disturbing.
Either way, the episode did actually air in 1976, before being pulled from TV for good. Aside from being shown at a Museum of the Moving Image screening as part of a “Sesame Street Lost and Found” event in 2019, the episode’s been relatively unavailable for decades, according to the AV Club. The episode was reportedly sitting in the Library of Congress, the publisher notes, but it’s unclear whether it was available to the public to watch. Mashable has reached out to the LOC for further information.
But now, it’s available to watch online. Over the weekend, reddit user u/sarsaparilla170170 shared the 15-minute episode on Reddit’s r/lostmedia subreddit, where it quickly went viral. The uploader didn’t share where they’d found the episode, but Mashable has reached out for comment and we will update this article if we receive a response.
