Ernie and the Pumpkin Seed Candy Salesman (found 1970 Sesame Street sketch)

"Ernie and the Pumpkin Seed Candy Salesman" (usually shortened to "Ernie and the Candy Salesman") is a sketch that originally aired during Sesame Street episode 0264 (during Season 2) on May 13, 1971 (exactly a day after the Tales from Muppetland special "The Frog Prince" premiered).

In this sketch, a candy salesman comes up to Ernie and sells him some pumpkin seed candy. Ernie told the salesman that he doesn't really like pumpkin seed candy, perhaps like it was icky or something. He keeps selling him the sizes of pumpkin seed candy until he sells him the tiniest piece of pumpkin seed candy that he even can't see it like as if it was invisible. It almost looks like Ernie was looking at the camera in a closeup shot of the tiniest piece of pumpkin seed candy.

There are no video copies of this sketch available online, but the German-dubbed version from a Sesamstraße episode that used to be uploaded to YouTube several years ago had been deleted in 2014. Only a couple of poor-quality screenshots, both taken from the deleted German dub, have survived.

A user has listed the segment as one of the rare/lost Ernie and Bert sketches on a MuppetCentral forum thread. Another user has emailed Sesame Workshop requesting a copy of this segment, and unfortunately they didn't want this segment in the public. This is, more than likely, because they have a policy to not send out tapes, and they don't want anyone leaking their (inaccessible) video footage online due to copyright restrictions. When several classic Sesame Street episodes (from seasons 1, 10, 12, 20, and 22) as well as a few inserts (having unseen behind-the-scenes material such as clapperboard credits, sound check and camera positioning) got leaked online sometime around 2015, this clip sadly didn't make it on time.

Thanks to documents found at the CTW (Children's Television Workshop) Archives, the clip was known to have aired in two episodes on Sesame Street (#264 and #301) during 1971. Other airings of the segment, especially in foreign co-productions, remain unidentified, but the only known international episode to feature the segment in its foreign dub was Folge 2033 of Sesamstraße. There is a claim that the clip also aired on the Italian co-production Sesamo Apriti, but so far, no physical evidence of this has been put forward. However, from watching a Greek dub of the clip on YouTube, a user by the name of "Sesame Street Finder" has confirmed that the sketch also aired in Sousami Anoikse, the Greek co-production, and that the Greek dub was once uploaded by Erniefan1998 (who has already been suspended from YouTube). The Greek dub had an alternate ending where the candy salesman facepalms and sighs.

As of May 16, 2017, a Lost Media Archive user by the name "Stingy aka Lostmedia1998" claimed to have had the German dub of this segment on a VHS tape but unbelievably trashed it. As of July 2017, the segment still has not resurfaced; no YouTube users appear to have the German dub of this clip backed up on their computers before it was deleted from YouTube in 2014, and it is still completely unknown if Sesame Workshop will ever release this clip to the public or if anymore upcoming YouTube uploads of full episodes for foreign co-productions (i.e. Barrio Sésamo, Rechov Sumsum, etc.), besides Sesamstraße, will ever have this extremely-scarce clip included by surprise.

There's a very small chance anyone will ever get to see this clip again, especially since the only copy of it in German is now removed off of the Internet, and Sesame Workshop has no intention of releasing this segment (along with other rare, long-unseen segments) at all, perhaps due to the following reasons: either these segments are believed (by fans) to be lost from Sesame Workshop's archive as they were trying to make room for more newly-produced episodes during 1974-1975, or there are certain legal issues keeping the majority of classic segments privately stored away and publicly inaccessible.

The clip however isn't lost, but outside of Sesame Workshop keeping a copy of the clip privately stored away and never converted to digital format with all the other old shows, no one has come forward with anymore VHS recordings of the clip, so it is more than likely believed in public that all the fan recordings of the clip (recorded from television broadcast) are forever lost due to losing the clip from harddrive crashes and trashing the old videotapes that had the clip recorded on them, and it is unknown if anyone will ever come forward with a bootleg copy of the clip.

UPDATE 8 July '17: A user by the name of Radioactive Wizard (known as Star Dragon Dust on YouTube) has posted a thread on Scratchpad stating that a YouTuber by the name Rohail Hashmi has confirmed on FaceBook that he has the German dub of the "Ernie and the Pumpkin Seed Candy Salesman" (along with the longer version of "Surprise!" in Hebrew) saved and will upload it back online by the end of July.

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