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.

A user has listed the segment as one of the rare/lost Ernie and Bert sketches on a Muppet Central 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.

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. It is also rumored that there were other foreign airings of the clip which also had an alternate ending where the candy salesman facepalms and sighs, but so far, no physical evidence of this has been put forward.

Despite most Sesame Street classic footage and episodes being converted to digital format, it is a theory that this could be one of the long-unseen footage (and not just the Wicked Witch episode) being kept stored away and never converted to digital format with all the other old shows. For an unknown reason, Sesame Workshop has intended to not release or re-broadcast every classic insert or episode of the show in the public, because these inserts and episodes either lacked an educational concept on the show, are not available at this time in favor of a smaller, more licensee-friendly package, or are being privately kept hidden in storage due to legal issues (especially involving song covers or existing children's books, which got edited out of many home media releases). No one has come forward with anymore VHS recordings of the clip, and fans have messaged multiple online users of whom may have copies of any long-unseen clips. However, it is more than likely that this segment is now forever unwatchable due to fans losing the clip from harddrive crashes and trashing the old videotapes that had the clip recorded on it, and it is unknown if anyone will ever come forward with a bootleg copy of the clip.

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