3942. Cookie Monster

Cookie Monster is a Muppet on the children's television show Sesame Street. He is best known for his voracious appetite and his famous eating phrases: "Me want cookie!", "Me eat cookie!", and "Om nom nom nom" (said through a mouth full of food). He often eats anything and everything, including danishes, donuts, lettuce, apples, bananas, as well as normally inedible objects. However, as his name suggests, his preferred food is cookies. Chocolate chip cookies are his favorite kind; oatmeal cookies are his second favorite. In a song in 2004, Cookie Monster revealed that, before he ate his first cookie, he believes his name was Sid. Showing awareness of healthy eating habits for children, since 2006 he has said that cookies are "a sometime snack" and that he also likes fruits and eggplant. He is known to have a mother, a younger sister, and an identically-designed cousin, who all share his characteristic blue fur and "googly eyes". He also has a father, who appeared in a Monsterpiece Theater sketch promoting energy conservation, water conservation and environmentalism. Both Cookie Monster's mother and father have his enormous appetite. He and his Sesame Street friends are popular motifs on T-shirts. The book Jim Henson's Designs and Doodles explains Cookie Monster's origin as follows: "In 1966, Henson drew three monsters that ate cookies and appeared in a General Foods commercial that featured three crunchy snack foods: Wheels, Crowns and Flutes. Each snack was represented by a different monster. The Wheel-Stealer was a short, fuzzy monster with wonky eyes and sharply pointed teeth. The Flute-Snatcher was a speed demon with a long, sharp nose and windblown hair. The Crown-Grabber was a hulk of a monster with a Boris Karloff accent and teeth that resembled giant knitting needles. These monsters had big appetites for the snack foods (like cookies) they were named after. Each time the Muppet narrator, a human-looking fellow, fixes himself a tray of Wheels, Flutes and Crowns, they disappear before he can eat them. One by one, the monsters sneak in and zoom away with the snacks. Frustrated and peckish, the narrator warns viewers that "these pesky monsters could be disguised as someone in your own home", at which point the monsters briefly turn into people and then dissolve back to monsters again. As it turns out, these commercials were never aired — but all three monsters had a future in the Muppet cast. The "Crown-Grabber" was used in a sketch on The Ed Sullivan Show, in which he ruins a girl's beautiful day. Known from then on as the Beautiful Day Monster, he made a number of appearances on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show. The "Flute-Snatcher" turned into Snake Frackle, a background monster from The Great Santa Claus Switch and The Muppet Show. In 1967, Henson used the "Wheel-Stealer" puppet for an IBM training film called Coffee Break Machine. In the sketch, called "The Computer Dinner", the monster (with frightening eyes and fangs) devours a complex coffee making machine as it describes its different parts. When he is finished, the machine announces the monster has activated the machine's anti-vandalism system, which contains the most powerful explosives known to man. The monster promptly explodes. This sketch was also performed in October, 1967 on The Ed Sullivan Show. It was also later performed on the George Burns episode of The Muppet Show using the Luncheon Counter Monster. Two years later, Henson pulled the puppet out of the box again for three commercials selling Munchos, a Frito-Lay potato chip. This time, the puppet was called Arnold, the Munching Monster. After the three ads were produced, Henson had the opportunity to renew the contract. He chose not to, because at that point he was working on Sesame Street — and that monster puppet was moving on to the next stage in his career. Cookie Monster, still unnamed, made his Sesame Street debut in the first episode, interfering with Kermit the Frog's "famous W lecture" by eating a model "W" bit by bit. He turns it into an "N", a "V", and finally an "I", to Kermit's frustration. He then tries to eat Kermit. It was during the first season that Cookie Monster got his name and began using the growly vernacular (e.g., "Me eat cookie!") that would become part of his character. His signature song, "C Is For Cookie", was first aired during the 1971-1972 season, and became one of the best-known songs from Sesame Street.