Are you ready for a particularly odd article this morning? Maybe one that comes straight out of Oz will do.
A Sesame Street episode from the seventies was never released onto television and kept secret for many decades. The episode featured the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. I suppose the creators of Sesame Street felt at the time it was potentially too scary or perhaps they shouldn’t deal with anything even coming close to the occult. As a result, many thought the episode was gone forever.
But there were signals that the episode existed, and finally around 2019, it seemed all but certain a high-quality copy remained. For those who hunt “lost media,” this was sometimes considered the Holy Grail. A screening from Sesame Workshop was intended to quell the desire for the show but instead it resulted in bootlegged, low quality content being disseminated. When would fans of media preservation finally get their hands on the original?
So it was pretty exciting when earlier this summer, someone leaked the whole episode in perfect quality onto Reddit. There’s just one big problem: it’s Reddit. And Reddit hasn’t exactly been known as a place for free discourse, impartiality, and fair rules lately. In fact, there’s a whole host of issues with Reddit and its various subreddit moderation policies. Thought the video remains up until publication today, there’s been an update that says the video may be taken down in the future. As a result, we felt it might be nice to post it here for the time being. Enjoy Margaret Hamilton in one of her final appearances as the Wicked Witch:
[Found] Sesame Street 847 Margaret Hamilton Wicked Witch
byu/sarsaparilla170170 inlostmedia
Here’s the update from Reddit on the episode:
We have had to remove download links and such of this, as it violates reddit’s TOS, and puts this subreddit, and users, at risk. Trust me, we all understand the irony of this situation. As somebody who, like many of you, is very passionate about media preservation, I get how ironic it is that we’ve removed the links of the backups. However, spreading content from an illegal data breach (especially when it gets this much attention) puts this subreddit at risk of being banned for violating Reddit’s TOS.
We are still looking into if the post itself can remain up.
To sesame workshop, we are happy to oblige with any requests to take this down if need be whilst the mod/admins look into this. We are happy to cooperate with you fully.
For greater understanding of why people are so crazy about this piece of previously lost content, check out this video:
For all the latest news that should be fun, keep reading That Park Place! As always, drop a comment down below and let us know your thoughts.
