Because NPR‘s In Character series has impeccable taste in fictional characters, they recently interviewed my favorite: Cookie Monster!
Elizabeth Blair starts the inteview like so: “We at NPR News have high journalistic standards. So I sat down with Cookie Monster for an exclusive interview.”
She sounds like my kind of girl!
Anyway, first she covers Cookie‘s direct ancestor, the Wheel Stealer, who first arrived on the muppet scene in some unaired commercials for General Mills in which, of course, he devoured snacks. Wheel Stealer then went on to star in this hilarious training video for IBM, called “Coffee Break Machine“:
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You may be wondering, “Training for what?!?!?!” So am I, dear reader. So am I.
If you want to buff up on Cookie Monster’s complete lineage, there’s a page devoted to just that at the Muppet Wiki.
The highlight of the NPR segment, though, was hearing Frank Oz, the puppeteer who originated Cookie Monster—and, along with Jim Henson, invented him—validating my reasons for loving Cookie so, so much. Frank said:
He’s a very sensuous monster, very tactile. As opposed to many of us, who need many things to make us happy, he only needs one thing. And that’s a cookie. And he’s insatiable. He’s not intellectual, he’s not that smart…
And the highlight of the b-roll video (which is actually more entertaining than the complete segment) would have to be Cookie’s answers to a few questions from The Proust Questionnaire such as:
Elizabeth: What is your favorite word?
Cookie: COOKIE! Hahaha. What you expect?
Elizabeth: What is your least favorite word?
Cookie: Outtacookies! That one word: Outtacookies! Outtacookies! Yeah. That count? Not count, huh?
Elizabeth: For you, we’ll make it count.
Cookie: How ’bout pusillanimous? Me not sure what that means, but me heard it once and it sound pretty icky.
Elizabeth: What sound or noise do you love?
Cookie: Oh me love uh, um-num-num-num. That me favorite sound.
Elizabeth: What sound or noise do you hate?
Cookie: Snoring. Me do not like snoring.
Elizabeth: Do you have friends who snore?
Cookie: Yeah. Pretty much all me friends snore. It a thing on Sesame Street. Everybody who sleeps, they snore. It drive me crazy.
Elizabeth: But you don’t snore?
Cookie: Me not sure. Me sleeping. Me probably do, but me not hear it.
Elizabeth’s full Cookie Monster segment and accompanying video are both available here.