Well, I don’t believe (I can’t believe!) that the Cookie Monster is really a terrorist, but he certainly looks like one for us these days on the cover of the October 1976 Sesame Street magazine. As someone who was actually in Manhattan on 9/11 (in my case, trapped underground on an E train near Times Square for a couple of hours while trying to get to work), this cover looks pretty spooky.
It’s so, well, predictive of what happened 25 years later… But to put it all in perspective, we should remember that in 1976 a remake of King Kong, in which Kong climbed the new World Trade Center, was out in movie theaters. But that version of Kong has been pretty much forgotten, and now, chomping the WTC has a very different meaning.
This picture can be found in full size on this Flickr page.
The Monkey Speaks 
January 9, 2009 at 1:10 am
Well he showed his true colors in this 1977 book that I don’t think I could do a storytime without. It’s called Wanted: The Great Cookie Thief. A western town is terrorized by a bandit who steals all the cookies he can. It’s pretty much the best book ever. Ever.