99. Any recurring character in an animated segment
98. Baby Bear: That voice is just the worst thing. The worst thing.
97. Rudy: Seemingly the heir to Baby Bear’s annoying voice, Grover’s tendency to screw up, and Telly’s stubbornness all in one. Rudy is not endearing.
96. Rocky (Zoe’s pet rock): Rocky makes Zoe a terrible character whenever he’s around, which is a lot, actually.
95. Mr. Noodle and all other Noodles: There’s a Tiger King style documentary to be made about the world of Noodles and i can’t wait to see it.
94. Elmo taking on different forms in Elmo’s World: These can be downright terrifying and they sometimes make my son cry.
93: Elmo’s World Guests: Pretty much only have one of two old-time Noo Yawk accents.
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88. Elmo’s Dad: It pains me to note that Elmo’s Dad is supposed to be an engineer. He’s also an obvious attempt to construct a boomer’s idea of a Cool Dad. He has a soul patch and plays a saxophone in a classic rock band. FFS.
87. The Crumb: Mid-20teens Sesame Street had a lot of expensively animated missteps. This is one of them.
86. Velvet: Elmo the Musical was never aimed at me. I do not condone musical theater. Velvet is annoying, even correcting for that admitted bias.
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77. Prairie Dawn: Mostly down here for telling Abby she could only dress up as a princess, but honestly it’s the most she had to do for years.
76. Dorothy: You’re killing Elmo’s World, Dorothy. It grinds to a halt every time you’re on the screen.
75. Grouchetta
74. Giant Elephant Guy: Exceptionally annoying voice, made up for by being very obvioulsy a dude in a suit, which is a little funny.
73. Stinky the Plant
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A bunch of others that don’t really register.
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25. Bert: Poor Bert. He’s redeemed some by his pure love for pigeons.
24. Barkley
23. Herry Monster
22. Guy Smiley
21. Baby Natasha
20. Gonger: Cookie Monster and Gonger’s food truck is underappreciated. A little bit of talking about following directions, a little bit of how-it’s-made film, and occasionally they’re just kinda sneaky funny.
19. Julia
18. The yip yip aliens: They lose major points for their implication in this season’s dreadful Number of the Day song.
17. Ovejita:
16. Any and all penguins
15. Murray Monster: One of the few new characters that does a good job of doing old Sesame Street things, notably, muppets interacting with random people on the street and going and learning things about new places.
14. Snuffy
13. Any and all chickens: The chickens are never not funny.
12. Telly Monster: Telly can be annoying, but only because he tries so very hard.
11. Slimey
10. Elmo: You’ve gotta give him some credit for not making you absolutely want to murder him, considering his ubiquity. That being said, cocky “yeah baby” Elmo is the worst and belongs at the other end of this list.
9. Abby: Once they toned down the “magic things are magic!” introductory interactions with Abby, she became a lot more likable, despite her overuse. Animated Abbys do not count here, they mostly suck.
8. Rosita: Rosita seems fun in general and ideally she would be around more.
7. The Count: His love of counting is so pure.
6. Two-Headed Monster: They’re funny and i don’t have more of a justification than that.
5. Ernie: As a kid, I identified with Ernie. Ernie was fun. Bert was not. I’m sure it’s tough to be a Bert in this world, but it was never something i could wrap my brain around.
4. Big Bird: Big Bird is nice. He’s the embodiment of nice. If we could have Big Bird be our ambassador for our first contact with aliens, i think he, Mr. Rogers, and Tom Hanks would handle that job just fine.
3. Oscar: is my wife’s favorite. A true Gen X’er’s muppet.
2. Grover: Not Super Grover, importantly, and especially not “Super Grover 2.0”. Real Grover is cheerfully foolish and curious and sure of himself before he makes peace with his ignorance. Super Grover 2.0 is a boring buffoon.
1. Cookie Monster: Cookie Monster is the rampaging id we all want to be in our lives. Not me though, i’m like that all the time and people still like me.
Vuvuzle 