Beginning with the iconic opening lines to “The Sesame Street Theme” that opened the first episode, music has always played a critical role in setting the educational and creative standards of Sesame Street. Early songs such as “I Love Trash,” “People In Your Neighborhood,” “Green,” “One of These Things,” and “Rubber Duckie” (just to name a few) have a memorable and timeless quality to them. Many have become classics in their own right.

Take the song “Rubber Duckie,” Ernie’s classic ode to bath time toys.  Written by Jeff Moss, the song debuted on February 25, 1970 during Sesame Street’s first season. In the skit, Ernie, performed by Jim Henson, soaks in a bath and sings the song to his very favorite little pal. When the Workshop began releasing musical content from the show on records in the summer of 1970, “Rubber Duckie” was included on the very first album. The song went on to sell more than 1 million copies as a single and reached number 11 on the Billboard chart in 1971. It was nominated for The Best Recording for Children Grammy in 1970, losing out to The Sesame Street Book and Record, which itself contained the song. Since then, the song has been included on 21 different albums released by the Workshop.

“Rubber Duckie” inspired follow-up songs like “Do De Rubber Duckie”, “D-U-C-K-I-E”, and “Put Down the Duckie.” During Season 25, Little Richard sat in a bathtub at the piano and performed a rock-and-roll version of the song. In a skit from 2000, Ernie convinced Bert to sing the song as practice in the even that Ernie wouldn’t be around to sing it to his friend. The song has been recorded in Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Spanish and Dutch. In 1996, a German version of “Rubber Duckie” sold 1.8 million copies. The English version on Sesame Street has almost 14 million views on YouTube.

Jeff Moss, composer and lyricist of "Rubber Duckie"

The words and music for “Rubber Duckie” exemplify Jeff Moss’s writing style – fun, energetic, sentimental, and entertaining. Moss was invited to join Sesame Streetas the original head writer, composer and lyricist in 1969 – a job he thought would last for six months. He ended up spending more than two decades as a writer and composer for the series and penned many of show’s best known songs including “Rubber Duckie,” “People In Your Neighborhood,” “I Love Trash” and “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon.” In an interview in 1998, Moss explained his approach to song writing. “I don’t look at writing for children is that different than writing for anybody else,” he said. “The emotions that you write about are for the most part the same as you would write about for anybody. You just do it with a vocabulary of experience that children will understand.” In 2007, Princeton University ranked Moss among its top 20 most influential alumni, citing the effects of his songs and characters on the Sesame Street audience.

Music and singing have always been an integral part of the material taught on Sesame Street. Some songs even had success far beyond the show’s reach. On any given night, in any city or town, in houses with young children, “Rubber Duckie” is still sung as part of the nightly bath time ritual. Hearing the song at any age reminds us of something Jeff Moss once said. “All of us have a great deal of child left in us.”

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Ernie and his best pal Bert are some of our oldest friends on Sesame Street. They’ve been living in the basement apartment of 123 Sesame Street since the show’s premiere in 1969.

Aside from providing us with some of the show’s funniest moments – who could forget the classic “banana” sketches – Ernie teaches us all a very important lesson: it’s possible for two people who don’t have much in common to be great friends. Ernie and Bert don’t have many similar interests: the excitable and mischievous Ernie enjoys playing tricks on Bert and taking baths with Rubber Duckie, while Bert, always the lovable curmudgeon, loves his pigeon Bernice and collecting paper clips and bottle caps. But despite those differences, they’re still best friends.

Given that Ernie’s been a part of the show for over 30 years, he’s been played by more than one performer. Originally Jim Henson did both the voice and puppeteering for Ernie. He last played Ernie in the 1989 episode, “Don’t Throw That Trash on the Ground.” Nowadays Ernie is performed by Steve Whitmire.

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That’s why we have partnered with Qualcomm to explore how augmented reality technology can encourage learning and emotional growth in young children. Our CEO Mel Ming, Innovation Lab team member David Glauber and Grover demonstrated the Vuforia^™ augmented reality platform at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 10th. By merely holding up a tablet to a traditional playset, children can interact with their favorite Sesame Street characters while developing socially, emotionally and cognitively.

Quite simply, when a child points a tablet or smart phone at these toys, the camera recognizes the objects and they come to life on screen. The camera on the tablet recognizes 3-D objects – in this instance specially designed versions of Bert and Ernie as well as a television, a bathtub, a racecar and other toys for Bert and Ernie to play with. (The characters are designed with special code-infused clothing so the camera can identify them. But developers at Sesame Street’s Innovation Lab are confident that, someday soon, the camera will be able to recognize any of the plush Sesame Street characters children own.) T-shirts, books and countless other items also have the potential to “come to life” when viewed through the app.

When Ernie is placed onto the playset, the camera recognizes the floor and triggers a response on screen, creating “walls” around him.  In the prototypical version of the technology presented at CES – the app is not yet available for purchase – Ernie says hello to the user and asks for another Sesame Street character to play with. But in future, more developed versions of the technology, Ernie and the other Sesame Street characters will have a wide range of reactions to any given scenario. This will allow for both a more guided form of pretend play, as well as child-directed experiences.

Both kinds of play – guided and child-directed – are important for fostering social confidence and a children’s ability to manage their own behavior and emotions. As children move toys in and out of the playset, they choose what kinds of social situations they would like to experiment with. Meanwhile, the app provides the structure necessary for them to learn more advanced forms of narrative construction, such as telling stories with a beginning, middle and end.

It was important to our Innovation Lab team that, in the words of team member Jason Milligan, the use of the augmented reality technology not be “gimmicky.” Milligan and the rest of the team wanted it to genuinely support and enhance the well-established ways children already play with their toys. So they reimagined the ways information can be input into a digital tool like a tablet.

For instance, when children play, they physically move their toys in and out of the playset. That’s why, instead of using a mouse or touch screen as an input device, the toys themselves are the input device. It’s also why all it takes to “activate” the toy’s digital rendering is to point the tablet at it. Directing the camera at the jukebox causes music to play; directing it at the TV turns it on, and causes whatever Sesame Street scene is playing to fill the tablet screen.

Because it comes in the form of an app, the technology is very malleable. As new characters are created and new storylines for them imagined, the software can be automatically updated like any other app. This is just the first generation of a new technology that has almost limitless possibilities.

The future is a fun place to play.

The Sesame Workshop Blog