About

Pinball Number Count is a series of musical animated shorts that aired on episodes of Sesame Street using a song composed by Matt Kraemer and performed by The Pointer Sisters. The animations were later recreated by fans of the shorts. Remixes of the original song were also made by fans.

Origin

The shorts aired on Sesame Street from 1977 to 2002.^[1] In the shorts (shown below), The Pointer Sisters would sing about a number from two to twelve (shown below). A short for the number one was never produced.^[2] The first short aired on Sesame Street's 0978'th episode on February 9th, 1977, and was for the number three.^[3]

The shorts were also referenced on Family Guy in the episode "The Father, The Son, and The Holy Fonz", which first aired on December 18th, 2005.^[4] In the episode, a cutaway gag is shown in which Stewie Griffin is used as the ball for Pinball Number Count #12 (shown below).

Spread

The earliest known usage of the shorts online was by gordyboy^[5] in August 2003, who used clips from the shorts along with a remix of the song by Braces Tower. The video was later reposted to YouTube by contron^[6] on August 28th, 2005, (shown below) where it received over 115,000 views in over nineteen years.

On August 20th, 2007, YouTube user foureyestv^[7] used the song and a reanimation of Pinball Number Count #4 to promote their YouTube channel. The video (shown below) received over 233,000 views in over seventeen years.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References