Sam the Robot

Sam the Robot (the Super Automated Machine) is a "perfect" machine, who appeared on Sesame Street from Season 4 through Season 7. As he explains, "I am a machine that would be anything you like. What kind of machine do you want? I can do anything. Machines are better than people. Machines can do anything. I can be an adding machine, subtracting machine, gumball machine, soda pop dispensing machine, jukebox..."

Sam first appeared in the Season 4 premiere, episode 0406, where he met Gordon and Susan. He informed them that he was on Mulberry Street, not Sesame Street, because his programming told him to go to Mulberry Street, and machines don't make mistakes.

Sam was always ready to assist his friends on the street with their problems, but he invariably bungled his attempts. Despite his assertion that "machines are perfect," Sam frequently got stuck repeating the same few words over and over, until another character temporarily fixed the glitch by whacking him.

Sam also appeared as "Sam the Sesame Street Robot" in Marvel Comics' Spidey Super Stories #31: Star Jaws, a Star Wars parody in which Sam teams up with Spider-Man and other characters to save Earth. As the only robot on the side of the "good guys," Sam's character is roughly a hybrid of the R2-D2 and C-3PO characters in Star Wars. The Star Jaws variant is smaller than the full-body Muppet character and is similar in size to R2D2. Unlike the original Sam the Robot, the Star Jaws Sam is not a predominantly comic character&#x2014;he is physically agile and participates effectively in fight scenes, using his two front legs to kick his adversaries and jump to safety.

According to a 2009 interview with Caroll Spinney, Spinney "invented" Sam the Robot and was his original puppeteer.

Sam left the show in the mid-70s, but a computer animated version&#x2014;Sam the Super Automated Ghost of Christmas Future&#x2014;appeared in the 2006 direct-to-video special A Sesame Street Christmas Carol. The futuristic Sam shares several of his predecessor's traits, including a bow tie, idiosyncratic eye movements, and a tendency to repeat the same few words.

Book appearances

 * The Sesame Street 1, 2, 3 Storybook (1973)
 * Oscar-the-Grouch's Alphabet of Trash (1977)
 * Big Bird's Busy Book (1975)
 * The Sesame Street Dictionary (1980)

Links

 * Sam the Robot's page on the Marvel Wiki