Episode 2096

Since Mr. Snuffleupagus made his first appearance in the Season 3 premiere, the adults had thought that Mr. Snuffleupagus was just an imaginary friend of Big Bird's. Big Bird would often try to arrange for them to see Mr. Snuffleupagus, face-to-face, but Snuffy would always be gone by the time they finally chose to look at him. After years of not seeing him and many near-misses, the adults finally got to see Mr. Snuffleupagus for the first time in this episode, and finally find out that he is real.

In the documentary Sesame Street Unpaved, hosted by Sonia Manzano, Snuffy's performer, Martin P. Robinson, revealed that Snuffy was finally introduced to the main human cast mainly due to a string of high profile and sometimes graphic stories of pedophilia and sexual abuse of children on shows such as 60 Minutes and 20/20. The writers felt that by having the adults refuse to believe Big Bird despite the fact that he was telling the truth, they were scaring children into thinking that their parents would not believe them if they had been sexually abused and that they'd just be better off remaining silent. In addition, during Robinson's explanation, Loretta Long uttered the words "Bronx daycare," a reference to reports of sexual abuse at the PRACA Day Care Center in New York City's Bronx borough, as covered by area TV station WNBC.

In 1988, a book about the adults meeting Mr. Snuffleupagus, titled Meet Mr. Snuffleupagus, was released. However, in that book, they meet him when he takes a toaster to The Fix-It Shop to get it fixed. The sequence in which the cast meets Mr. Snuffleupagus was included in Sesame Street's All-Star 25th Birthday: Stars and Streets Forever, Sesame Street Unpaved, The Street We Live On, and Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days. A script for most of the street scenes was featured in Sesame Street Unpaved.