Cracks

Episode 0818 of Sesame Street, which aired on December 31, 1975, included an animated musical insert that told the story of a young girl who has an adventure with the cracks in her wall, including a crack camel, hen, and monkey. They soon encounter the "Crack Master," an angry creature that tries to scare them but ultimately ends up destroying the plaster around it from being too mean. The camel returns the girl to her room and she decides to play with the cracks another day.

On September 20, 2008, the blog Tail O' the Rat posted about "The Crack Monster!" The post was an illustrated recollection of the insert by cartoonist Jennifer Bourne. Bourne had been attempting to find the short online for some time and had even made posts on some Muppet-themed message boards and Snopes, but could only find other Internet users who similarly recalled the short but were unable to find it. Soon a small conglomeration of people attempting to find the short formed, although they found little success.

Eventually, voiceover actor Jon Armond, who had also been searching for the short for several decades and had even contacted Childrens' Television Workshop itself, received a fax from an untraceable number offering to send him a copy of the short on the condition that he not share it with anyone, nor could he release it to the public. Armond agreed, and shortly after received an envelope containing a DVD with the short. Although he showed the recording to Bourne and some fans and even screened it at a public event, he kept his contractual obligation. Nonetheless, Armond made a 2009 audio documentary describing the short in detail with a recreated soundtrack.

Daniel Wilson, the founder of the Lost Media Wiki (a website dedicated to finding lost material), continued his search for the short for several years afterward so it could be released to the public. He had little success until in December 2013 when an anonymous email sent him a message that simply included the "Cracks" short. Wilson subsequently posted the video on YouTube.

Although the short had been found, there was still one mystery left unanswered: who produced the short and why had it remained so elusive? In 2019, Studio 360 producer Sam Kim began an investigation into the creation of the short. He spoke directly with executive producer Benjamin Lehmann, who showed him the insert was in fact in the digital archive. Lehmann could not give an official explanation as to why the short was phased out, but offered that either it was phased out because the United States crack epidemic occurred only a few years later which made the insert's text seem inappropriate, or the insert was seen as insensitive during the New York housing crisis in the 1970s. Lehmann found that the insert was produced by a studio called "P Imagination," but could not find any information about it. The only lead Kim could find was a studio called "Imagination, Inc.," run by Sesame Street animator Jeff Hale. Unfortunately, Kim could not follow up on this: Imagination, Inc. closed in 1979 and Hale passed in 2015.

Undeterred, Kim decided to find anyone else who could have contributed to the short. After some investigation, Joe Hennes gave Kim some further credits for the music: saxophonist Mel Martin," radio producer Peter Scott, and vocalist Dorothy Moskowitz, the former lead singer of the United States of America. Kim was able to contact Moskowitz, who was stunned by the short's infamy. She was able to provide information on the recording of the short, which she dubbed "the most goddamn strange recording session I ever attended": Moskowitz performed the vocals by improvising music where she felt it was appropriate in the text, and Martin added music to her narration. Moskowitz could not tell Kim who animated the short, but remembered a woman whose name she could not recall (besides being "vaguely hippy-ish") whom she suspected was either the animator or someone from the animation studio.