The Ringmaster

The Ringmaster was a character seen in a series of eleven animated sketches on Sesame Street, animated by Jeff Hale. He was a character very much like the ringmasters seen in most circuses. The sketches he appeared in taught children how to count numbers of various animals.

Each sketch began (and ended) with a number of red dots appearing on-screen, which then turned into whichever numeral was to be featured in the sketch. Then the numeral became part of a 3-by-4 grid of squares and flickered as it appeared.

In the Ringmaster sketches, the top-hatted character boldly announced however many animals would be performing whatever tricks. With a whip, he made the animals rearrange themselves in many patterns, despite the fact that their number remained unchanged. This happened in every segment, except #2 where he used a saxophone instead.

The series made its debut in Season 10 and lasted until Episode 3959 of Season 32, where he demonstrated the number 9.

The music for the segments was composed by Phil Kimmelman, and the ringmaster was voiced by Rick Cimino.^[1]