C is for Crap, I've Been Laid Off!

As you may have heard, Sesame Workshop was recently forced to let 20% of their workforce go. It seems that not even Hooper’s store is safe from this economic downturn. While we sit back and hope that Elmo’s coworkers can all get back to work real soon, let’s do what we do best: Make fun of a situation we have no control over.

It seems to me that Sesame Workshop’s woes would all be fixed if only they had a bit more dough, more clams, more bread, more kumquats. And they’ve got a workshop full of puppets just lying around on pegs and in drawers. It’s past time they all get off their furry bums and earn a buckaroo or two for Sesame! Here’s a few ideas I’ve had that can totally work, for realz.
It’s almost April, and if the Sesame Street Muppets are anything like me, they haven’t done their taxes yet. So let the Count do them. That vamp knows his way around a calculator, and he’s bound to get a whopper of a refund, mostly because he knows that cookies are tax deductible.
Ernie pulls the greatest scam ever, in which he releases Twiddlebugs into people’s homes, and then gets hired to exterminate for a nominal fee. Man, that idea is so good, I might do it myself.
Let Telly Monster enlist with medical research to test anxiety pills.
Start finding new sponsors for each episode. Maybe part of Sesame’s money problems lie with the funders: the letters and numbers. I’ll bet the umlaut or the ampersand has a marketing budget, and I’m sure they’d love the opportunity to be read aloud by Trash Gordon.
The Two-Headed Monster can get a job translating at the United Nations. Hey, if Nicole Kidman can do it…
Two words: Group baths. Then again, the money they’d save on the water bill would have to be spent on superhuge bathtubs.
Have Grover donate some of the money he’s made in his 97 different jobs. According to the Muppet Wiki, he’s been an actor, baker, bus driver, camp counselor, clerk, concession monster, chauffeur, conductor, construction worker, dancer, furniture deliveryman, doctor, daredevil, detective, dog walker, elevator operator, farmer, fast food worker, flight attendant… you know what? Just read the Wiki article. Grover lives with his mommy, so you know he’s living rent-free. And he doesn’t have to pay for clothes, so where’s all those paychecks he’s been saving?
Start selling real estate in Elmo’s World. The only downside is that Elmo would have to be your landlord, and I have a feeling he doesn’t know his way around a broken toilet.
Oscar doesn’t need money; he lives in a trash can.

Meanwhile, we at ToughPigs will keep on writing about Sesame Street in any capacity, helping to give the show more viewers and letting them know about the great merch that’s out there, which will hopefully keep money going to the Street we all love, and help to get some of those lost jobs back.

Wondering how else you can help? Donate to Sesame Workshop by clicking here!
Click here to give us your Muppety money-making ideas on the ToughPigs forum.

joe.toughpigs@gmail.com