Brian Jay Jones, who's writing an authorized biography of Jim Henson, writes to give me a little more history on the clip I embedded earlier today of the formative years of Cookie Monster…
In 1966, Jim Henson was approached by General Foods about producing ads for a new snack called Wheels, Crowns and Shells. (They were shaped chips, and probably tasted something like corn chips or Bugles, I'm guessing.) Anyway, as part of Jim's "campaign concept," he drew up a series of characters related to each snack in the box — including a character who would do anything to steal the wheel-shaped snacks from the box. That became "The Wheel Stealer" — and the same puppet was used in the IBM films, the Munchos commercial, and the sketch you see here, then eventually morphed into Cookie Monster (when the snacks were released, by the way, they were changed to Wheels, Flutes and Crowns).
Incidentally, this bit was performed on Sullivan on October 8, 1967 — and in his "Red Book" (a sort of professional diary) Jim called the sketch "Monster Eats Machine." Which, I guess, is an obvious title, really.
Yeah, I do remember a period when The Muppets were appearing a lot on Mr. Sullivan's show and others like it, and I had a friend who was into puppets but not necessarily theirs. He said, "Every bit ends with someone eating everything or blowing up." This routine must have really annoyed him because it involved both. Thanks, Brian. Looking forward to the book.