Best Character on Sesame Street: Cookie Monster

Rare is the child-current or former-who cannot look back and recall a favorite "Sesame Street" character. The television mainstay has been around so long that parents who watched it as kids are now able to watch it with their own children. Over that time, characters have come and gone, characterizations have evolved and the cast has changed, but the lovable Cookie Monster has been a constant-in presence and personality-since the beginning, and is still the highlight of the show.

There isn't much to the guy-just a grunt and a desire for cookies-and that's why he's so unforgettable. You can grasp Cookie Monster's key point in maybe one or two sketches, particularly if his character's goal stands in direct contrast to what a more level-headed type, perhaps the straight-arrow Kermit, is trying to get done. It is perhaps easiest to note Cookie Monster's popularity and the importance of staying faithful to his core traits by charting public reaction when attempts are made to shake things up. Facing pressure to encourage healthy diets, the show's producers have forced Cookie Monster to remind children that "cookies are a sometimes food"; rumors even flew of getting rid of his cookie obsession altogether, prompting a hilarious sketch where Matt Lauer showed up on the Street to ask Cookie Monster if he was really giving up cookies. (Showing remarkable prudence, Cookie Monster asserted: "You media types blow things way out of proportion," then proceeded to eat a bowl of fruit, a cookie and Lauer's microphone.) In increasingly politically correct times where special interest groups hold power and the media is increasingly called on the carpet to make up for poor parenting, it is refreshing to know that people can and will howl whenever Cookie Monster is targeted for 21^st-century updating. The people have spoken, and C is for Cookie.