Jim Henson created the Sesame Street muppets for Children's Television Workshop in the mid-sixties. Sesame Street premiered in 1969. Sesame Street has been honored with more than 50 Emmy Awards.Sesame Street has been on the air for over thirty years. Some of the characters have changed, but its missions to teach the alphabet, how to count, how to observe, and how to be a friend still remain the same. All our favourite characters are still there - Big Bird, Ernie, Bert, Grover, Oscar the Grouch, and Elmo! The series was designed to help preschoolers build the skills needed to provide a smooth transition from home to school. The show focused on learning the alphabet, numbers and social skills. The strategy was to combine education with entertainment. Sesame Street premiered in Germany in 1972. Samson, the very big teddy bear came to the Sesame Street in 1978. Differences in the development of American and German episodes of Sesame Street: In the beginning Americans emphasized cognitive objectives in their catalogue of objectives. In Germany social behaviour, creativity and self-confidence were emphasized due to differences in the population. Some German educators believed that small children couldn't identify with some of the American "street scenes", that included puppets, actors and different locations in America. These scenes were cut out but now the children were complaining. They liked that real actors were interacting with puppets.   The German Sesame Street decided to introduce German actors and locations as well as new puppets. One example is the big brown bear (Samson) that replaces the big yellow bird (picture). Because of him many children started to call the show Samson-Strasse (Samson Street). Today there are still many American scenes in the German episodes. In the future they want to include less studio scenes but concentrate on real life situations. Also there will be more actors and puppets in new situations that fit to today's changing society.