ABCD-East to west, going on an Alphaquest

February 15, 2020 2:56 PM

Doors up and down the halls / Wonder what's behind them all / Doors that lead to anywhere / Got to ABC what's there / Got to ABC decide / Where's the door I haven't tried / ABCD East to west / Going on an alpha quest! Alphaquest was a series of Sesame Street segments combining live action and animation, in which a girl goes through a hallway and into various rooms, each one representing a different letter of the alphabet.

The segments premiered in Season 21, in 1989.

Each segment consists of the same theme song: A very determined young girl is exploring a long series of hallways full of doors which are decorated by floating animated letters. On the last line of the song, she finds a door with one letter on it. She reads the letter and goes through the door, where she finds a a short adventure relating to that letter.

The theme song was written by Stephen Lawrence (music) and Mark Saltzman (lyrics).

The very determined girl was played by a child actress who didn't pursue acting into adulthood.

These are apparently all the segments that were made:

B

D

F

H

M

P

R

S

(This song has been in my head a lot lately so please enjoy)

posted by bleep (9 comments total)

Oh wow, I hadn’t thought once about this song in thirty years, and yet as soon as I saw the post I could hear it instantly
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:56 PM on February 15, 2020 [2 favorites]

The end of Alphaquest S is sampled in Aquarius by Boards of Canada.
posted by solarion at 4:09 PM on February 15, 2020 [4 favorites]

I LOVED THESE
posted by ChuraChura at 4:30 PM on February 15, 2020

When I was watching these I eventually remembered when I was little I would think about how she's being tested & she really has to remember which doors she's already tried, & the letters only appear the first time. When she gets it wrong she gets transported back to her own time. None of that backstory was available to me anymore til I remembered it.
posted by bleep at 5:55 PM on February 15, 2020 [6 favorites]

Oh god yes I read "doors up and down the hall" and that's all it took for the song to be stuck in my head for, I estimate, six to eight weeks
posted by potrzebie at 6:40 PM on February 15, 2020

I absolutely don't remember this
watches a segment
holy shit I absolutely remember this

I remember wondering what she was looking for. I guess she never found it
posted by Merus at 6:53 PM on February 15, 2020 [6 favorites]

These were after my Sesame Street years.


I don’t think I’m ready to be old on metafilter yet.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:54 AM on February 16, 2020

It's ok snuffy we know you're real!
posted by bleep at 7:45 AM on February 16, 2020 [3 favorites]

This gave me nightmares as a kid
posted by OverlappingElvis at 10:26 AM on February 16, 2020 [1 favorite]