Grover is a Muppet character on the popular television show Sesame Street. Self-described as lovable and furry, he is a monster who almost never uses contractions when speaking or singing.
Grover was first seen on The Ed Sullivan Show in a Christmas Eve appearance in 1967. He appeared as Gleep, a monster in Santa's workshop. He later made a cameo appearance in The Muppets On Puppets in 1968 with the Rock and Roll Monster. In 1969, clad in a necktie, he appeared in the Sesame Street Pitch Reel in the board room sequences. During the first season of Sesame Street, Grover was originally named Fuzzyface and depicted as having dark green fur and an orange nose. By the second season of Sesame Street, he had acquired his present name and his appearance was changed to the more familiar puppet with blue fur and a pink nose (although the original puppet was subsequently used for the initial appearance of Grover's mother). Grover's birthday is October 14.
Another of the more frequent skit segments featuring Grover involves him taking a series of customer service jobs. One of his customers is always Mr. Johnson, a balding, mustachioed customer who invariably becomes frustrated at Grover's poor service and/or his (Grover's) insistence that he is serving him properly.
The first Grover-Mr. Johnson series of skits, set at "Charlie's Restaurant," aired in the early 1970s; here, Grover is employed as a waiter and Mr. Johnson is his customer. The skits followed the same basic premise: Mr. Johnson would order a menu item, Grover would serve the customer, a disagreement results (usually) as a result of Grover's mistakes, and Grover attempting (often, more than once) to correct the mistake with varying degrees of success. Under this backdrop, the skits served to teach the childhood audience basic concepts such as same and different, big and little, hot and cold, the alphabet, following directions and patience, among other things.
Repeats of the "Charlie's Restaurant" series of skits aired for many years on Sesame Street. In the years since, new Grover-Mr. Johnson skits have been produced, with Grover taking other customer service jobs and Mr. Johnson as his hapless customer. Every time, Mr. Johnson recognizes Grover as "that waiter from Charlie's." Grover's jobs have ranged from that of a taxi driver and a photographer to a flight attendant and singing telegram artist. One skit parodied the ABC television series Home Edition in a segment where Grover began remodeling Mr. Johnson's home against his express wishes.
Other segments
Grover also has an instructional persona who wears a cap and gown to provide educational context for simple, everyday things. His lessons are often wrong, leaving himself open to correction by a group of kids or Muppets. This, combined with the failings of the Super Grover character, means that Grover is very self-conscious and timid. He is often a source of slapstick humor and often accidentally injures himself.
Early in the series, Grover would often greet Kermit the Frog by running up to him and yelling, "Hey, froggy babeee!" and then giving him a hard slap on the back, which knocked him over.
Global Grover is a more recent series of segments in which Grover hosts a trip to a foreign country to learn about their culture and customs.
Grover is the favorite character and subsequently the nickname of Amy Abbott (Emily VanCamp) in the TV series Everwood.
Grover has a semi-secret superhero identity as the well-meaning but inept SuperGrover. Originally he wore a pink cape and medeval knight's helmet, with a Superman-esque crest on both the cape and his T-shirt, bearing a letter "G" instead of "S". During the 70's and 80's, Sesame Street ran a series of SuperGrover skits parodying old Superman series. The announcer introduced each episode with the lines:"Presenting the further adventures of everybody's favorite hero. A man who is faster than lightning, stronger than steel, smarter than a speeding bullet. It's... SUPERGROVER!"With that, a fanfare sounds, SuperGrover bursts through a paper wall bearing his crest, fruitlessly tries to move his helmet up off his eyes, and adds, "And I am cute, too!"
Announcer:And now, on to our story.
SuperGrover: Yes, on to our story!
SuperGrover is first flying somewhere over Metro City to find a (muppet) child in trouble. Common to many wannabe superheroes, Grover can fly, but he can't land without crashing. Grover is usually no help, and whatever he's doing as a feat of strength or speed only kills time while the child solves the problem on their own, so Grover often winds up in comical trouble himself.
SuperGrover has also made appearances in the Sesame Street special Don't Eat the Pictures and the full-length 1985 film Follow That Bird.
For Sesame Street's 41st season in 2010, the character was revamped as SuperGrover 2.0, who debuted on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, naturally crash-landing behind the chair where he was meant to sit. His new costume consists of a helmet reminiscent of a Spartan or Centurion, a red cape and a black rubber vest resembling bike racing gear. Both the cape and the vest are adorned with his crest, now with a lightning bolt added behind the "G". Of course, the helmet has a hinged visor which still tends to fall over Grover's eyes.
In November of 2003, SuperGrover received the honor of Macy's creating a balloon in his likeness for their annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. Wearing his original costume, he became the fourth Muppet to have this honor, after Kermit The Frog, Big Bird, and Elmo.
"Grover's Mommy" plays an integral but often unrecognized role on Sesame Street. She has been seen almost exclusively in print, including the many illustrated books starring Grover. She was also occasionally seen in photographs, as a photo puppet, such as on the cover of Volume 4 of The Sesame Street Treasury. Over the course of time, her appearance has fluctuated greatly.
Her earliest known appearance as a Muppet is a 1970s sketch in which Grover speaks to the audience about being afraid of the dark. At the end of the sketch, his mom (Frank Oz) enters his room to kiss him goodnight. Another early appearance (circa 1981) involves his mother (Kathy Mullen) coming into the bathroom while Grover is telling the audience about how to take a bath.
She has recently appeared (performed by Stephanie D'Abruzzo) in a brief Elmo's World sequence (from the "Families" episode), with her son as his alter-ego Super Grover, as her own alter-ego, "Super-Mommy". Grover crashlands, screaming "Moooommy!" and his mom follows yelling "Soooonny!" crashing on top of him. They recover, acknowledge each other, and both faint.
In A Celebration of Me, Grover (performed by Eric Jacobson), Mrs. Monster attends a benefit dinner in her son's honour.
In her first appearance in puppet form, she was gray-green in color. In later appearances, she was blue.
In the 1971 children's book The Monster at the End of This Book, Grover goes to great effort to keep the reader from turning the pages of the book, because there is a monster on the final page. Despite Grover nailing pages together and building a brick wall to block access, eventually the reader does reach the end, where it is discovered that the monster at the end of the book... is Grover himself. The late 90's saw a new edition of the book where Grover desperately tries to stop Elmo from reaching the end of the book, eventually directing him to leave the book and enter from the back. Therefore, when both of them reach the end, they wind up scaring each other.
In 1974, Grover went on a learning expedition in Grover and The Everything In The Whole Wide World Museum. He tours rooms such as "The Long Thin Things You Can Write With Room", as well as "The Things That Make So Much Noise You Can't Think Room". Grover wanders through "The Things That are Light Room", returns a rock to "The Things That are Heavy Room", and just when he wonders whether it is possible to have a museum that holds everything in the whole wide world, he comes upon a door labeled "Everything Else", which opens to take him out into the world. As of 1996, Publishers Weekly ranked the book at seventy-nine on their list of best-selling children's paperbacks, and Lou Harry of Indianapolis Business Journal included the book on his list of twelve examples of how muppets have qualified as quality entertainment. It was written by Norman Stiles and Daniel Wilcox, and illustrated by Joe Mathieu.
