I wouldn't immediately dismiss the claim that the Elmo stuff has more explicit social-emotional teaching, as in "here's the thing we're teaching in this skit an

I wouldn't immediately dismiss the claim that the Elmo stuff has more explicit social-emotional teaching, as in "here's the thing we're teaching in this skit and exactly what we want you to learn!", while Big Bird's was more implicit and role-model driven (though I don't want to claim it was always subtle and didn't ever just come out and state what it was trying to get across, of course—there was plenty of that). I haven't sampled enough Elmo-street lately to know whether that's true, but it could be.