"I got mail! Yay! I got mail!" -Special Ed
An original Special Ed puppet from Comedy Central's Crank Yankers, the adult puppet comedy which premiered in 2002 and ran across multiple revivals through 2022, also the very puppet used in the character's famous MTV awards appearance with Eminem.
Set in the twisted puppet town of Yankerville, Crank Yankers re-enacted real prank phone calls made by comedians and celebrities — Sarah Silverman, Tracy Morgan, Wanda Sykes, Eminem, and the creators themselves — with an ensemble of felt-and-foam characters acting out every word. Special Ed, created and voiced by comedian Jim Florentine and puppeteered by Ronald Binion, became one of the most popular characters in the show's history: an excitable, helmet-wearing kid whose relentless catchphrase "Yay!" and "I got mail!" drove his unsuspecting call victims to the breaking point. Eminem was such a fan that he flew Florentine to Detroit to record prank calls together, and in 2004 the rapper and the puppet shared one of the character's most famous moments: a bit on the MTV awards in which Ed pesters Eminem until the rapper snaps and tears into him while also injuring the puppeteer and damaging the puppet. This is that exact Special Ed puppet that appeared on the awards broadcast opposite one of the biggest music stars on the planet.
Retired when the series returned in 2019 and deemed too edgy for the revival, Special Ed is an artifact of an unrepeatable era of envelope-pushing 2000s comedy, and this puppet, with its nationally televised Eminem showdown stands as the definitive example.
