Original term, pre-Sesame-Street, for
what is now universally called a cookie monster. A
correspondent observes "In those days, hackers were actually
getting their yucks from...sit down now...Andy Williams.
Yes, that Andy Williams. Seems he had a rather hip (by the
standards of the day) TV variety show. One of the best parts of the
show was the recurring `cookie bear' sketch. In these sketches, a
guy in a bear suit tried all sorts of tricks to get a cookie out of
Williams. The sketches would always end with Williams shrieking
(and I don't mean figuratively), `No cookies! Not now, not
ever...NEVER!!!' And the bear would fall down. Great stuff."
cookie monster: [from the children's TV program "Sesame
Street"] n. Any of a family of early (1970s) hacks reported on
{{TOPS-10}}, {{ITS}}, {{Multics}}, and elsewhere that would lock
up either the victim's terminal (on a time-sharing machine) or the
{{console}} (on a batch {mainframe}), repeatedly demanding "I
WANT A COOKIE"....