Off the top of my head…I don’t recall any other puppets from the Henson family tree (Sesame Street, The Muppets, etc) that had romantic relations with the exception of Kermit and Miss Piggy.
Even Farscape’s puppet characters didn’ really have romantic relationships. Rygel was always more interested in food.
So you’re saying they most definitely did the Monster Mash?
Damn it. I’m still trying to get Mario Kart out of my head.
Brother, that’s kinky.
Obligatory.
Right. Next they’re going to force Dipsy back in the closet.
Jokes aside (and that did give me a chuckle), yes. The same way the parents of any child in a TV show did. That doesn’t make their on-screen relationship “adult” or otherwise inappropriate for children, though. Even if Bert and Ernie really are “just friends” in a strictly platonic way, why can’t a muppet be gay? Given that there are several examples of parental relationships among monsters/muppets in Sesame Street, it seems misleading to suggest that there’s no such thing as muppets having sexual attraction or orientation. And even if they all reproduce asexually or simply manifest into existence through unspecified magic, why are all of their adopted familial relationships explicitly heterosexually-coded?
For the record, I’ve never thought of the muppets on Sesame Street any differently than the human characters (I kind of thought that was part of the point), and the show doesn’t seem to do anything in particular to push the “muppets are asexual, aromantic blocks of foam” narrative that CTW has decided to go with here – on the contrary, there are multiple (straight) muppet families on the show, and The Count has a lady-friend that the fan wiki refers to as a girlfriend (it also uses the term “romantic tryst” to describe his relationship with Lady Two, which suggests that someone at CTW is doing a bad job of writing to this supposed “no romance” rule if those are the sorts of implications being drawn).
So they’re not gay, but they ARE asexual? By some usages/understandings of the term, that would still be queer representation, I guess.
And, most frequently, they don’t even have a lower half of their body. #GestaltCompletion
Rather than puppet/human I’ve always seen the contrast as adult/children. I can’t believe I’m the only person who sees Bert and Ernie primarily as children. When I was a kid watching the show, they were the ones we could identify with, not the human adults. FFS, they take baths with a rubber duckie. Which always leads me to a smh when this topic comes up because while kids certainly can enjoy gender crossing behavior, I question whether a 4 or 5 or 6 year old could truly be considered gay or straight.
Shouldn’t this discussion be about inter-species relationships?
ugh, totally missing the point…
how hard would it be to say that Ernie and Bert deeply LOVE one another? Maybe they are asexual and aromantic and literally inhuman monsters, but how else do you explain their long term domestic partnership except to say they are filled with enduring, gratifying, beautiful love.
The sleeping arrangement in their apartment supports that theory.
I think Elmo is the only prominent muppet from the show that I ever immediately associated with being a kid. Maybe Big Bird too, but even he always struck me as more of a naive/innocent adult. Maybe it’s because he’s like 8 feet tall. Bert just doesn’t look like a kid to me (he actually kind of reminded me of my dad, growing up), and Ernie’s voice is not what I’d call kid-like.
I also don’t know many kids who live by themselves in their own apartment… (also maybe I’m misremembering, but didn’t Bert have a job?)
I think kids are more in tune with themselves than you give them credit for, though they may not have the words for it. That said, even if they don’t develop that understanding until later, I still think it’s better for them to have examples they can reflect on and identify with, rather than feeling adrift in an endless ocean of heteronormativity.
Yeah but at least those two overcame their inhibitions eventually…
Or standards changed on TV! Whichever! 
It can be difficult when a couple has asymmetrical sex drives.
