Next week, Sesame Street unveils its latest character, “EBT Eddie.”

Update to this story.

Via NBC News:

Those friendly, fuzzy Muppets from “Sesame Street” have helped kids open up about all sorts of serious subjects, from hunger and divorce to military deployment.

But they’re now tackling a much more unexpected issue: incarceration.

Meet Alex, the first Muppet to have a dad in jail. One in 28 children in the United States now has a parent behind bars — more than the number of kids with a parent who is deployed — so it’s a real issue, but it’s talked about far less because of the stigma.

Alex is blue-haired and green-nosed and he wears a hoodie – you might think he’s just another carefree inhabitant of Sesame Street. But there’s sorrow in Alex’s voice when he talks about his father.

“I just miss him so much,” he tells a friend. “I usually don’t want people to know about my Dad.”

It’s easier for kids to hear such things from a Muppet than an adult, creators of the initiative noted.