That's the way the cookie crumbles

Samuel Feldman had damaged thousands of dollars worth of biscuits and bread

Sesame Street has the Cookie Monster. Philadelphia has the Cookie Crumbler.

And on Monday, the Cookie Crumbler was sentenced to 180 days' probation and a $1,000 fine for severely damaging bread and biscuits over two years of shopping in suburban Philadelphia.

I do touch too much bread, more than the next person

"Cookie Crumbler" Samuel Feldman

"You engaged in behaviour that was not just odd, it was criminal", County Court Judge David Heckler told Samuel Feldman, 38, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Mr Feldman had been convicted in September of two counts of criminal mischief for handling bakery products to the point where they were irreparably damaged.

His lawyer's defence was that Mr Feldman was "just a picky shopper."

Store surveillance videos showed Mr Feldman poking, prodding, squeezing and running his hands over dozens of loaves of bread and boxes of cookies.

'Vandalism'

Judge Heckler described Mr Feldman's destruction of bakery products as vandalism, saying that damaging bread and cookies was no better than wrecking "the neighbours' car or their house".

At his sentencing, Mr Feldman admitted "I do touch too much bread, yes, more than the next person," the Philadelphia newspaper reported.

But two court-ordered psychiatric examinations of Mr Feldman showed no diagnosable mental illness, his lawyer said.

Mr Feldman, labelled the Cookie Crumbler by the local press, had been accused of damaging

• 175 bags of bagels
• 227 bags of potato dinner rolls
• over 3,000 bags of sliced bread

between 1997 and 1999.

A baked-goods distributor said that more than $7,000 worth of breads had been damaged.

But Mr Feldman was convicted only of criminal mischief, which carries a maximum fine of $500 - Mr Feldman was fined $500 each for bread and for cookie damages - and a six-month prison sentence.

The judge gave Mr Feldman two consecutive 90-day periods of probation rather than sending him to prison.

At his sentencing, Mr Feldman admitted that he had a problem. He said that in the future "any time I go shopping, my wife will supervise and will be with me".