If you lived through 1996, the “ha ha ha ha ha ha” of the Tickle Me Elmo will undoubtedly still haunt your (and your parents’) memories. The hottest toy of the year, and possibly the decade, came in the form of the Sesame Street plush bear who would laugh and move when you tickled him. Every young kid wanted one of these bright red muppets, and if your parents lost their minds enough to trample over other desperate moms and dads at the local Toys R Us, then maybe you even got one the year they came out. But how in the world did the Tickle Me Elmo become such a sensation in the first place? Read on.
Elmo was first introduced on Sesame Street in the ’80s and quickly became a favorite among young kids, but the Tickle Me Elmo didn’t actually start out in the form of the popular red muppet. Ron Dubren, one of the co-inventors of the toy, first came up with the “tickle me” concept when he saw some kids tickling each other, and it made him remember his own childhood times being tickled or tickling others — how there would always be a big build up to a final hysterical laughing moment. He wanted to create that feeling in toy form, and in the beginning went for a chimpanzee. He and Greg Hyman, a sound engineer, worked together to put together a working prototype of Tickles the Chimp.
Though the team was turned down by around twelve different companies, they finally found someone who believed in the concept at Tyco in 1994. Though they wanted to brand it with Elmo right away, Tyco didn’t have the rights to Sesame Street’s plush toys division. But, they did have the rights to Looney Tunes. So, for a while there, the concept was going to be a Tickle Me Taz, using the Tasmanian Devil. But, Tyco ended up dissolving their licensing agreement with Warner Brothers (the owners of Looney Tunes), and in the interim, had gotten the rights to make plush toys for Sesame Street. Elmo was back in business.
Originally, the Tickle Me Elmo was just meant to escalate with laughter — his trademark shaking wasn’t part of the initial concept. But when the marketing department said they would have a tough time creating television advertising for a sound-only item that didn’t do anything visually, the team decided to try to make him shake while laughing. And that was just the ticket. But, before he could be put out onto shelves in June 1996, the team did one more thing to really entice buyers as they walked by the toy in stores — they added a “Try Me” option, where buyers could see what the Tickle Me Elmo did before actually buying it. Try Me proved to be such a success, that almost all toys with a similar function since then have incorporated this marketing tactic.
But word of mouth alone back in the more analog mid-90s wasn’t going to be enough to really shoot the toy to the stratosphere — it also needed a television push. The TV push that ended up really giving a boost to Elmo was The Rosie O’Donnell Show. Rosie and her son loved the plush toy so much that she asked to get one for each of her audience members. Her endorsement in October 1996 put the Tickle Me Elmo on the map in a huge way. Soon enough, parents were scrambling to find their kids their own Elmo. Before Rosie’s segment aired, Tyco was forecasting about 100,000 Elmos would be sold, but within a week after airing on her show, the forecast was up to a million.
Because the company had only predicted that around 100,000 would be sold during the holiday season, there was a huge disparity between supply and demand, which caused some riots in stores that had last been seen during the Cabbage Patch craze in the ‘80s (click to read our article on that). Stores were still honoring their “rainchecks” for the Tickle Me Elmo up through June of 1997, a whole year after the plush toy had first debuted. By the second holiday season, Elmo was joined by a whole host of other Tickle Me toys featuring Sesame Street characters like Cookie Monster and Ernie. And indeed, over the years, there have been many different versions of the Tickle Me Elmo to hit the market. Still, nothing can quite compare to that initial 1996 craze where everyone was trying to get their hands on one of the tickle monsters… even if the incessant, repetitive, laughing eventually drove everyone crazy.
What about you? Did you have a Tickle Me Elmo? Let us know your favorite Tickle Me Elmo memories in the comments, but first check out these commercials to get truly nostalgic (and maybe even cringe a little at Elmo’s distinctive laughter):
For an even more in depth look at how Tickle Me Elmo came to be, check out the great oral history from Mental Floss.
- The original concept for the Tickle Me Elmo actually had the toy tickling the user rather than the other way around, but that concept was deemed too hard to achieve.
- John Gotti Jr. made headlines when he and some friends went to a Queens Toys R Us and bought a case of Tickle Me Elmo dolls (and some other toys) for $8,000.
- One stock clerk at a Walmart in Canada suffered a broken rib, pulled hamstring, and a concussion after a group of shoppers saw him holding a Tickle Me Elmo and mobbed him trying to get it. It’s reported that the last thing he saw was a white Adidas sneaker kicking him in the face before passing out.
- The toy sold at retail for $28.99, but scalpers would go on to sell the toy online and in newspapers for upwards of $1500 a pop.
- If you want to share your childhood love of the Tickle Me Elmo with the next generation, Playskool has got you covered with their rendition of the toy, available at Amazon and other major retailers.
- The original concept for the Tickle Me Elmo actually had the toy tickling the user rather than the other way around, but that concept was deemed too hard to achieve.
- John Gotti Jr. made headlines when he and some friends went to a Queens Toys R Us and bought a case of Tickle Me Elmo dolls (and some other toys) for $8,000.
- One stock clerk at a Walmart in Canada suffered a broken rib, pulled hamstring, and a concussion after a group of shoppers saw him holding a Tickle Me Elmo and mobbed him trying to get it. It’s reported that the last thing he saw was a white Adidas sneaker kicking him in the face before passing out.
- The toy sold at retail for $28.99, but scalpers would go on to sell the toy online and in newspapers for upwards of $1500 a pop.
- If you want to share your childhood love of the Tickle Me Elmo with the next generation, Playskool has got you covered with their rendition of the toy, available at Amazon and other major retailers.
