A brief history of Tickle Me Elmo

A look back at Tickle Me Elmo

Tickle Me Elmo drove kids crazy and their parents crazier. From store mobs to scalpers, here’s how WNYW covered the fad back on December 18 and 24 of 1996.

The hottest toy of 1996 was, without question, Tickle Me Elmo.

Who could resist the motorized, stuffed version of everyone’s favorite Sesame Street character? Squeeze his cute belly and you’ll get a joyful laugh, a vibrating Elmo and an "oh boy, that tickles!"

One of TIME’s top 100 toys of all time, Tickle Me Elmo had parents fighting in aisles, classified ads selling them for $1,000-plus, and a stolen Elmo that had the attention of then-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Here’s a brief history of Tickle Me Elmo.

The evolution of Tickle Me Elmo

FILE - Large Elmos sit on a store counter while a cashier rings up a Tickle Me Elmo doll in Los Angeles (Photo by Ken Lubas/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

According to The Houston Chronicle, toy inventor Ron Dubren was inspired by two children he saw in a park who were tickling each other "into hysterics." He wanted to mimic that joy in a stuffed animal, thus Tickles the Chimp was born.

Tickles the Chimp, it turns out, wasn’t very interesting, so toy developers considered shifting to a Tickle Me Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil. They landed on a less aggressive Tickle Me Elmo to add to Tyco’s line of Sesame Street toys.

In October 1996, the toymaker sent 200 Tickle Me Elmo dolls to Rosie O’Donnell’s hit talk show. There, a star was born.

Tickle Me Elmo madness

FILE - Tyco's Tickle Me Elmo (Photo by James Keyser/Getty Images)

Expand

Tickle Me Elmo dolls retailed for less than $30, but it didn’t take long for newspaper classifieds to be filled with ads selling the doll for $1,000 – or more.

According to a Tickle Me Elmo oral history from Mental Floss, a Walmart worker in New Brunswick, Canada, ended up in the ER with a broken rib, a pulled hamstring and a concussion after he was spotted in the store holding a Tickle Me Elmo. The mob that went after him for the toy was so brutal, someone even tore the crotch from his jeans.

"The last thing he saw was a white Adidas sneaker kicking him in the face before he lost consciousness," Mental Floss notes in its oral history.

Elmo was so popular, not even the NYPD could keep one safe. Police had seized a Tickle Me Elmo from an unlicensed street vendor and had it locked in a police storage area. When it went missing, internal affairs launched a full-scale investigation – even then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani had something to say about it.

In July 1996, when Elmo was introduced, Tyco had expected to sell 400,000 for the year, according to The New York Times. They sold more than 1 million by the end of December and 5 million by the end of Christmas 1997.

How ‘Try Me’ feature fueled Tickle Me Elmo’s success

Dubren and the team developing Tickle Me Elmo knew that the popular "Try Me" feature would be key to Elmo’s success.

"Try Me showed off everything about the toy. It laughs, it escalates, it starts to shake, and you get it right away," Dubren said.

When shoppers went wild for Cabbage Patch Kids

Cabbage Patch Dolls became the toy to have in 1983, prompting long lines and even some near-riots at stores across the United States. Here's how local news covered the craziness from coast to coast.