TMX - The Only Toy You Don't Want for Christmas
Welcome to the Tilsner Report. Each week Julie will bring you reports from the extreme trenches of Motherhood, with a hint of humour and a slice of snark. Enjoy!
Five things I will do before I buy my children a Tickle Me Elmo Extreme doll for Christmas.
1) Sell them to Satanists
2) Volunteer them for active army duty. In Liberia.
3) Home-school them via a wall-sized plasma-screen TV stuck on the Fox channel 24/7.
4) Donate them to the Raliens.
5) Sign them up for private Catechism lessons with Father O'Reilly.
I don't care that Tickle Me Elmo Extreme (heretofore known as TMX,) is the "It" toy of the season. I don't care that I won't be able to find the product for any price in any brick and mortar store. I don't care how many Entertainment Tonight segments are done on the whimsical magic that is TMX. My kids could fall to the ground and weep, clutching my pant leg and begging me to buy them just this one gift and then they'd never again ask me for anything and still I would remain unmoved. Nope. I ain't playing the game.
Because they just went a teeny bit overboard on the hype with this one. And it backfired on this mom. Fortunately for me, my kids are aging out of the mechanical stuffed animal concept.
Still, there are now only two months left before Christmas, and I'm going to have to endure "news" reports about the riots and fistfights that break out in Wal-Marts and Toys 'R' Us outlets all over the country over this object for the next 50-plus days. And that's put me in a grumpy mood.
My objection isn't the toy at all. My kids, at 3-years-old, would have gotten a kick out of it. They loved Elmo (who, btw, is himself 3-years-old, according to backstory reports), and they also loved those singing, dancing novelty toys you find in drug stores – you know the ones – the pigs in hula skirts swaying to "Tiny Bubbles," or the Dog in cool glasses gyrating to Elvis. I always wondered who bought such kitsch. And then I had toddlers and learned the secret.
The TMX (note the hard, techy name. A nod to Arnold and the Terminator movies, perhaps? ) is nothing if not annoyingly appealing to the three-year-old set. First, he's Elmo, which they all know and love from Sesame Street. Secondly, he moves and laughs when you touch him. Thirdly, he apparently falls down then gets back up on his own. Lots of pre-schoolers will find all of this really neat. Especially the laughing part. Because Elmo will laugh and laugh and laugh until Mommy and Daddy take an ax and chop poor Elmo into fluffy little reddish bits.
Fortunately for Elmo, my particular children are onto quieter, less annoying toys.
It's the calculated, patronizing way it's being marketed to people that I take great umbrage at. It's a toy, damnit. Not a cure for Cancer. Do they think we're that stupid?
Apparently yes. And apparently, given the frenzy caused by the original Tickle Me Elmo Doll, we've proven them right.
The madness started 10 years ago, when the original Tickle Me Elmo made its debut. I didn't have any kids at that point hence I didn't pay much attention to toys. But the Tickle Me Elmo hysteria reached through to me even then. According to a story in USA Today at the time, the doll was one of the last huge hits of the toy industry. A real blockbuster event - and years before eBay even existed! There were news reports of hoarding and gouging and all sorts of sorted behavior over this furry read doll. But sales did soar. Mattel hoped this new version, the "extreme," would be akin to the Second Coming.
In any case, the first whiff of TMX came in Feburary, at the American International Toy Fair, when trade reporters and buyers were expecting to see the actual doll and got instead ... a prototype of the box. The company wouldn't even release a photo of the doll.
"The toy is so magical that we want to keep a little suspense around it," Neil Friedman, president of Mattel Brands, which include Fisher-Price, the maker of Elmo, told the media.
Oy Gevalt.
And the media lapped it all up. It got coverage all over the place. What is this new "secret" Elmo all about? How wonderful could it be? The industry was said to be all a-flutter with excitement for the secret new Elmo's unveiling in September, 2006. The new doll, which as far as I can tell laughs with a bit more gusto than the original, was debuted to huge fanfare and a corresponding statement by the company that they hadn't anticipated the strong response and hadn't made enough of the dolls to meet demand. Whoops. Instant shortage. More furious demand. TMX dolls began popping up on eBay for double, sometimes triple the $40 retail price. Meanwhile, the media reports that you can't find TMX anywhere, but it remains the "must-have" toy for the 2006 Christmas season. That's where the fistfights in Florida come in.
Now. Does Mattel really think this is all about ten million little kids all wanting a Tickle Me Elmo Extreme doll? Or is it more about the collector/speculators hoping to make a fast profit off the parental urge to make our children happy (or at least quiet)?
Why would any self-respecting parent fall for this?
Please, before you go stand in the pre-dawn line at Wal-Mart hoping for you chance to get little Suzy her own rare TMX doll, realize that you've been had. The marketers have very callously played on your desire to get your child that one rare object that nobody else can get. Please don't fall for it. Get her something else. Make her something. Better yet, make this lesson number one teaching her how to view the consumer culture she's growing up in through a gimlet eye.
I mean, if just a handful of parents who were otherwise planning on robbing someone else of their TMX dolls in the mall parking lot reconsiders because of my post, then I will be able to sleep better between now and Christmas.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Eden 11-01-2006 @ 10:46AM
I hope all the "entreprenuers" who have cleaned the shelves in my area are still sitting on their investments come Christmas Day.
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Beck's Mommy 11-01-2006 @ 10:48AM
Hear! Hear!
I am not against TMX personally, but I am against the hype. I refuse to buy anything that is the "Toy of the Season". If someone else buys it for him, thats fine, but I am not asking for it or going out of my to get it. I am not that easily manipulated.
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Special Red 11-01-2006 @ 10:57AM
Amen to that. I refuse to buy anything that is forced down my throat. Hence no cell phone, no Ipod, etc.
Secondly, my daughter is 2. She's just as happy with a laundry basket or a wooden spoon as she is with toys that will inevitably drive me insane. As she gets older I'm going to teach her to stay away from products that are marketed like TMX... why? Because they're usually very simple, crudely made toys with a basic concept that are then portrayed as "Will amuse your child for years! Will teach them quantum physics and then ensure their full scholarship to Harvard! Will land them a million dollar contract with the government building more TMX's!"..... We're not that stupid in this household.
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kate 11-01-2006 @ 11:01AM
Two thumbs up from me! My 2 1/2 year old does not watch tv & but has recieved a few (non-noisy) Elmo gifts in the past. We have told all the grandparents in no uncertain terms that a gift of TMX will be immediately exchanged!
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Kimberly 11-01-2006 @ 11:51AM
The minute I saw the entire shelf of these, all safe and secure in their boxes, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be buying it. The mere gimmick of "ooooh, secret. Can't tell you what it is; you have to buy it sight unseen" really pisses me off. Um....no. I'm not buying something when I don't know what it is.
Then I saw the YouTube of exactly what it is. And not even if it was the only toy left in the world and promised to cure cancer to boot would I buy that abomination.
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Jessica 11-01-2006 @ 11:51AM
I didn't see all the media hype so who knows what I was watching at the time. My daughter watches Noggin or nothing and they don't have commmercials, so I apparently missed it. So I can't comment on that issue except to say that my mother frantically called me from wal mart to ask me if she had it yet b/c there were only three left on the shelf. Huh, what the heck is TMX, I replied.
My mom did buy TMX for my 1yr old and she absolutely loves it. I am not at all unhappy with the toy as she loves to interact with "elbo" (her fifth word) and make him "tcktcktck" as she so eloquently says.
it tickles my daughter pink and so I love it!
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Tony Triana 11-01-2006 @ 12:29PM
Yeccch to hype! Tilsner, you've nailed it again!
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Alice 11-01-2006 @ 1:30PM
Amen sister!
Anyone remember the crazy Cabbage Patch Kid insanity when we were younger? My mom refused to participate in the comsumerism of it, and I am a better person for it.
Take that $40 and put it in your kids college fund. You will get a much better return for your money, and your kid will never know the difference!
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ann adams 11-01-2006 @ 2:43PM
I hear you. I've boycotted some perfectly acceptable brands of food simply because I was offended by the commercials.
I was thinking about the Cabbage Patch dolls as I was reading through the comments. By the next year or so they were selling for a quarter at garage sales and then I bought them.
The girls have outgrown Elmo in all his manifestations but for a while their maternal grandmother would send three of each every Christmas. Tickle Me, Rock & Roll, and whatever else all playing at once but not quite in unison. Every once in a while one would magically turn up in my bed and start laughing like a loon.
She has trouble realizing they're growing up. I'll have to remind her that 3 more Elmos may not be the same thing and gently suggest clothing or books instead. Or even toys and games are fine; just please not any more Elmos.
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ann adams 11-01-2006 @ 2:45PM
Too much Halloween for me last night. I've been struck illiterate. Should have been "may not be quite the thing".
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Lea 11-01-2006 @ 3:55PM
This reminds me...I need to tell both of Baby A's grandmothers that Elmo is off the list this year. And the TMX version is way, way off.
I agree that the hype is offensive. What an annoying way to market.
- QSMama
P.S.--Hey! iPods are great! :)
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Tina 11-01-2006 @ 4:35PM
We didn't need a blog to tell us this- after all, we're all educated and discerning moms reading blogging baby, right? So, who buys this kind of thing? lots of people- the kind who actually shop at Walmart all the time and buy their kids crappy hyped up noisy electronic toys at every turn instead of reading to them or taking them to the zoo.
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Special Red 11-01-2006 @ 4:45PM
I don't do iPods mainly because, for one, they've been thrust in my face and forced down my throat since they came out. For two, it requires me to buy even MORE crap to accomodate said iPod, when burning said mp3's onto a cd that will play in everything I own is not only more cost-effective, it simply makes more sense.
My sister owns an iPod, with the recording attachment, for her college classes. That I can understand. But getting one because they are the "thing to have" is just not me.
Same goes for 10 year olds with iPods, and iPod accessories being marketed to children: stop the madness.
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Spring 11-02-2006 @ 12:04AM
I read in an article that TMX Elmo says "no, stop it!" then laughs when you tickle him further. I found that pretty disturbing as it gives some mixed signals about a child's right to say No to someone touching their body. I am hyper aware of that kind of stuff, but it just creeped me out.
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Ginny 11-02-2006 @ 8:31AM
"The marketers have very callously played on your desire to get your child that one rare object that nobody else can get. "
Yep....don't you think that they would just open a new damn plant working 24/7 making these things if there were an actual demand? They are counting on the competitive parents who want little Susy to be able to brag that she got one of these things...probably for $1,000 in a back alley.
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Jessica 11-02-2006 @ 12:32PM
As a matter of fact, Tina, I do take my daughter to the zoo monthly and I read to her daily. Whoops. Generalizations, anyone, anyone..beuller???
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