Remember ten years ago when the first Tickle Me Elmo hit the marketplace and every was amazed by this plush doll? All you had to do was push his tummy and he bust out in a seizure, vibrating like the world’s strongest sex toy cell phone? It wasn’t particularly innovative — there were certainly other talking children’s toys that performed different acts — but there was something strangely appealing about it that got crazed parents to head on over to eBay and pay inordinate amounts of money for the doll, because their kids absolutely had to have it.


They tried following up on its success with a few other renditions, including taking other Sesame Street characters and making them tickle-me-friendly, giving Elmo other abilities, and the like, but they never quite caught on in quite the same way as the original. It’s been ten years since then, and they seem to have found themselves another winner. Dubbed the TMX (or Tickle Me Elmo X), this tenth anniversary edition doesn’t just giggle and jiggle, he slaps the ground, holds his stomach, and begs you to tickle him again.

My friend shot out to the local Walmart some time back and grabbed as many of these as she could. She ended up buying ten. No, not to give to her loving younger cousins or anything like that. This was a business venture. She was going to flip them on eBay. Tickle Me Elmo TMX retails for about $40 or $50, but she ended up selling the ten of them — as a lot — on eBay for a cool g-note (that’s $1000, in case you didn’t know). This is above and beyond the $200 she charged for shipping (although it only cost her $60 or $70 to ship the ten boxes). Quite a profit, I’d say. I’m scared to see what she’ll do when the PlayStation 3 hits our shores on Friday.

Tickle Me Elmo has becoming a money-making whore. What ever happened to toys for toys’ sake.

Anyways, here’s a video in case you’ve been under a rock this whole time, oblivious to the wonder that is Tickle Me Elmo TMX: