TMX Elmo hype
Posted in Early Tuesday morning I just happened to be placing an order at Amazon when I read an article about the release of the new TMX Elmo so I added him to my cart. I have a 2 y/o nephew that loves Elmo. (Are there any toddlers who don’t!?) The price at the time was $39.99. I checked the status of my order in the evening and the estimated delivery date is November 26th. A long wait, but plenty of time for Christmas. The crazy thing was that Elmo was now being sold by a different merchant (when I ordered the merchant was Target) for $100! I checked again in the morning and there were none left, but plenty of people complaining in the review section about even higher prices.
Ebay was even worse, I saw auctions closing near 200 bucks.
An article in the Philadelphia Inquirer says “more than 20,000 T.M.X. Elmos - the initials stand for Tickle Me “Extreme” - were for sale on the Internet auction site at 5:35 p.m. yesterday, according to eBay Marketplace Research, which monitors listing, bidding and pricing on the site. And more than 7,000 Elmos had already been sold, at prices up to $355.”
Barbie’s even got in on the action wearing the latest Elmo fashion line and has her own TMX Elmo doll. Barbie’s mini Elmo is missing all the electronic gadgetry but that doesn’t seem to have stopped Elmo speculators as she’s sold out most places too and is now on the secondary market for 2-3 times her retail value of $19.95.
So, is it worth all the hubbub? Here’s a video someone posted on Google showing exactly what this toddler toy gadget does.
I say forty bucks is a fair price. Anything over that and you are probably better off buying one of the dozens of other cheaper Elmo dolls and putting the extra dollars in your kid’s college fund!
