Ever since Sesame Street hit the airwaves in 1969 it has been responsible for licensing more individual products then anyone could possibly count, including Count Von Count. Plush toys, books, games, puzzles, records, lunch boxes, plays sets, bed sheets and countless other products have been produced featuring Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Bert, Ernie, Oscar the Grouch and their many Muppet neighbors. While these classic characters remain popular to this day it goes without saying that some new blood is needed in order to keep the franchise fresh. Among some of the second, third and fourth generation Sesame Street Muppets that have found their way into the hearts and toy chests of preschoolers are Telly Monster, Rosita, Zoe, Abbey Cadabby and of course a little fire engine red monster with a penchant for bursting out into giggles and referring to himself in the first person – that fuzzy little dynamo named Elmo.

While many old school Sesame Street fans revile the little guy and believe that the very moment he appeared on the show ruined it forever just like when Henry Winkler went airborne over that great white shark on Happy Days, many of those haters might be surprised to know that Elmo has actually been around a lot longer then they realize. At first Elmo was an anonymous “anything Muppet” that appeared in the background at least since the late seventies. At one point he was given a name and assigned to Richard Hunt, a puppeteer with an inherent revulsion to overly cute characters. He tried to give the little monster a sort of contradictory caveman voice. It didn’t work. He passed the puppet along to one of the newer puppeteers, Kevin Clash. With a Mom who ran a daycare center he had no trouble coming up with the ideal personality for the little guy, that of a cheerful, precocious, hyper imaginative and affectionate preschooler. Slowly but surely the little monster began to grow in popularity and by the end of the eighties he was fast becoming the most popular character on the show (“I never thought I’d live to see a character more popular than the Bird,” said former cast member Sonia Monzano, aka Maria). By the mid-nineties Elmo had already become an omnipresent force in the Sesame Street merchandising machine.  Nothing, however, could prepare people for the massive popularity of a little electronic plush toy that hit the market in 1996.

The toy that would become Tickle Me Elmo was originally a toy called “Tickles the Chimp,” a little toy simian with a computer chip that made it giggle and vibrate when it’s belly was touched. The toy was presented to Tyco Toys who agreed to buy it but thought it would sell better as a licensed product. At the time Tyco had a licensing agreement for the Warner Brothers cartoon characters and came up with a toy called (get this) the “Tickle Me Tasmanian Devil.” Lord only knows what they were thinking but it was soon apparent that this idea was too loony for even that toon. The idea was revived when Tyco signed a licensing agreement with Sesame Street. With Elmo’s penchant for giggling it only made sense that he’d be the toy with the built-in tickle box.

According to Clash in his book My Life as a Furry Red Monster, he first encountered the toy when shopping for his own infant daughter at Bye Bye Baby. He didn’t remember recording the voice for that particular toy seeing as how the job of playing Elmo requires a seemingly year round schedule of voice over recordings. He was charmed by the toy and decided to buy it for his daughter. It was a darn good thing because soon even he wouldn’t be able to get his hands on one.

The toy was released in the summer ’96 with only 400,000 units shipped. They sold surprisingly well and 600,000 more were ordered. But what really lit the Elmo spark was talk show host Rosie O’Donnell who featured the toy on her show and raved about what a cute, charming toy it was. This was in October. By Black Friday demand for the toy was going through the roof and that’s when the you-know-what hit the fan. Hopeful buyers chased after delivery trucks, people were arrested for fighting over the doll and at least one clerk in New Brunswick was reportedly injured when 300 patrons nearly trampled him to death. And there was also a black market for the little guys. One person in Denver reportedly sold one for over $7,000!

Like a number of toys on this list one does have to wonder whether the mania for this ticklish toy was more the product of media hype then what the little children really wanted. Sure, Elmo was popular and so was the toy, but there were plenty of other Elmo dolls on the market. In the end the craze died down and while new shipments of Tickle Me Elmo’s sold there were plenty of other dolls with both him and his Sesame Street brethren that kids were every bit as happy to poses. Recently the toy has been re-released and it still has the ability to charm but when all is said and done is any single toy really worth all that craziness?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIsI7JWUdO4

In the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey HAL 9000, the super computer that powers the Discovery One space vessel begins to make errors, which the computer suggests are human errors calculated by his programmers. Maybe, but when Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) and Dr. David Bowman (Keir Duella), the astronauts manning the mission decide to disconnect HAL, the computer figures this out by reading their lips. He kills Poole and Bowman ultimately shuts HAL down. The irony is that he seems more human than the two astronauts.

HAL did not “murder” Dr. Poole. Though programmed to seem human, he’s not a conscious, sentient being. He simply calculated the variables that could endanger the mission via a series of algorithms that he was programmed with. The year 2001 has come and gone and we are still nowhere near the point where we can create a supercomputer as powerful as HAL, let alone one that can develop consciousness. Some science fiction authors and even quite a few scientists talk about the “singularity” when humans can transfer their consciousness into a computer and theoretically achieve immortality. Others talk about machines developing their own consciousness and acting on their own free will, thus rising up against their human inventors. This was the premise of such movies as Blade Runner, The Terminator and The Matrix and there are some scientists who think that those films aren’t that far off the mark.

Okay, I’ll admit that this is all getting a little arc when talking about little fury robotic toys. The simple fact is that for the moment and for the foreseeable future all artificial intelligence is just that, artificial. Still, more than a few people were surprised when a toy hit the market that was actually able to “learn” and grow “smarter” under its masters tutelage.

Like so many toys that cause a stir, Furby’s were unveiled at the American International Toy Fair in 1998. They generated a lot of buzz and soon there were numerous reports from industry insiders predicting that Furby’s would be a big seller come Black Friday. Sure enough there were plenty of kids, and quite a few adults, who just had to have one of these little guys that more than one observer felt looked like Gizmo, the adorable little Mogwai from the film Gremlins (one party that noticed was the Warner Bros. legal department. An agreement was quickly reached and a none-to-successful Gizmo Furby was released the following year).

What made Furby’s unusual is that these mechanical talking toys started out speaking what sounded like gibberish but was actually a language called “furbish”. A glossary included with the instructions told the owner how to translate this adorably cryptic language, so Furby trainers learned that “doo” means “what?” That “u-nye-loo-lay-doo” means “do you want to play?” and that “wee-tah-kah-wee-loo” means “tell me a story?” As kids interacted with their Furby’s by petting them, talking to them, hugging and “feeding” them (this simply required putting your finger in their little beak-like mouths) they began to respond by replacing their furbish with words in English. What’s more they were equipped with motion sensors that identified other Furby’s, allowing them to interact.

Sure enough, Furby’s became the must-have craze of ’98. People camped outside of toy stores hoping to nab one for their kid while others hoarded them hoping to sell them at a huge three and four figure mark-up. These black market dealers resorted to the usual measures placing ads in the paper or just selling them out of the trunk of their car while some more tech-savvy pirates turned to that newfangled invention called the internet, most notably a growing auction site called eBay. It was estimated that by the Furby’s first anniversary that 24 million toys had been sold.

Plenty of kids were thrilled to unwrap a Furby on December 25th and most kids thought they were cool but it wasn’t too long before parents had buyers remorse and even some Furby parents began to second guess these electronic virtual pets. Sure they were cute and fury but they weren’t soft or cuddly, pretty much an important factor when they ask you for a “may-lah” (hug). Another problem is that while they were equipped with a sleep mode the damn things were known to start talking all of a sudden. If that wasn’t enough, the only way to get them to shut up was to remove their batteries, which was easier said then done. Removing their 9 volts meant unscrewing itty bitty little screws, kind of like the ones they use in watches. Before long people were getting pretty sick of these little guys. By springtime some ended up in the family yard sale and others were being used for batting practice once spring training started up.

Still, Furby’s had a pretty good run, selling over forty million units worldwide. Hasbro later bought the rights to them and re-launched them in both 2005 and 2012. The newest models boast LED eyes and can be controlled by a mobile app. It’s unlikely that they’ll ever cause the same fervor that they did towards the end of the second millennium but they did prove one thing. Toys with computer chips could do a lot more than say a few phrases. They now could develop a vocabulary of their own and eventually learn ours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n0Bupm8mkg&list=PLO2Mrb4LOnLJ7DG362wIZvaHvU2l1gl41&index=23

1982 was the year that moviegoers all over the world fell in love with E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, Steven Spielberg’s cinematic fable about a young boy named Elliot (Henry Thomas) who befriends an alien that was accidentally left behind by his team of intergalactic explorers. A mind-boggling hit, E.T. grossed $359 million in North America and $619 million worldwide, making it the highest grossing film of all time, a record that would hold until Spielberg himself broke it with Jurassic Park eleven years later.

That same year video game giant ATARI was recording record profits. Founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, ATARI created the first commercially successful coin operated arcade game Pong in 1972. From there they went on to create a whole bunch of hugely popular arcade games including Asteroids, Tank, Breakout, Destroyer, Centipede and many others. In 1977 they released the ATARI 2600 (originally known as the ATARI VCS), the first successful home video game console. By 1982 over 8 million consoles had been sold. Warner Communications bought the company in 1976, primarily because ATARI was entering the personal computer market with the ATARI 800 and 400 home computer systems, both released in 1979. Though these computes enjoyed some success it was the video game division that was undeniably paying the bills.

For all of ATARI’S success there were a few cracks in their cybernetic plaster beginning to show. New systems like Mattel’s Intellivision and Colecovision, both of which boasted superior graphics were encroaching on ATARI’s market share. ATARI had more games but their quality seemed to be getting worse, not better, with each passing year. ATARI won an exclusive contract to create a homeport for the blockbuster hit Pac-Man but the game resulted in more migraines than fun. Still, ATARI was the giant of the industry and when they saw the success of E.T., not to mention the truckloads of dolls, lunch boxes, bed sheets and even chewable vitamins selling around the globe, ATARI decided to get on the E.T. mother ship.

Knowing full well that Steven Spielberg was (and still is) a hard core gamer, Warner Communications Chairman Steve Ross offered Spielberg an unprecedented amount of money – reported to be between $20 and $25 million – for the exclusive rights to an E.T. video game. He enthusiastically agreed and personally requested that Howard Scott Warshaw, the programmer behind such hits as Yars Revenge and even the Raiders of the Lost Ark arcade game, be brought in to create the game. Warshaw agreed but no doubt had second thoughts when he was told that he had to deliver the game by September 1st in order for the game to be developed in time for the holiday shopping season. Even in those primitive vector graphic days a game could take six months to a year to develop. Warshaw had to program E.T. in less than six weeks!

With the time constraint it was decided not to introduce the game in the arcade. Though a coin-op version was proposed it was going to have to wait. ATARI also decided not to create a version for their new 5200 console until the following year. The game would only be developed for the 2600. Warshaw did indeed deliver the game on time. In order to make the cartridges, ship them to stores and launch an ad campaign, ATARI decided to skip the usual market testing, a huge mistake.

E.T. barely made it into stores in time for Black Friday. A beautiful commercial featuring the eponymous alien as Santa Claus was produced in order to tantalize youngsters. According to some reports ATARI produced more E.T. video game cartridges then there were consoles in American households. When the game came out it was absolutely panned by critics and kids who couldn’t wait to start playing the game come Christmas morning were treated to a spinach green screen, a little yellow avatar with a neck that extends being chased by guys in trench coats. All that really happened was that E.T. fell down holes looking for the pieces to his telephone to call his home planet, then floating up and getting out of the hole. “So there’s basically just a lot of falling down a hole and then extending my neck and floating out,” noted Conan O’Brien on the “Clueless Gamer” segment of his talk show. “This just simulates the cycles of depression.” That’s pretty much how the players felt who got game in their Christmas stocking and the parents who had to shell out the money to buy it. While an estimated 1.5 million cartridges were sold, enough to make E.T. one of ATARI’s best selling titles, as many as four million went unsold. Roughly 750,000 copies were rumored to have been buried in a New Mexican desert. In 2013 the rumor was confirmed when the site was dug up to for a construction project and a number of games were unearthed. All of this was documented in the 2014 documentary ATARI: Game Over.

Today E.T. the video game is frequently cited as the worst of all time, and is often seen as a major factor in the videogame market crash that happened the following year. Warner Communications sold ATARI in 1984. Though they continued to make consoles they never regained their momentum and it’s assets were sold off. Obviously there was one guy who got a high score, and that was Spielberg. Despite the huge payday he received Warner CEO Steve Ross (who passed away in 1992) justified the sale claiming that it prompted Spielberg to begin producing and/or directing movies for Warner Bros., including Gremlins, The Goonies and The Color Purple. Still, for one of the most beloved movies of all time to have one of the worst video games ever is an irony that stings like a wasp. There’s no question though that for a brief moment E.T. was one of the most hyped Christmas gifts of all time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajJXapRHPNs&index=19&list=PLO2Mrb4LOnLJ7DG362wIZvaHvU2l1gl41

8. PLAYSTATION III (2006)

…If Microsoft thought they could completely steal the PlayStation III’s thunder they were sorely mistaken. Its predecessor, the PlayStation 2, had by then become the best-selling console in gaming history, a record it holds to this day with an estimated 155 million units sold worldwide. While there were plenty of people who had to have both, some PlayStation purists and budget conscious gamers passed on the X-Box 360 in favor of waiting for the PS3. The new system was the first on the market to run it’s software on Blu-ray disks, had 3-D capabilities, could connect with other gamers and download games via the PlayStation Network and could connect with the portable hand-held devices PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita.

The console went on sale in Japan on November 11th and in the U.S. one week later. That’s when all hell broke loose. There were reports of fistfights, people camping out to buy one getting robbed at gunpoint and at least one person being shot over a console. One particularly humorous story had a guy camping out in front of a toy store offering to buy coffee for the other campers. He returned with a cup of Joe for everyone who wanted one but he didn’t tell them that he had spiked the coffee with a laxative. When the other campers took care of nature he moved up in the line, talk about call of doody (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Successful as the PS3 was, it didn’t quite sell as many as the X-Box, falling 200,000 units short of its sales figures. Perhaps even more surprising was the success of the Nintendo Wii which no doubt due to its kid friendly games and surprising popularity with the elderly went on to sell 101 million units! Oh well, Sony’s stock holders had no reason to be disappointed and the Tokyo based electronics giant continued to hold a dominant position in the gaming industry for the next decade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOJ1_6826EM

In the years following World War II America experienced an age of prosperity unprecedented in the history of the world. Goods and services were plentiful and middle class Americans found themselves with more disposable income than ever before, not to mention more things they could dispose of their income on. Among the things that the masses now had access to were:

A. An abundance of food. With so many families unable to afford enough sustenance during the Depression, followed by wartime food rationing, Americans soon found themselves with plenty to eat (and the expanding waist lines to prove it), as new supermarkets seemed to open every week.

B. A surplus of plastic. With wartime rationing over, chemical companies were now selling acres of cheap, plastic raw material that could be melted down and molded into a huge variety of goods. Plastics lack of biodegradability was not much of a concern at the time.

C. Television. Though this wondrous invention had been in development since the 1920’s it wasn’t until 1948 that televisions were being massed produced and television networks began broadcasting enough programs to entice people to shell out a couple of weeks worth of a pay to buy a set.

All of these factors would play a huge role in the creation of one of the worlds most offbeat, interchangeable and endearing (if perhaps starchy) toys.

The man who sired this super spud was Brooklyn native George Lerner who conceived the idea of a toy with facial features that could be re-arranged in a variety ways by using little plastic pieces to represent eyes, a nose, lips, a mustache, even a pipe. The pieces were affixed with little pointed prongs (think corn holders) that could be inserted into the skin of just about any fruit or vegetable. Lerner shopped the idea around to various toy companies, none of whom were willing to buy the toy. After all, from the time we start teething we’re told, “don’t play with your food.” Perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that he eventually sold the idea to a company that packaged food, namely cereal. The idea was to distribute the plastic parts in boxes of cereal as a premium, then as now with the idea was that kids will bug their parents to buy more boxes in order to “collect them all.” Everything changed when he met Henry and Merrill Hassenfeld, two brothers who’s Rhode Island based manufacturing firm made school supplies. Wanting to break into the toy business, the Hassenfeld’s paid the cereal company $7,000 to buy Lerner out of his deal with them. Hassenfeld Brothers – later renamed Hasbro – packaged the various pieces together as part of a “funny face kit”. A plastic torso with arms and legs was made to serve as a stand on top of which the toys vegetable cranium would rest. Though any fruit or vegetable could be used the pieces worked best on a potato, ergo the toy became known as Mr. Potato Head.

Of course the Hassenfeld’s were new to the toy game and they had to compete with more established companies for shelf space in toy stores, let alone get the attention of young consumers. Most toy companies advertised in print media, creating eye-catching ads for newspapers, magazines and of course comic books. That’s when the Hassenfeld’s decided to take a major, expensive gamble and sell their toy on that newfound technological wonder called television. At the time kids shows like Howdy Doody and Kukla, Fran and Ollie were sponsored mostly by cereal and candy companies but thus far no toy manufacturer had tried their luck marketing their product over the airwaves. The Hassenfeld’s realized that unlike with radio, TV would actually let kids see the product and the quirky things kids could do with it. Sure enough, Mr. Potato Head took off. Kids saw the toy commercial and quickly asked their parents to buy them a kit, not a hard sell considering that they were only 98 cents each. By Christmas these kits became the most popular gift of the year. Even if some kids had to wait until the A&P opened the next day to get that all-important potato for a head, kids across the country were thrilled to get a Mr. Potato Head kit. Over a million of them were sold in the first year alone.

Mr. Potato Head put Hasbro on the map. He later got a spouse named (surprise, surprise) Mrs. Potato Head. The two of them later had two children, a son named Spud and a daughter named Yam. While the plastic parts were reusable, the potato head was not. Kids soon left their bro from Idaho around the house as it biodegraded. Kids also began pricking themselves on the sharp prongs. With new safety regulations introduced Lerner was called into duty to give Mr. P a reusable plastic head with pre-drilled holes. Now dull pegs, rather than sharp prongs were used to create Mr. Potato Heads interchangeable facial features. Later the still rather small pieces were deemed a choking hazard. Therefore a fourth Mr. Potato Head was introduced in 1975. This one was twice as big, as were the pieces. Alas, the potato now made up his whole body, only his feet were not part of his cranium. He didn’t have any arms and worst of all, certain parts could only go into designated slots, meaning that kids couldn’t mix and match his facial features like they did before. It was almost like Barbie but without her wardrobe and accessories.

Mr. Potato Head was given one more transformation in the eighties. He was now more tan-colored, had rubber arms, a storage compartment in his rear end and most importantly, the pegs on the pieces and pre-drilled holes were all uniform so that any facial feature could be placed in any hole that the kid playing with him wished. This was the Mr. Potato Head that was here to stay.

Just as potatoes were the staple crop of Ireland, Mr. Potato Head is a staple of toy chests all over the world and has managed to become a true American icon. He’s been featured in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, was the spokes spud for Burger King’s french fries for a time. On the more civic-minded note he gave up his pipe as part of the Great American Smoke out in 1987 while both he and his spouse helped the League of Women Voters launch their “Head to the Polls” campaign. Most significantly, he became a bonifide movie star when the late Don Rickles lent his voice to Mr. Potato Head for Toy Story and its two sequels. So move over Lon Chaney, Mr. Potato Head will always be the man with an infinite number of faces!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICGrjmJouWA&list=PLO2Mrb4LOnLJ7DG362wIZvaHvU2l1gl41&index=16