Why Elmo is the James Bond of toys

Around Christmas, parents start hearing a lot about Elmo, the red, grinning, googley-eyed Muppet doll based on the Sesame Street character. The Elmo Doll has been a smash hit since it first hit shelves in 1996, topping "favorite toys" lists almost every Christmas.

There are a bunch of theories explaining why toddlers go seriously gaga for the doll. They find bold red comforting, for one. Also, he talks in familiar "mother-ese," and giggles when you poke its tummy — which is apparently a kind of cat nip for kids.

That all makes sense, but Robert A. Ferdman at Quartz points out another reason the doll flies off shelves: Tyco Toys keeps making new Elmos, and toy stores keep stocking their shelves with them. As Ferdman puts it, it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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This makes Elmo, as well as Barbie and other toys, a lot like successful film franchises. Both toy makers and studios make franchises out of products that resonate deeply with audiences, releasing new iterations every so often with slight adjustments.

For Elmo, it started with 1996's "Tickle Me Elmo" — a doll so insanely popular that parents were willing to steamroll store clerks to get their hands on one that Christmas season. The U.K's The Independent wrote this at the time:

Since then, the company has released a new Elmo just once a year, right around the holidays. Each one is slightly different from the last, with some nearly identical to earlier incarnations. There's a Let's Rock Elmo and a Rock n' Roll Elmo, for example. There are also two Tickle Me Elmos — the old one that laughs on one octave, and the 10th anniversary version that laughs a bit differently the second and third time you squeeze it.

Like the most successful franchises, such as James Bond for instance, there's something enduring about the character that makes people come back not just two or three times, but year after year after year. James Bond has masculine mystique. Elmo has toddler mystique. As Melinda Wenner Moyer explains in Slate, "We all love characters we can relate to."