ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 5, 1996 TAG: 9612050042
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: Associated Press
Surprised by soaring demand, the maker of Tickle Me Elmo is flying in the dolls instead of waiting for a slow boat from China. You'll be hard-pressed to find the latest Nintendo, too. And Barbie on CD-ROM is gone as well.
Barely one week into the holiday shopping season, the blood pressure is rising among moms and dads competing for the hottest Christmas toys.
``Parents are breaking down doors for some of these toys,'' said Frank Reysen, editor of Playthings magazine. ``There's not just one hit this year, but a couple that everyone wants.''
As in the Cabbage Patch Kids craze of 1983 and the frenzy over Holiday Barbie last year, parents are using guerrilla-shopper tactics. They're lining up by the hundreds before dawn at stores rumored to have the toys. In a phenomenon satirized in the new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, ``Jingle All the Way,'' they're tugging and brawling to get a toy after the doors open.
At a Target store in Davenport, Iowa, a clerk handing an Elmo doll to a customer saw it intercepted by another customer.
``Grown people are willing to go pretty far for one of these dolls,'' said Jen Smith, a mother who couldn't find an Elmo at New York's FAO Schwarz. ``It's pretty crazy.''
Stores can't keep Tickle Me Elmo in stock. It is a plush doll, based on the Sesame Street character, that giggles when you press its tummy. It sells for less than $30.
Tyco Toys Inc. is flying the dolls from factories in China to the United States. The company will have shipped 1 million dolls between its July debut and Christmas and still doesn't expect to meet demand.
``You can never plan a phenomenon,'' said Neil Friedman, who heads Tyco's preschool division.
Also scarce is Nintendo 64, the new video game system that exploits advances in computer chip and software design to create 3-D play. The system costs about $200, and each of its eight games costs about $70. Many of the 1.2 million machines the company allotted for Christmas in this country already have been sold.
``It's too bad, because my boys are going to be disappointed if I can't find it anywhere else,'' said James Lynch of Nashua, N.H., a dad who has been searching for a Nintendo since the weekend.
Even parents who succeed aren't necessarily gloating.
``I don't think I'll do it again,'' said Carmen Ruiz, who waited an hour at an Elizabeth, N.J., toy store last weekend to get a Nintendo for her 13-year-old daughter.
Finding a Holiday Barbie is a perennial challenge. But this year you can't even find her new CD-ROM, which lets kids create their own fashion designs, print them, then make the outfits. It sells for about $40.
Many stores offered rain checks that guarantee the toys by Christmas, but even the rain checks have been sold out in many places. Others are offering coupons to receive the toys in 1997.
Jason Donnelly, a 12-year-old from Coxsackie, N.Y., still expects to find a Nintendo under his Christmas tree. ``I told my mom that's what I want, and she said she'd get it,'' he said. ``She'll find it somewhere - she'd better.''
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. 1. The popular Barbie demands a lot of shelf spaceby CNBat toy stores as parents search for that ``I just gotta have'' toy.
2. Tickle Me Elmo is so hot this year that the doll maker is
shipping the little red Muppet from China by air freight to keep up
with demand instead of the usual trek by boat. The plush toy giggles
when you press its tummy and sells for less than $30. color.