Exactly 10 years ago this Christmas, there was a phenomenon for a new laughing and shaking toy called "Tickle me Elmo." Since then, its creators have released a multitude of Elmos in hopes of another phenomenon. There has been Rock 'N Roll Elmo, Country Elmo, Chicken Dance Elmo, Hockey Pokey Elmo, and so on.

These releases were no where near as famous as the first Elmo. As you can see in this graph from Terapeak Research, over the past 2 years, dollar sales for Tickle me Elmos have been minimal, until September, 19, 2006.

In celebration of Elmo's 10th anniversary on September 19th, Tyco released a revolutionary new Elmo called "T.M.X." Will this toy be as famous as the original, or will it be just another Christmas toy?

Using Terapeak, we tracked the progress of this giggly toy, and the little guy showed promising results. Directly after its release, we watched its sales on eBay to see whether it's going to be a phenomenon or not.

• Within 7 days of its release, the new Tickle Me Elmo had sales of $3,304,073 and 379,914 Bids.
• After a month on the market eBay sales were $6,050,111 and it had 670,829 Bids.

Other holiday releases include new gaming consoles from Nintendo and Sony. Nintendo's Wii will make its debut November 19, and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 hits stores November 17. With such similar release dates, it will be interesting to see which toy comes out on top. Terapeak showed that in the last 30 days (as of November 1st), Nintendo has had $75,509 in pre-sales, and Sony has had $124,668 in pre-sales. Despite these findings, Nintendo has made the Toy 'R Us top 15 hot toys this season, while Sony did not.

Source: Terapeak, 11/1/06. Terapeak Marketplace Research has developed an advanced research tool for analyzing eBay consumer transaction data. http://www.terapeak.com/signup/freetrial