Greg Hyman, Co-Creator of Tickle Me Elmo, Dies at 78

Greg Hyman, an electronics wizard and toy inventor who was a creator of Tickle Me Elmo, the giggling red plush Muppet that crushed sales records when it appeared in 1996 and became a touchstone of runaway toy success, died on May 1 at his home in Boca Raton, Fla. He was 78.

His partner, Deborah Nelson, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.

In the early 1990s, Mr. Hyman was a veteran toy inventor whose longtime business partner, Larry Greenberg, had recently died. The pair had been known for their electronic innovations, including a talking robot named Alphie. On his own, Mr. Hyman had made a talking Barney, a toy version of the goofy purple dinosaur from the children’s TV series “Barney and Friends.”

A fledgling inventor named Ron Dubren, who knew Mr. Hyman’s reputation for being clever with sounds, proposed that they collaborate on an idea he had for a giggling toy. Could they make a toy whose laughter escalated in a kind of jag? Together, they came up with a giggling monkey called Tickles the Chimp and began to shop it around.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/greg-hyman-dead.html