It's 'Threaten Me Elmo'

The talking Sesame Street toy brought a message of death after a battery change.

By S.I. Rosenbaum, Times Staff Writer
Published February 23, 2008

LITHIA - "Kill James!" said Elmo, his red, furry face beaming with joy.

"Kill James! Kill James!"

Who is James? And why does Elmo want him dead?

The first part is easy. James is a 2-year-old living in Lithia.

The second question is more mysterious.

Melissa Bowman said her son received his Elmo Knows My Name doll, a $40, 12-inch effigy of the high-pitched Sesame Street Muppet, for Christmas.

The doll comes with a DVD and a USB cable, so parents can program in their child's name, friends' names, favorite foods and colors.

Elmo asks questions, sings songs and expresses opinions, all personalized with the child's vital statistics.

Relations between James and Elmo were cordial, the family says, until Elmo's batteries ran down.

Bowman replaced the batteries. And just like that, Elmo's nature changed, she said.

Bowman didn't realize there was anything wrong with the toy until she heardJameschirping "Kill me! Kill me!"

That was when she noticed Elmo now says something that sounds a lot like "Kill James" - and nothing else.

"It comes out as plain as be," said Becky Secor, James' grandmother. "I thought it was kind of creepy myself. ... I thought of that movie, Chuckie."

Talking dolls date back to 1876 and the invention of the phonograph. The idea of sinister talking dolls have been around almost as long. In the 1960s, the popular talking doll, Mattel's Chatty Cathy, quickly inspired a Twilight Zone episode in which the doll commits murder.

In real life, talking toys have often been accused of going off-message.

In December of 2006, a mother in California heard her daughter's Little Mermaid doll say "You're a slut!"

That same Christmas, a Miami dad said he caught his daughter's singing Bratz doll dropping the f-bomb.

And in January of 2006, several families across the country say a talking Elmo book asked them, "Who wants to die?"

Mattel could not be reached to comment, but Secor said her daughter had contacted it to complain about Elmo's new mantra.

"They didn't act like it was any big deal," she said.

Mattel agreed to replace Elmo or refund the cost, Secor said.

So what happened to change Elmo's outlook?

No one is sure.

Casey Halverson, a computer systems engineer from Seattle, said Elmo shouldn't be able to talk about killing anyone.

Halverson posted a guide on his Web site showing how to "hack" the Elmo doll after he bought one for his 4-year-old daughter.

Inside Elmo, he said, is a tiny computer filled with pieces of sentences recorded by a voice actor, along with a program that tells the computer how to string them together into phrases.

Halverson figured out how to rearrange the doll's vocabulary to make it say some new things, like "Elmo likes to eat whale and seal." The family is part Eskimo and actually keeps this meat in the freezer.

The words "whale" and "seal" were already there, ready to be slotted into a sentence about Elmo's favorite pets. Halverson simply moved them into a sentence about food.

"You have to be really creative," he said. "It's like those refrigerator word magnets."

But he said he hasn't found a way to add words that aren't in Elmo's computer.

"'James' might be in Elmo's vocabulary," Halverson said. "But 'kill' is not in Elmo's vocabulary. That wouldn't make any sense. ... Elmo shouldn't be threatening kids."

It's possible Elmo had some hitherto unknown glitch, he said. Or perhaps Bowman is mishearing something.

"I can't understand what Elmo says half the time," Halverson said.

Bowman said she isn't taking any chances. "We lock it in the closet at night."

S.I. Rosenbaum can be reached at (813) 661-2442 or srosenbaum@sptimes.com.

[Last modified February 22, 2008, 23:37:08]