Elmo effect
n.— «People were referring to it as the “Elmo effect” because it got people into the stores way ahead of what is normally seen as the kickoff to the holiday shopping season.» —“Hot-selling US toy Elmo was well-kept secret before debut” in East Aurora, New York International Herald Tribune (Paris, France) Dec. 19, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
How do you pronounce the word mobile, as in the toy that hangs above a baby’s crib? In the United States, that kind of mobile is pronounced MOH-beel, but in the United Kingdom, it’s MOH-byle. In the early 1930s, the American sculptor Alexander...