toys

I've been Simpson's fan since it began airing 20 years ago.
The annual Tree House of Horrors episodes around Halloween have always been some of my favorites.

One of the best was an episode titled "Clown Without Pity".
(Yeah, I DID have to look the title up.)

In it, Homer runs out at the last minute to buy Bart a birthday present, ends up getting him a "cursed" Talking Krusty the Clown doll.

Which ends up going all "Chucky" and chases Homer around the house with a butcher knife.
This goes on until a repairmen flips the evil Krusty over, and realized it had been set to the "evil" function, flipped the switch over to "Good" and they lived happily ever after.

Why'm I mentioning this?
Cuz it's my blog, and I can do whatever I want.

Oh, wait. That's not the reason.
Here's the reason.

I have a kid now. She has many battery-operated toys. They all make a variety of sounds.
And.... they make these sounds unprompted, at random intervals, and it's damn creepy.

Was talking to my wife on the phone yesterday. She was sitting in the rocking chair in the baby's room, feeding our daughter.
All the sudden, I heard a noise in the background.

"what the ???" my wife says.
Seems the LeapFrog alphabet caterpillar was making noises all the sudden, from inside the closet. The closet door was shut, but I could still hear it.
It kept repeating the letter "T".

"something probably shifted in there, fell on it, so the "T" leg is pushed down." I opined.

The baby finished feeding, and my wife walked over the closet door, and opened it.

Nothing was on or even near the toy.
"T!" "T!" "T!"
It stopped, when my wife opened the door, and then....
"Ok, goodbye!" and became silent.

"T" stands for "Time to turn that toy off".
And remove the batteries.
And douse it with holy water.
and then bury it's head in someone else's backyard....

We've a rocking horse that whinnies, seemingly at random. We think it gets lonely. We keep expecting to find it grazing on our rug, or drinking from the dog's water bowl.

We've a v-tech ball that lights up and moves by itself, and makes noise. If you leave it alone for too long, it calls attention to itself.
"Over Here!!!"
Uh, no. I think you'll be happier over..... here. in the cupboard. which we'll keep latched.

We've a magnetic barn on our 'frig. It makes animal noises. Not always when we want it to.
Honey, the refrigerator's squealing like a pig again. Let's order out.

Good friends of ours bought their daughter a V-Tech barn. It happily tells anyone who listens that it likes mud. But this sounds an awful lot like "I like blood." And once, completely unprompted, it said something that could only be interpreted to be "Get used to the color red."

Not too surprisingly, that toy is sans batteries on the top shelf of a closet somewhere in their house.

These little eccentricities are generally attributed to low battery power. I've got a big problem with toys getting petulant, when they need new batteries. low power = low activity. They need to become quiet, when their batteries are dying. And still.
Aww....the toy's sleeping........

If I knew that was the case, then maybe I, too, could sleep.