Do you guys have these toys, too? The kind that spontaneously start making noise or flash their lights or otherwise turn on out of the blue, when nobody is within ten feet of them? And make you feel, for a moment, like you're in some mediocre horror movie? Except, the haunted toys aren't so much creepy as they are, well, annoying?
We've got this roller push-toy thing that, when you push it, shouts out "A! B! Ceeeeee!" in this androgynous, nasal voice and then plays the alphabet song. That is, it's supposed to. But it got left out in the yard a couple of times over the summer and got wet. (Also, um, I got it from the curb of a neighbor's house on garbage day.) So, now it only works intermittently, and primarily when no one is touching it. Alastair and I will be sitting there in the living room after the kids are in bed, reading aloud to each other from Dickens or discussing macro-economics, or, you know, watching 30 Rock, and suddenly this little voice will sound out from the toy boxes: "A!" (Actually, it's more like "A?") and we both jump.
I've racked my brain, digging back into musty memories of high school physics, to try to think what might compel this toy to suddenly express itself. The obvious answer is that things shifted a little -- a butterfly sneezed in Indonesia or whatever -- and the movement triggered the sound mechanism. But I swear to you, it has happened while the thing is lying on the floor with nothing else around it. To be honest, I'm not even sure there are batteries in it.
We've also got a Leapfrog Music Table that breaks spontaneously into song on occasion. It's got some jazzy little numbers on it, and it's usually the one of the scat riffs that sounds out of nowhere -- a woman's voice singing, "Ba-ba da-pa ba-pa da-pa bee DOT dowwww!" In this case, I like to think that it's the tortured soul of whatever poor, aspiring singer/actress whored herself to the toy company to make some cash, when what she really wanted was to be playing Sally Bowles on Broadway. I am waiting for the day when the toy says "Oh, screw it!" and bursts out into "Don't Tell Mama."
The Leapfrog Music Table lady is actually one of the less annoying trapped-in-a-toy voices, as toy voices go. The worst -- the absolute worst -- is the singing shape sorter Cookie Jar that someone gave us. A cloying, sticky-sweet woman's voice with waaay too much vibrato and "smile" in it. I can just see the woman in the recording studio -- a slightly deranged-looking ingenue with crossed eyes and pipe curls, standing on her tiptoes, index fingers pinched to thumbs in the air, trilling "Shapes are in my cookie jar! Triangle, heart and star!" And really loving it. Feeling it. If that toy ever starts spontaneously singing, I'm calling an exorcist.
Oooh, ooh! Babble editors -- you guys should do a 10 most annoying talking/singing toys feature sometime! Please consider my totally fucking annoying Cookie Jar.
Other contenders?
