I have given many a noisy gift to babies over the years. It has always been with a smirk that I have wrapped up a music player, or a keyboard. And it appears karma exists, and my mischief is coming back to haunt me. My daughter has been given talking books, loud keyboards and flashy shrill balls. I have been promised drum kits and toy guitars.
And that's fine, actually. Except when they turn evil.
When they start to run out of juice they go to the dark side. As the batteries run low, the kindly V-Tech woman's voice which sings little French rhymes and talks about farm animals is having trouble getting her words out properly. Her voice becomes suddenly deeper, gruff, as if possessed. She'll get stuck and repeat one word again and again and again until I go and give her a kick. Then the words will come out in an other worldly wail. A drawl. A stutter. And then she goes quiet.
Confident that she is dead we leave her with her better behaved companions, only to be woken during the night by a shrill bark. She has come back to life and got stuck on animals again. I go downstairs in the dark to switch her off, and as I do so I nudge another toy I believed to be dead. The teddy bear suddenly starts to sing the alphabet song at me. My nerves are on edge. I am more careful not to wake the toys than I am about not waking the baby.
I am reminded of a series of books by Enid Blyton based around a doll called Amelia Jane. It is about a doll who gets up at night and plays pranks on the other toys. When their little girl owner is around they have to pretend to be just toys, but in reality they are living breathing teddies and dolls. It's actually quite sinister if you think about it.
I wonder if Enid Blyton had written those stories much later when everything had batteries and flashing lights if the books would have remained children's books or would they have been moved to the horror book shelves.
Who would ever have thought toys for babies under 12 months could be so freaky?
mwah ah ah! We got a singing toy at a nearly new sale where, with new batteries in, the female singer is completely out of tune. We burst out laughing every time we turn it on it is So wrong.
ReplyDeleteWe had the same problem with a dream show we had for Ruby when she was tiny. It drank batteries like water and when they ran down, the happy nursery rhyme tune became really dark. We haven't used it for Elliot. Funnily enough.
ReplyDeleteNothing is always perfect. The simple solution just replace the batteries.
ReplyDelete