Squeeze Me Again, Little Baby! (aka Possessed Toys)

There were electronic toys available when I was a child, but nothing like today. When we were Christmas shopping for Jack, I saw very few baby toys that did not require batteries. Of course, adding these new sophisticated elements just means that the potential of the toy malfunctioning is even greater.

My little brother Chris, who is now eighteen, had a talking ALF doll when he was a toddler. (FYI, ALF was a talking alien on a television show that ate cats--not the Animal Liberation Front or the American Liver Foundation.) To make the toy talk, you had to put cassette tapes into ALF's back and give the unfortunate alien a D battery enema. (Why oh why do the batteries always have to be stuck up the toy's bum?) ALF worked fine at first. He would even sing Guns n' Roses if you changed his tape. Hey, it was the late eighties and I was a teenager. Anyway, poor ALF eventually became possessed by the Toy Demon. If you are unfamiliar with the Toy Demon, it likes to make the toy come to life in the middle of the night or begin to say unfortunate phrases it was not programmed to. Both of these happened to ALF. It began simply enough with a random "Here kitty, kitty!" now and then when no one was near it. But then it began playing tapes backwards. And nothing is more freaky than hearing a garbled ALF-like voice at 2:00 am saying, "Esaelp uoy fi ssa ym morf seirettab eseht evomer dna. Yresim ym fo tuo em tup esaelp. Sdrawkcab gniklat m'I."

And now the Toy Demon is casing our house for possible toys to possess. We have had a few instances, most notably Jack's Speak n' Say meowing and barking at midnight. My candidate, though, for the first to go is the Pooh Bear that talks when you squeeze random toy parts. It's already a tad masochistic. The other night, I was sitting in the glider in Jack's room while Kate dressed Jack after his bath. The glider tipped and I fell over sideways (Don't ask. If you know me, you then know this is pretty normal). Apparently, I landed on Pooh. After I managed to get myself off the floor, an overly excited voice (with a Southern dialect?) shouted from under the glider, "Squeeze me again, little baby!" Uhhh, no thanks.