What Children’s toy still traumatises you?

[Soubriquet]

Was discussing toys from when my oldest was a baby, when I suddenly remembered that stupid singing v-tech bear my mum bought my dd.

Nearly 7 years later, and I still remember the fucking song

“I’m a friendly light up bear
I’ll teach you 1-2-3
A sleepy hungry happy bear
Hey come and hug me”

Then it would randomly go off in the evening with things like “I’m a happy bear!”

No bear...you were lucky to be in one piece

ToysRUs rocking unicorn.
It sang-
I'm a magical unicorn
Rainbow coloured
With a glowing horn...

DH and I would literally be besides ourselves...

Having sworn we would have no plastic tat in the house, this monstrosity was given to our DD aged 2 and of course it was her favourite toy in the world

Its traumatising me right this minute
Fucking Baby Dragons !!
Weird things that are alive and grown in the water when you feed them !!
Partners brother bought for xmas ! Cheers bro.... cant wait to get you something that totally dominates your time
The things live between mine and partners house so risky journey every time they travel back !

Yes! I’ve still got my original game of Perfection and it still scares the crap out of me. The ticking of the timer, the little jump it does before it pops up. Makes me actual SOL (scream out loud) 😮

Bloody dolls! I did have some as a child but a lot of the buggers terrified me. Maybe it’s because they look like us but aren’t human, I don’t know. Talking ones were the worst. And a friend had Baby Alive which got stuck so just kept moving it’s mouth & making a horrible munching sound. I also can’t bear toys that whizz around on the floor & come towards you without warning - DD has a dog & I couldn’t let it anywhere near me! Oh & flying toys. When we went to Paris, there were hideous wind up doves being sold on every street corner & I couldn’t bear them round my head!
DD had a talking/singing bus which was ok but tended to go off randomly. I was proper spooked once when I was getting out of the car & a voice from the back announced “ Bye Bye”!

I can't believe no one has mentioned Alphabet Pal, or Alphabet Fecking Pal, as I've seen it referred to before. DD had one, another VTech special - a creature with 26 hypersensitive legs that could play music or phonics. Always entertaining if you kicked it in the dark trying to get out of the bedroom after spending hours trying to get your child to sleep

DD had a furby a few years ago and it's still in a corner of the dining room after it started speaking in a high-pitched voice she didn't like. A friend's child had one of the original furbys and brought it to our house. After being left on a table for a few minutes it clearly said 'bored' which creeped even me out!

I'm definitely outing myself if my family are on here but Skeletor from He-Man used to terrify me! Doesn't help that my cousin used to chase me round the house while wearing the mask, every time we visited my aunt's house!

My uncle bought me a pop up book of the jabberwocky when I was a kid. It terrified me, my mum had to hide it

I love Struwwelpeter! We had it as children and my brother and I were terrified of the long red-legged tailor so I would always skip the page where he cuts off the boy's thumbs! When my DCs were born I made sure to get them a copy but they've never shown much interest (now pre-teens)….

@Lunde - your clown is horrific! My brother had a similar bendy Andy Pandy one Christmas - he had asked for a 'baddy' so we decided that was him, and destroyed it within 24 hours. But it was very similar.....

Alfie Bear - yes, DCs had one and like everyone else I'm now singing that tune in my head - which I had forgotten until now! Thanks!! But it reminded me of my sister's horrible doll back in the (probably) early 70s - called 'Sally Happy walk and talk'. She said 'I love you mummy' and 'I've got a pretty dress' over and over again. Used to drive me demented back then, and now I can hear it as clear as ever - hideous!

@ThanksForAllTheFish those words are from the opera Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck - maybe that’s the tune that it plays?

@Soubriquet not read the full thread but yep that bloody bear, we used to sing “Hey come and punch me”

Counting, counting, counting is such fun!
Count with me, let’s start with number one,
One two three four five six seven eight nine ten,
Wasn’t that the best, I’d love to count again!

I think it was a fisher price turtle.

Shapes are in my cookie jar,
Triangle, heart and star!
There’s a circle over there
And. A. Square.

But the best was a penguin that used to randomly call out in a low, mournful voice, ‘I seeeee yoooouuuu’ in the middle of the night. Scary fucker.

The orgy bunny
Well that's why it got named... Got dragged to bingo 12 yrs ago whilst pregnant and won the stupid thing didn't play its stupid song till dd was about 6months old and was horrified to hear that in the lyrics to petter cotton tail coming up and down the bunny trail it sang about an orgy for your mummy... I think the actual lyric is and orchid for your mummy.... But this thing def said orgy.

Ds currently has a t-rex that roars when you press a button on its side... Except it torments me in the night a starts roaring randomly (never during the day)

Also the cookie jar

The bloody cookie jar song still haunts me 4 children on...each child I've gotten rid of one and someone decides to gift one to the next child!!!

Oh god, I had the 'Here comes my boooody' 'My feet are getting CLOSER!' doll where you pull the head off ... and now I know what's going to be going through my head on a repeat during my run this morning! I think we found it in a jumble sale, c. 1981. My brother and I thought it was hilarious. Little things ...

I had to hide the lavishly illustrated book of the film Watership Down picture book at the back of the bookcase, I mean behind it with - appropriately enough - the dust bunnies. Because that film was TERRIFYING.

In recent years, I'm still haunted by the sodding vTech walker with Hello Puppy Calling, but for some reason, my friends and I all thought it was saying 'Hello, puppy Colin'. We thought that was his name.

DS has this horrible vTech dinosaur car transformer thing that he periodically gets out and sits beside his plate while eating and then makes it 'talk' continually (he has autism. This bloody thing satisfies something deep inside him). The dinocar says things like 'I'm king of the road, coming through' and 'I'm fast - and I'm FUURRRIOUS!' and, in a particularly Pervy Uncle sort of voice, 'turn my wheels'. God I hate it.

vTech are bastards.

@HarrietM87. Could very possibly be from that opera. I’m really not too familiar with much opera to be honest. Added a little link to a you tube video of the music it plays (not my video but a random one I found on YouTube).

I remember my sister being terrified of my Spacehopper: not that I exploited that at all

@GlomOfNit I agree, that film (and the book) is disturbing!

2 porcelain dolls, they were antique, with proper white porcelain faces, musty old dresses and rank straw like hair. The definition of horro film dolls. My um sat them on my wardrobe and said I should keep them as they'd be worth something one day. They terrified me.

My daughter had a doll with sensors in her hands and when you completed the circuit - holding both her hands in a circle - she sang "Ring around the roses".

One summer night my husband and I woke up to a creepy child voice singing that one line over and over. It sounded like it was coming from the garden. It was real horror movie stuff.

He got dressed and grabbed a torch and went off to do battle with the demon child. Just outside the door he found this doll - the damp air had completed the circuit and the batteries were low so it just sang the same line over and over.

Of course because it was damp so wouldn't shut up so in the early hours of the morning he was searching for a screw driver to take out the batteries and shut her up!

@IthinkIsawahairbrushbackthere That doll would give anyone the shudders, especially considering the origin of the song Ring-a-ring o' roses.

And I think one of the worst "creepy dolls" ever is not a children's toy (which probably ironically have a label saying "not suitable for children under three years old), but those dolls designed to educate teenagers on the realities of parenthood; as described in Adrian Mole the Cappuccino Years, which cry every few hours and have to be cuddled and fed, and if roughly handled, they sound an ear-splitting alarm.

I hated that fucking bear with a passion when my eldest who is now 13 with a passion. It was also used by 2 of his closer aged younger siblings. Got the little fucker out of my life... had a 4th child last year...

... then boom I unwrap a brand new sleepy, happy, fucker bear, my 5 month old got from one of his aunties for christmas 😭😭 he got a VTech Zebra as well for christmas which is a future haunt. I hate it already. It sings about dancing and being from Africa and has an elvis prestleyesque jacket on.

I hated the Furby, I hated the red bus with all the numbers and letters on... I hated all forms of lego and a little blue cat which answered questions like a yes and no game my kids had when they were slightly older.

Also Silly Sausage from a few years ago.

As a kid though, the Alfian, it had a push button box in its chest which often got stuck. Creepy and all with its beady little eyes. Pet Monster didnt look too healthy in the dark either.

Play-do

When it first arrived, it had a bit of an odd smell that lingered. My abiding memory us of being in bed, ill for some time. Every time I caught sight of the box of play-do, put away on top of the wardrobe I would be sick again.

Not sure they ever worked out why I was being sick for so long. No one thought to just ask me.