So the holidays are around the corner and I thought I’d do a snobby “what gifts not to buy my kids ever” type post.
Like when my 2 year old gets a gift that is for ages 10 and up. “Um, thanks for this great gift that I have to store for eight years.”
Or gifts that are so huge they take up my entire living room. “Um, thanks for this great gift but we had to move our coffee table into the garage.”
Because really, it is all about me. Not the kids. When people buy them gifts they aren’t thinking about whether or not the kids will like them. They are just trying to annoy me.
But doing a complainy post like that will just bring people out of the woodwork who will say things like “you should feel fortunate that you can be so picky with toys because some people have to give their kids rocks and sticks” and that will just frustrate me. Because I’d rather give my children rocks and sticks than the toys I was going to complain about. Tongue-in-cheek, people. Relax.
Anyway, I already complained about toys. So I scrapped the idea and instead, I’m just going to talk about one special toy…
The infamous Fisher-Price Dog
We got ours two years ago as a “Congrats on the New Crappy Baby” gift from someone. This means ours is one of the first-generation ones that don’t move. (I understand that the newer versions walk and come with a machete.)
My first impression is that it looks benign.
There is a tag tied around his wrist from the gift giver and I read it.
It starts with the usual stuff “Congrats on the baby!” but then it says something else too.
It says this:
And that is a direct quote. I saved the tag because I thought it was so funny.
Now if you are so annoyed with a toy that you have to remove the batteries what on earth makes you think I would want this thing making noise in my home?
Once the batteries were engaged it did this:
Without the mad face. I added that in because that is what I think he looks like behind our backs.
Truth is, I’ve never trusted toys that talk and “interact” with you. I’ve always thought they were creepy. Probably from growing up watching that Living Doll episode of The Twilight Zone, one of my favorites.
I can’t have this thing stabbing me in my sleep.
So the dog is sent to the car to live. Forever.
I use it to bribe Crappy Baby since he hates his car seat. “Get in the car seat, you get the dog. Do we have a deal?”
The dog is like an old friend they suddenly remember exists every time they ride in the car.
The thing is, like my battery dislodging friend alluded to, this dog is sensitive. It starts chattering and singing and giggling from each and every bump in the road.
Even when I’m driving alone in the car. That doesn’t happen very often.
But last Friday I found myself driving alone in the car for a little over two hours. With no music. My phone just got replaced and I haven’t loaded any music on it yet. The radio was playing nothing but shouty and angry “GET THE BEST DEAL EVER!!” ads so I turned it off.
It was just me.
Well, just me and the dog. The dog who wouldn’t stop trying to make conversation.
So I did what any person stuck in rush hour traffic would do.
I started talking to it.
And we became the best of friends.
So thank you for the Fisher-Price™ dog. No really! After two years of fear, I kinda like him now.
But he still isn’t coming inside my house.
—————
December 2013 update: He’s been donated! And honestly, I WAS a little sad when they chose to put him in the donate pile. A little.
Hahaha I have that toy! Every time he sings the I love you I love you morning noon and night! song I want to cry.
I thought I was the only one!!
Haha my kid got that one too, it used to talk when I was walking past it in the middle of the night! creeeeeeeeepy!
We had the same problem. Isn’t that the one that says “I see you!”
What’s worse is that we were gifted two of them! My 2nd kid got one for his 1st birthday from his American Uncle. It ended up living in the basement until I think we finally got rid of it. Then on our 3rd kid’s 1st birthday, his British Uncle got him the exact same puppy. I think that one is still in the basement. Neither Uncle has their own kids, so they don’t know what joy the puppy brings! 😛
HAHA. We have the dog too. I actually have to say I like it so much I bought one for this Christmas for my friend who just had a baby.
We’ve been singing and playing games for years now.
LOVE! Can you believe that ours was totally stashed in the closet until last night when my 4 year old found it & resurrected it out. Bummer for me, lol!
Awesome! Sums up my life perfectly, as usual.
I have an extra if you would like two.
Oh my gosh, I am totally laughing my butt off because I could HEAR the dog when I read this!!! We have had it for 4.5 years and he’s still here!
Ohhh I am so giving it to my new neighbor….ahahhaha complain about my REAL dog barking now!
My son, who is now almost 8, got that for his first Christmas or birthday. I can hear the EXACT voice in my head, reading this post. Do you have the Fisher Price Laugh and Learn house that the dog goes with? My father is still reporting traffic as “its bumper to bumper on the rainbow bridge.”
“It’s bumper to bumper on the rainbow bridge!” Ah, memories. We just donated the house this past year.
I step on that dog CONSTANTLY when I’m trying to sneak into my daughter’s room at night. It needs a night-mommy-stealth-mode.
One of my daughter’s first “performances” was singing along with the morning, noon, and night song. Made me want to cry, too.
i agree it does need a mommy stealth mode,i laughed my head off Like this Hahahahahahahaha! i laughed so hard i almost Woke everyone in my house(‘,:
cause you never know when your child has that puppy in his or her room
We have one of those programmable Elmo dolls that were popular a few years ago. That thing would start talking at like midnight two rooms away and /still/ wake me up. Creeeepy.
I love the dog too! My kids love it. Although it is buried in the toy box more often than not, it still carries on its own conversation. Kinda creeps me out a bit. Walking down the hall at night, alone, in the quiet, and you hear a muffled “Hug me!” Kinda scares the be-jesus out of you! Overall though, not a bad toy!
Oh hilarious! We have one of those that lives at Grandma’s! Also a first generation type with no movement!
I also think it should be illegal to create a toy with no volume control. And not just loud or louder, but a “Seriously the kid is playing with you and thus you are inches away from their brand new ears” setting. I am fearful that my children will be hard of hearing by age 5!
Put tape over the speakers (if you can find them)
grace is a pretty name and i had that puppy for my neice she loved it
I just bought one for my 13 month old. Crap.
I’m a hater. Though it’s really good for a laugh when it pipes up by itself while you’re trying to have “relations” with your husband…For some reason hubby never saw the humor when I was laughing hysterically instead looking properly turned on.
Yes. I stepped on her “toes” one night after spending an hour getting my son to sleep.
The kids love it. 🙂
Oh shizz…I think we have one of these stashed under the Christmas tree from a friend…it keeps talking everything I move presents :/
It’s sooooo true! We got this about two Christmases ago. The first time it blurted out “I love you!” we were like oh god, it’s one of those creepy talking toys…and our daughter LOVED it. It’s stashed away in a trunk now…
Thank you for this crappy blog! I was feeling bad that I had not purchased one of these for the doodlebug, but suddenly, I am feeling much better about not having done so. lol
OH MY GOSH! Most annoying toy ever. Nailed it. We got this for our first kid thinking it’d be awesome. 30 minutes later we took the batteries out.
Then what did we do? Perpetuated the circle of annoyance by giving a new one to the little girl on our Giving Tree at church. …sorry Mommy and Daddy of the little girl…
OMG I laughed so hard I have tears in my eyes. We have 2 of those things, and I took the batteries out because it was so damn annoying. We finally put them in, and my son wailed when the “I love you” song came on, so I thought we could just take the batteries out again. Now he loves it so I’m screwed. Your picture of that stupid thing is awesome.
We had the Bunny till I accidently ran over an ear with the vacuum. Then we decided to send it back to Fisher Price because of a recall and the melted mangled ear.
Oh, lord, that puppy! My son got one for Christmas last year when he was 11 weeks old and going through phase of screaming instead of napping. On Christmas Eve, he finally fell asleep after 6 hours of bouncing and so on. Five minutes later we heard “peek-a-boo, I see you!” in his room. My hubs ran wide-eyed down the hall, grabbed the puppy, and ran back. The dog was singing the whole damn time. A slight breeze will set it off! (p.s.: It now lives at Grandma’s house.)
My children have a hand me down pooh dolls with the whole alphabet on it. He sings at night when NO one is awake. Needless to say he is with out batteries and in the closet.
Oh no. We just bought this for my daughter for Christmas. I hope I don’t regret this. lol
OMG , my toddler LOVES this toy, but he only likes two songs so he presses the paw until that song comes on , over and over and over again, i hear it in my sleep… sad thing is, this is going to be around for a while cause i know my newborn daughter is going to love it when she turns about 6 months…
my daughter has that dog too! She didn’t really care about it too much which i was happy about. it was put away in a box 3 years ago. then we moved to another country and somehow (i really really don’t know how it found its way into that box) I found it while i was unpacking and after 3 years it came back to life! My 1 year old actually laughs and claps at it, so cute and annoying at the same time. I have never ever even tried to change the batteries and its still going! i am reminded of it ever few hours as it is now in our living room at the bottom of the toy box.
Oh my goodness that is SO TRUE! We have a talking LeapFrog elephant in our car for that exact reason. You are so funny Amber…the machete comment had me rolling on the ground!!! Thank you for the laugh!
Dolls that talk are freaky. But we did get a Little Mommy doll for the two year old for Christmas that talks with every shake and roll. Something to do with helping her practice listening and hearing as she has hearing issues …however any misbehavior from this doll and I will banish it to the car too! We also have those wooden board puzzles that suddenly come alive with sound every time the light switch turns off.
Oh I have to comment because I have that blasted thing and you are SO right. Unfortunately we haven’t learned our lesson with our 4.5 year old (it was his as a baby) since we bought Leap Frog Violet for our 2 year old for Christmas, LOL.
Violet is nowhere near as sensitive as this dog. Plus, you can program which songs she sings, so she isn’t even in the same annoyance category.
My 4 1/2 year old loves her violet so much even now despite it smelling like puke/moldy milk/just plain yuck since she’s had it since she was 6 months old lol she even ended up with baby violet and so both go with her everywhere or else the world ends lol
ROFL!!! I love your blog so much! It bring happiness to my boring days at work! I LOVED the part where you started talking to it in the car…so something I would do too! Also glad that we haven’t gotten one of these, thought about it for our 1.5 yr old but didn’t…yet…LOL
I can’t stop laughing. He is in my back seat now just out of reach and I always forget him until I am moving. You just made my day. The other one is the green caterpillar with numbers and letters on his many feet. That thing never shuts up!
i sell that stupid dog. i work in a toy store, so we have shelves and shelves of motion-detecting, interactive crap. you know how annoying it is to have one dog do it… now imagine, the store has closed for the night. you and your fellow co-workers are cleaning up. you walk down an aisle to put something away, and suddenly, 20 dolls start shouting “peekaboo, i see you!” and “play with me!” and “i’ll kill you in your sleep!” at you. it’s super-creepy, i’m telling you.
Haha, we have a talking Thomas the train. He says, “if you want to go to boulder mountain, say ‘let’s go Thomas!'” My son used to get the pee scared out of him when it talked to him. Now he just responds, “maybe later” or “how about we go to the grocey ‘tore in’ted?” LOL!
This cracked me up. I used to teach students with disabilities and one of my kids had this toy – we kept it in our classroom for him. But one of his classmates loved it and she soon became it’s “owner.” Which was fine with the first boy. But we’d be having some down time – everyone quiet – and suddenly this high pitched voice (in my room of children who are non-verbal!), “LET’S PLAY!” or “I LOVE YOU!” Super-creeeepy. LOL
Too flippin hilarious!!!! Ours was also confined to the car…until we cleaned it out. When that happens, everything that doesn’t belong there (think most everything you can see, and even some things you can’t) ends up in a plastic bag to “go through later”. Which of course never happens. So along with a few other plastic bags of toys from the car, the dog is still sitting patiently waiting to be rescued. It’s been a year. I think it’s donation time.
HA! We used to have that dog too, and it would make noise even if it was in a dark room with nobody in there. Seriously! I think it’s living in a closet at my parents’ house now. With its batteries dislodged.
That’s a “car only” toy for us too!!! 🙂
Oh no. I JUST purchased this for my 9 month old. I got an excellent deal on it and couldn’t pass it up. Now I’m pretty sure I’m going to regret being a bargain shopper (aka cheapskate).
Ya know, if you keep drawing un-crappy pictures like the one of the dog, you’ll have to change the name of your blog.
haha we have that doll. i love that it does so many different things, but its so sensitive that when you hold it it accidentally plays another song instead of finishing one. i dont understand why it says “sooo big”. what sucks is when you bump into it while trying to carefully walk away from sleeping baby.
Oh my, the talking toys…..just be glad you have boys because I have 2 girls and someone gifted us that stupid talking baby doll. It always freaked me out and reminded me of the baby in the twilight zone. I have a post about it here…. http://3valiantnuts.blogspot.com/2008/11/baby-alive-means-baby-is-alive.html
but i love it though and i luckily never get tired of kids songs
Hahahaha I have this dog, ours isn’t as sensitive as that but the only paw my son seems to like the the on/off one so all I hear is “it’s learning time woof woof, let’s sing and play games *stupid bell ringing* and goodbye
My 2 year old sleeps with that dog every night (yes, it is annoying). Awesome ‘crappy’ rendition of it btw. you have to turn it off by pushing the (left/yellow I think) foot twice… or unvelcro-ing the back and switch it to off.
LMAO – you know how it also says “soooo big” at one point? Yeah . . . my husband and I were having a rare moment of an attempt at intimacy and he rolled over on it and it told him he was soo big . . . given the context . . . yeah . . . it killed the mood, but was pretty funny 😉
mwah, ha, ha, ha, ha! We have this one too. I tried hiding it up top in the cupboard but forgot to take out the batteries and it started whispering evil things to the children while they were sleeping… oooopppps. I meant they heard it and made me get it back down! doh! It has so thoroughly indoctrinated me after five years that when I’m really losing the plot but still need to entertain the kids and muster some fake enthusiasm and energy for the task I find myself saying ‘Let’s SING! And play GAMES!’
Oh, good lord the dog! My son got that for Yule last year. I had heard horror stories about the dog and I was less than thrilled with this “great gift” my grandparents were so excited to give. We had it for all of 5 hours before the dog peed on it! . . . I gave the (real) dog a treat . . and put the toy in the garbage can . . . damn thing talked to me from inside the garbage for 3 days before I finally got to take it out to the curb! Scared the livin’ daylights out of me several times in the process.
Oh yes, I’m pretty sure my husband needs on in his car too! lol
Ha! That is funny to think of a talking wrapped present!
Amen to it all, including the sticks and stones 🙂
We had that dog. It was a gift from my MIL and she ripped it out of its original packaging before I could say “Oh, how nice. Let’s put it away for right now since you’re so sticky.”
It never shut up. Ever. I threw it in the trunk and I could still hear it everytime we rumbled over a pothole or turned a corner.
Then one blessed day, we went on long car ride. The dog was allowed in the backseat. The toddler girl got car sick and vomited which is HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE when it is done in a car seat.
Except…
this time…
She puked on the Puppy. It was determined (by me) that he could not be saved. And so Puppy was discarded, tied in a plastic bag in the garbage can of a reststop.
I would say “quietly” discarded but truth be told he was still singing.
Toddler girl never even missed him.
That. Is. Awesome.
ROFLMAO!!! And yeah, the ones that walk and talk are a little too much like “Chuckie”.
Maybe “Slightly Un-Crappy Pictures” for a name?
Hi-larious. My sis in law actually warned me about this dog when I was pregnant with my son. She said there was no way to turn it off/shut him up, so be warned!
We ended up getting him “My Pal Scout” the one you can program with your computer via USB, hooks up to the Cyberdyne network, and says your kids name, favorite color, favorite food, etc. And the best feature? An off button on this bottom left paw.
This lived in out bedroom closet until Christmas, three years ago, because its required to hide presents from a 9 month old.. we would be sleeping in bed startled awake by ‘I love you’ since then we call it the evil possessed dog…
Funniest scenario ever.
Your dog sure showed it who was the alpha!
My son loved that dog (the original one) when he was little. We played with it a lot. I must be weird because I never thought it was annoying. I actually gave it as a new baby gift to 5 other people. ha!
Oh, my! I laughed so hard, people were coming down the hall to my office to make sure I didn’t need some professional help! We have one of those, it is the most annoying thing ever. I’m thinking of sending it to live at Nana’s house! I’m glad we don’t have the one that moves!
Aww, I just had to throw our dog away because a lot of his bits didn’t work any more. I got it imported from aussie 7 years ago for my daughter before she was born – thats how desperate I was!! I cried when I had to put him in the bin. Haven’t bought another one for my 17 month twins though……
OMG that is hilarious, we say that too!
I hate that dog!! We got it for my son’s first birthday so it’s almost a year old itself. After 3 days it moved to the top shelf of the closet. Somehow it found it’s way out about 3 mos ago and has become my official “kick toy”. When I am annoyed and the kids aren’t there to witness it, I kick the dog. It still wants to be my friend, but that is just because it is a co-dependent masochistic loser and I am so much better than it!!!
Violet shuts up. Do not fear. Or at least ours did.
When my son was about 18 months a girlfriend bought him the most hideous toy ever. It’s a wooden toy from Ikea that has a long handle and a cylinder with wooden pegs. As you drag it across the floor the cylinder turns and the pegs fall back and forth on each rotation. You can imagine my distress as our house has tiled floors, a fact that I am very grateful for in flu season (and potty training), but an entire marching band in my living room couldn’t make as much noise! Needless to say I have not made peace with it and have stashed it in the farthest reaches of my closet. Oh, and you talking back to the possessed toy had me rolling on the floor 😀
I just cried Laughing……This is the 1st time I’ve read your blog and I LOVED it so much, perfect Friday Morning wake up.
We had one of these Puppy’s and his batteries “accidentially” coroded in his back whilst stored in the garage between children. My husband saw them in k-mart a couple of months and was so excited he nearly wet himself because he really wants one for the 18mth old.
Not sure how I did it, but convinced him otherwise, oh so thnkful that he’s no longer interested in purchasing – A chucky reincarnated PUPPY!!!
Thank you so much for the laugh (and the AWESOME pics)
Sounds like my dads talking Thomas the tank engine. (He’s into trains!) Stupid things would chat to each other and they were in the loft! Scary when it wakes u in the night when you go to visit!
I bought this for my 7 month old. LOL! Oh boy. I’m in for a treat!
We have an entire bag of giant plastic electronicky talking w annoying lights toys in our car that our very generous grandparents gave wo receipts & packaging so we coulldnt return them.
I have received that toy as a gift for my kids now THREE DIFFERENT TIMES! And I have every single thing memorized.
We got one as a shower gift. We call him the emotionally needy puppy. The 9 month boy *loves* him!! Mama and Papa HATE it.
Okay. Never had one of these and kinda glad we never did. However, we do have baby dolls that cry, coo, laugh, go psychotic on you even when there is no movement in the room. Scares the hell out of me when I go down to the playroom and hear this cackling laugh from hell coming from the other side of the room under a pile of stuffed toys. I just have to calmly remind myself that it is that damn baby doll and RUN UPSTAIRS AS FAST AS I CAN!!! I usually forget what I went down there to get in the first place and I’m not going back down to get it.
Your idea of banning these types of toys to the car is genius. So mad I didn’t think of it myself! Thanks!
Just bought this for my 10 month old and one for a friend’s baby for Christmas. They came in a box from Target and were talking non stop when they arrived. My 16 year old told me that I needed to open it and make them stop.
Every time someone gets my kids a toy that talks, sings, plays music or moves, I always have the exact same thought: This person must hate me. And the reason I think this, is that whenever I stand in the toy aisle at the store, I always have the same thoughts running through my head. “This toy would really spark that kid’s imagination, but this one would put his mother in a straight-jacket in a week.” Cue maniacal laughter.
Oh my gosh, I laughed out loud at this! So been there.
Yes, Becky. Volume control must be mandatory, or we get to return the toy to either the manufacturer or the giver and tape it to their heads.
I cried laughing. I have been afraid of these dogs ever since me techno toy crazy friend showed me her daughter’s.
They make bears like this too. Same friend bought one for my new baby girl right before she was born… “I am a bear, a hungry bear, a happy bear, a sleepy bear, I am a bear, a friendly bear, won’t you play with me?”
Turns out, said beautiful baby girl is deaf. The irony is astounding.
Man I think it must be written somewhere that it’s mandatory for grandparents/aunts/uncles/friends to buy every new child that stupid dog. My son has one, as do all of my siblings’ children. We promptly took the batteries out of ours and gave it to Goodwill. Thanks a lot Grandma!
Trying to smother my inadvertent guffaws at work. Way too damn funny.
I haven’t HEARD the dog in 4.5 years, and I could hear that dog when I read it too! Way to bring up repressed memories.
Brilliant as always! We received that dog 5 years ago when my oldest was 7m. I can’t stand it. I’m going to remember that voice on my death bed. We donated it about 2 years ago when the kids weren’t paying attention. One of the best days of my life. I still feel bad for unloading it on some poor charity.
we’ve already touched on the fact that my five-year-old makes me read your blog like it’s story time. SO, today just as i pull this up, in she comes to jump on my lap and demand i read. about two seconds pass before she realizes she once had that dog. and, what happened to it? “where’s my dog like that, mama?” lord.
i’m 100% sure ours was possessed, so it uh, ran away from home. xo
My son (now 2) is TERRIFIED of this dog!!!! I tried to stash it in the Goodwill pile and my mother in law insisted on taking it to her house – where he’s still ABSOLUTELY FRIGHTENED of the thing. And I know why – because he is a little kid, he can sense things, and it’s possessed!!!!
LOL!!! WE have what I think is the “girl” version of that thing – it’s never come out of the box or inside the house. I think I’ll dig that thing up and go donate it! Thanks for the reminder. 🙂
Oh funny!!
My daughter got a “stacker” from her uncle. I like to call it the toy from hell because it actually really is, it has 2 buttons, one for when the big stars go onto the pole so it make pretty, but annoying music and flashy light, the other for when the smiley face star goes on top which does the same, so really no mater what you do it makes a sound. My daughter however likes to sit there and press the buttons over and over. Which would be fine, except it has no freaken off switch, and the batteries are a misson to get in to.
It also happens to be her fav toy
*sigh*
A friend ‘thankfully’ regifted the dog to us a few years ago. I never knew that we could hear sounds from the kitchen through the heating pipes- until one night when everyone was sleeping, I hear the dog going through its routine. Images of Chucky popped into my mind. I stumbled downstairs and buried that thing in the basement until donation time came around.
LOL! I am so glad I bought my 1yr old the FisherPrice Learning Vacuum Cleaner instead of the dog! It is quite annoying it sings really catchy songs that I end up singing in the shower *washing hair, Oh Do Da Day! Tomorrow we will learn some more!* I almost broke my neck tripping over it in the dark because he “vacuums” the entire house all day!
Omg I love this post! Perfect for Christmas
“like”
Along the line of ‘gifts not to buy my kids’…I live abroad where there aren’t such stringent child safety standards. Last holiday season a relative gave me $ to buy gifts for my kids- who have tons of stuff. So I looked for something they didn’t have. For my 3 yr old son I found a box that contained shape patterns for him to copy- it looked educational and entertaining and not as cheap asthe quality of a lot of the other toys. When he opened it we were all shocked to see that they way he needed to copy the patterns was using real- 1/4 in. pointy metal nails and a hard plastic hammer. To remove the nails he needed to pull the shapes up- resulting in flying, pointy, 1/4 in nails! For real! I double-checked and the packaging said ages 3+! It was months until I was able to sneak that one out….
Oh. I love toys that make noise…. Yeah right. I put scotch tape over the sound holes of most of the super loud toys in our house. I also sometimes find them stashed away in the closet or on the top of the refrigerator and wonder when I put them there!! The most annoying one is the Fischer Price drum. For some reason it is super loud and repetitive. Maybe it is a brand thing?
yep. been there. had the dog. gave away the dog. Totally heard the voice “it’s learning time!” when I read it – and you had his face spot on 🙂
SO FUNNY! I love the visual of the alone time in the car. My daughter was terrified of this toy when she was younger, the spontaneous chatter was just too scary for her.
That toy can be creepy. I tried to hide it away in my son’s closet and I started hearing it in the monitor at night. CREEPY! So it got relocated to a box, in the garage. And I make sure i lock the door to keep it from getting in!
To funny my kids never recieved one of those but they have puzzles that are supposed to say numbers but instead rap the number fourteen untill I pick it up and throw it against the wall.
Me too! This dog has been resurrected at our house too with the new little one. She loves music, so its the perfect toy for her. But when she was napping the other day, it randomly started saying things & creeped me out!! Thankfully a battery change seems to have solved it. For now.
This post is hilarious! This thing has been in my baby’s closet since she was born (still in the box) and always goes off at the weirdest times. I usually hear it singing a song or asking to be friends over the monitor at like 2am. Creepiest ever.
We have the Violet programmable dog, and our daughter will roll over on it at night.. it starts barking and says her name. Aahhhhh… kill it, kill it with fire!
this is hilarious. toys that talk scare me and I know it is because of that living doll episode of twilight zone. even as a little girl i was afraid my american girl doll might wake up and try to massacre my family while we were sleeping!
We have this toy. I’ve designated it to my mother’s house. Along with the V-Tech ladybug thing that has no volume switch and it’s only setting is FREAKING ANNOYING. Instead I must listen to the Fisher Price laptop.
“Eight. oHHHH-Cho. Eight. oHHHH-Cho. Eight. oHHHH-Cho.”
My husband can’t understand how I can learn the words of a song on a new toy so fast… Hmmmmm.
We have gone through TWO of those dogs.. my daughter LOVED it and then my son found it one day after it was long put away and he loves it too. I couldn’t help but hear that voice in my head reading your post!! TOO FUNNY!
Bahaa rocks & sticks!! Love your blog!
My Grandma got that toy for my youngest for Christmas. Lord, help me.
Oh this so happened to me!!! Totally killed the mood. And it went in the trash after that. Scared me. That thing was possessed.
We also have a two year old who has this dog and let me tell you, it is of the devil. We affectionately refer to is as turrets-puppy due to the constant stream of nonsense it spews at the slightest touch or jostle. It will mostly make syllabic noises for 30 seconds or so until it decides on a song. Sometime it just will shout “It’s Learning Time” when sitting all alone in the room with no one near it. Recently my cousin flew down with her 9 month old son. She asked if I could drop off some toys to our grandmother’s house (where they were staying) so she didn’t have to bring so many down. Needless to say, she has now inherited turrets-puppy.
We had a Thomas the Train laptop that would do this. My son kept asking where the Thomas music was coming from.
I almost bought this for my son last year. Now I’m kind of glad I didn’t lol
Love the mad face…hilarious!
We were gifted the Minnie Mouse version of this toy from our soon-to-be-moving-out across the street neighbors who were cleaning out their garage. It was brand new, but failed to be gifted until it hit our doorstep. In that want-to-scratch-out-my-eyes stupid sweet Mickey’s Clubhouse Minnie Mouse voice, she says, “Find the square!” “Where’s the triangle?” “It’s time to learn!” I hate her voice. And, my almost-3 year old figured out how to make a beat box out of this stupid doll…so whenever she notices it, she grabs it and makes is say, “Lets, lets, (then she gets faster at it), le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le, le….le, le, le, le, le, le…” I hate that doll, and quite possibly, may never take her to Disneyland for fear there are more there like it. (Of course, we will take her there, but I won’t hesitate to bitch about whatever dumbshit toy I excitedly get in exchange for my little girl’s gleaming, wide-eyed smile…for $50.
Yep, have this toy, I can not stand it, I find it’s voice very creepy but my daughter loves it, so it stays. The things we do…
Agh- this dog is on my son’s Christmas list, & I’m pretty sure my brother in law got it for him. Maybe our dog will live in the car, too.
We have the dog, too! And, of course, it was a gift. I laughed so hard because everything you said about the dogs (and gifts, including rocks and sticks) is so true! By the way, have you seen this? http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/01/the-5-best-toys-of-all-time/all/1 Rocks and sticks (and a cardboard box) with the picture books to which he links really would be a cool present. 🙂
lmao, DO IT!!!
Tears….of laughter. My 14 month olds is here sitting looking at me. Ready to sing and play games when she wakes from her nap.
lol, looks like I missed out on that one! 🙂
I found a great deal on some Cars 2 stuffed pillow things that you hit and they talk. I stuck them in the car, hiding them until Christmas. As we drove though, they talked, alerting my daughter that there were Cars 2 characters hiding in that bag mom didn’t let her look at… kind of ruined the surprise.
Best thing? You can’t dislodge their batteries.
Oh, one more thing. My daughter has a doll that talks, but you have to touch her to set her off, and then she keeps up talking until you leave her alone long enough that she goes to sleep. In the car, that thing won’t shut up. I’m… not nice to that doll. “Love me momma!” or “feed me!” get responses of “NO!” and even being thrown across the room into the box. This is a great stress relief… until you see your daughter looking horrified that at a request of dolly love you slammed it into the toy-box… yeah. I just avoid the thing now.
Ours lives in the car too! My husband and I refer to it as Satan’s puppy. I hid it in the basement for a while but it would scare me to death every time I went down to do the laundry.
LOL – here’s our toy story to add to the list: Tickle-Me-Elmo started cackling manaically in my 4-month-old’s closet (yes, of course on a morning when she was sleeping in) because of bugged batteries. (“hahahaha, let’s play…hahahaha”) It’s a horrible noise alone, but coming over the scratchy monitor was like listening to a horror flick.
He woke me up. He sounded possessed. His time was over. He no longer lives with us…and, it sounds like we’ll be avoiding the dog now, too.
Thanks for the laugh!
SO funny! It’s our first baby-filled Christmas over here, so I’m betting this lovely toy is on its way to our home…or garage, perhaps.
Thanks for the laughs, and warning!
My daughters went in the cupboard after about two weeks and it lived there with the noisey wiggles guitar for quite some time. It never saw the light of day in my house.
We had a toy like that and it played “shave and a haircut” whenever you bumped it. But we “lost” it after it started going off randomly in the middle of the night (totally creepy). BTW, Pretty sure the stuffed dog is your best crappy picture rendition to date (at least in looking like what it is, lol) LOVE your blog 🙂
Awww, you made a fwiend! One of Miss L’s friends had this toy. Her mom told me they got it two years ago, and only just now put the batteries back in. It was THAT annoying.
We have the purple “girl” one and I was putting my non-verbal one year old to bed and tucked her in, said “I love you!” and stepped on that g@dd@mn dog and it said “I love you!” and I about plotzed myself.
I never laugh in the office (it’s an angry office) but I was literally laughing out loud. I literally mean literally. We had this dog for my now almost 7 y.o. daughter and I hated this thing. Do you ears hang low do they wobble to and fro? Husband and I were just talking about this toy and singing the x-rated version of this song. Ah, good times! Thanks for the funny funny post!
We have one of those…batteries died about two years ago…and unfortunately they don’t make those batteries anymore. Sucks I know! But, sometimes these things happen. 🙂
We have that dog, and he was the only thing that made my son happy in the car when he was about 7 months old!
We had one too. I finally managed to put in a consignment sale….where there literally ten of the things on the same table. Should have taken a picture!
We have a box in the garage of all the battery operated toys that have Suffered a Horrible, Mysterious Fate and Somehow Disappeared While You Were Sleeping. I don’t understand where these toys keep going. Sorry about that, kids….
Fisher Price toys in general bug me. My dad wanted to buy my daughter a Fisher Price tea set for Christmas, and Amazon said that the tea set required batteries. Why on earth would a tea set require batteries? I didn’t want to find out, so I asked him to buy her a nice wooden tea set instead.
(Thanks to your illustration above, I am envisioning an angry tea pot with vicious tea cup minions chanting, “IT’S TEA TIME!”)
LOVED this post! Omg, I’m dying over here. We have that puppy too and it (thankfully) also lives at Grandma’s house. Do any of you have the Elmo jack in the box? Right now it’s in my car to be donated and I keep forgetting to drop the bag off. Every bump I hear “what’s going out there?” LOL
That dog is straight from Satan’s loins. We’ve received two of them of twice. DEVIL’S WORK.
Of course we’ve got that dog… We got the very first generation of it – the one without the heart on its chest (you pressed its nose instead). It wasn’t nearly as sensitive as the newer versions and Gracie, my oldest, loved it. She named it Toe (after Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes). But alas, she threw up on it and didn’t tell me. I found it by playing the “What on earth is that smell and where is it coming from?” game. By that point in time, the thing was ruined. So we bought a new one and promptly hid it in the closet with no batteries until our second daughter came around. It made a 2 week appearance before finding its way back to the hidey hole.
The toy that really freaks me out though is this weird Baby Alive doll. ( http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Alive-Go-Bye/dp/B00160GKX4/ref=dp_cp_ob_t_title_1 ) When it’s turned on to Demo mode, you have to press its belly button to get it to make its noises. The thing says, “goo goo gah gah,” etc, but the thing that’s creepy is the gurgle it does. It sounds like a Furby on crack. It’s not really so bad on demo mode though, because like I said, it only makes noises when the belly button is pushed. However, it often times gets turned to “on” mode, which means that the noises are triggered by any shift in the environment. Step into the room and it makes a noise. Sneeze too hard and it makes a noise. Etc.
One night, I was alone in the house. It was the middle of the night and all the lights were off. I had gotten out of bed to get a cough drop when all of a sudden I hear a demonic “Grrlllrllll….” from the girls’ room. Freaked. Me. Out. I was so groggy from having just woken up and being sick that it took me several minutes to realize that there wasn’t a miniature demon in my kids’ room, but that it was actually Baby Alive.
And that’s how Toe came to have a baby friend.
Ha I keep ours in the car too, but ours is the even older non sensitive version that only talks when you push his buttons. It’s gotta be at least six years old now.
We have that tea set and I keep in on the random noise mode instead of counting or abc mode, cause when you tip the pot it makes a pouring noise, I thought was way cute.
OMG!!!! My husband was just complaining this toy tonight. He said that they go off every time he walks by one of them. (Yes, I said “they.” We actually managed to end up with two of these things.) Unfortunately, my three-year-old and nine-month-old actually love them, so there is no getting rid of them. On the upside, it’s one less toy for them to fight over. It’s like a choir of demented cherubs when the girls play with them at the same time. LOL Thanks for sharing this story. I needed the laugh today.
Ours was banished to a life in the car as well.
Oh yeah, we have the girl version of that dog. I don’t know how many times I have been sitting on the couch, not moving, while the baby is sleeping and all of a sudden that dog starts giggling and singing. Definitely creepy! We have certainly employed the power button and keep it off!
A few years ago my kids had the most awful Elmo doll that talked. One night when my brother was house sitting, he flipped on the lights of our completely empty house, and heard a disembodied voice say “Peek-a-boo, I see you!” Stupid Elmo doll was gone when we got home!
The My Buddy doll used to make me cry as a kid. And I think I was 11 at the time. Talking dolls are just wrong and creepy.
The My Buddy doll used to make me cry. And I think I was 11 at the time. Talking dolls are just wrong and creepy.
Oh my gosh. My son got one of these for his first birthday a year ago. It was successfully hidden at grandmas house until a few days ago, when he dragged it home. He kept playing the “Head Shoulders Knees and Toes” song over and over and over and over again in the car on the way home, so we had to sneak and turn him off, then tell my son that he must be broken. “Soooo big”
head, shoulder, knees and toes, knees and toes….LOL
Me too. Dog is long gone though.
Thank you! We don’t have one of these and I have now vowed that we will never have one of these. I will protect my home at all costs…..
OMG that thing drives me nuts! It’s especially NOT fun when you walk by it in the dead of night to get a crying kid from another room and it says “HUG ME!” really loud and scares the crap out of you…somehow we ended up with 3….
ha ha ha! First of all, whenever I read your posts I sit in my chair and laugh until I cry and my husband looks at me like I’m crazy and I try to explain and occasionally he understands but more often than not he just sort of nods. But right now I’m sitting here laughing hysterically because talking toys are freaky and the other night I went to check on my 20 month old and while in his room I SWEAR I heard a little toy voice say “Peek a boo, I see you” but I also swear we don’t have a toy that says that particular phrase! So, now I’m sure that the ghost of some toy is trying to get me. Also, the other day at Walmart I picked up 2 talking Cars 2 toy cars (1 for a cousin and 1 for my son) and between the toy department and the cash register I made the decision that there was no way that toy was coming to my house it was too noisy and sensitive. But I still bought the one for the other person… so now they will probably give us a revenge gift someday.
Ah yes, we’ve got one too but it’s in the closet. We use the LF Scout though. My son plays the bedtime music in the middle of the night and sometimes falls back to sleep – win for me!
I’m laughing at your sticks and stones! Didn’t you used to make wooden toys on Etsy? Are you the same person?
We have two of these, as well. (*Sigh*) BUT – I wanted to point out that the older one we have is much less sensitive than the newer one (neither of ours walk, move or have machetes 😉 ). The older one (from about 3 years ago) my daughter actually had trouble getting to talk when she was younger. But if you even LOOK at the newer one (purchased about a year ago), it starts yapping away. If they could actually get the sensitivity somewhere in between the two, it would be a great toy.
Your post, though, had me in tears from laughing so hard.
Uh oh. Busted.
Someone just emailed that link to me! Love it and it is so true.
There is an x-rated version? Oh…I can imagine what it is! lol
Toe. LOL! And that doll sounds way worse.
My Buddy! I forgot about that doll! Now that was a creepy doll.
We embraced the dog at first…until it started exhibiting some weird Stockholm syndrome symptoms by saying, “I love you,” every time our sadistic toddler stepped on it or bashed it up against the wall.
In person! I am woodmouse on Etsy. In hibernation though because my time is spent…well, here.
Santa is bringing that dog for my youngest this year. She has a possibly unhealthy obsession with dogs for being the tender age of 15 months, and every time we walk past that damn thing in the store, she starts reaching out of the cart, grabbing at it with her hands and going “eh! eh! eh! EH!”
Santa must be a big douche, since he’s also bringing my 5 year old one of those fur-real friends. *sigh*
Omg, Best post Ever!!! I laughed SO hard at the “angry face.” haha. And now I don’t know whether to be happy or apprehensive about this toy… I bought one (Sans dancing and machete version) for my toddler for Christmas this year. At least I got it on a huge sale. Thanks for the much needed belly laugh Amber!!!
I put duct tape over the speakers in toys that are too loud. It dampens the sound.
This reminds me of a bear my uncle gave my family when we were kids. It was one that had 100+ sayings it would say when you squeezed its hand. Only it didn’t. It got stuck on two or three, until it was alone in the room. Then, it would start saying all of them. Without anyone there to squeeze the thing’s hand…
OMG I can’t belive you are woodmouse! I love your toys!
ME TOO!!
we put clear shipping tap over the speakers
I am now a little sad/frightened that I got this stashed for my 1 yr old for Christmas!
Holy crap, I had the same experience. We also received it as a present 2 years ago. The activation out of the blue wigged me out. I shoved it in my car to donate or aka ‘lose it’.
My husband found it one day and gave it to my daughter to play with the in car. It then became the ‘car toy’ until DH realized it was possessed and would start talking with every bump or engine vibration.
He took the batteries out but our daughter wanted to know why her puppy wasn’t talking and singing to her.
I thought we add it to our donation pile last year but as I was pulling out the infant toys for #2, I found it in the bottom of the toy box.
Help! I think I’m going to hide our knives just in case… 🙂
I too am totally freaked out by talking dolls because “my name is Talking Tina, I am a talking doll.” Totally before my time, but for some reason I saw it as a child and am forever scarred. I don’t have the dog, thank God, but as usual, I laughed my butt off.
Hahaha! My in-laws have the dog at their place for when they look after my daughter. My favourite experience with the dog was when my then 18 month old daughter was about to go into full-on tanty mode she threw herself onto the dog and it started singing “If you’re happy and you know it” – she immediately sat up, smiled and started clapping along. Like flicking a switch! I was considering getting one for our house for it’s tantrum-busting properties but now I’m reconsidering… 😉
Uh… found the link to your Other blog. Why didn’t you tell us you’re so crafty?!? I… I think I love you?? lol.
Oh my gosh, that was your funniest one yet! I was laughing so hard I teared up… thanks for that!
My dad gave this dog to my baby this year and I hate it!! She wants it all the time, with the talking on so she can’t even go to sleep because it always starts talking or playing out of nowhere and the kids just keep repeating the “I love you” song, which is sweet, but very annoying after about the 8th time. I actually hate this dog, but I can’t get rid o it. Thank you for sharing the idea of leaving it in the car!
I so want you to do the what not to buy my kids ever post 🙂
Sounds seriously scary. We had a battery-enlivened Thomas the Tank Engine train that went senile – it would start ‘chuffing’ in the middle of the night, all alone in the box of trains. We’d be woken up by it from upstairs! It always took a good few minutes to tip out the train tracks and related crap to find the little beggar and then bury him in the garden.
Wow, too funny! We must have had an earlier (6-7 yrs old) model because ours never once made a sound without a person purposely pressing on it. So glad I just got to read about the posessed puppy instead of having one.
Our nigttime kid waking toys is always those sound puzzles. Not only does turning the lights off set the sound going but so does the sun setting except that it tends to get confused and go off several times. And of course we can never find all the pieces.
This toy grew on me too. It entertains my daughter and gives me a few ‘me time’ moments. 😉 She’ll happily sing along with that dog. Thank you dog for the ‘me time’ moments. 🙂
Annnnd now I know what to get for my cousin’s 18 month old for Christmas! HA! Perfect payback for all the loud/creepy stuff my kids got when they were that age!!
Oh no, not that damn dog! My youngest was given one this year, the new version which moves. The only fun we’ve had it with it was when she insisted the cat play with the dog. The cat was not amused and the dog is now battle scarred. Serves him right, little fucker.
HAHAHAHAAA!!!! We got that as a gift too! I have that toy!! Hidden in my basement. I’m going to give it away, and I think I’ll link to this for my disclaimer
Oh my gosh, yes it is super sensitive.
I also have an issue with toys that say, “I love you.” “Tad” says that too. I half-jokingly have said, “No no no. Toys don’t love you. You can’t get love from things. That think is lying to you.”
We have a fisher price tea set that also has “learning time!” It also lives in the car. Everytime I make a hard stop or turn I hear, “(liquid pouring)Mmmmm!!!!! More please!! Why THANK you!!!” And its in a British accent.
I found a video the other day of my daughter playing with hers. She used to love chewing his ears, so we’d get “ear, blue ear blu, blu ear” Then she’d get excited wriggle her feet and kick him “got my hands got my… blue ear. Heads, Shoulders. Blue ear.”
In the background you can hear my husband asking if we can take the batteries out, put it in the bin, dismember it. But our daughter loved it. I’ve accidentally on purpose forgotten when it is, so we may not be tortured by our 9 week old son discovering it.
I think the thing I hate most is that it gets the words to “Do your ears hang low” wrong.
BWAHAHA! Glad it’s not just me that happens to 😉
So dang funny! We have the pink version. My husband and I have started using some of her lingo. Whenever our stomach’s hurt we say “Tummy” in that drawn out baby voice the dog has. So funny.
We have this puppy and I liked it until one morning at 3am it woke me and my husband up by saying “peek a boo I see you”
This dog is definitely sitting under our Christmas tree, wrapped right now. My mom bought it for my daughter. Can’t wait! HAHA!
I think I just peed my pants!
I like when the batteries start running down and the anomalous messages will start running on a loop for NO reason, in a weird, low pitch slow rumble. like satan’s own fisher-price toy. HHHHUUUUUGGGG MMEEEEEE. . . yeah. . no.
OMG, I hate this stupid puppy! We got it as a gift (without receipt) and I went around to every stinkin’ store trying to return it. (Apparently each box has a store-specific code). Eventually I ended up donating the thing. It’s like a psychotic clown that needs attention! Not to mention, it has the MOST annoying voice EVER!
In our house we prefer Scout the LeapFrog puppy!
I have it and I hate it, I cannot wait for the day my son finally wants to give it up so I can sacrifice it back to the firey pits of which it came from.
Love your posts. We had the kids convinced that batteries just died and then you had to play with the toy as is…until the Grandparents helpfully showed them that batteries could be replaced.
Exactly.
Ahahahaha! My son has that, and, like an idiot, I thought to get him the one that dances.
Thank god whatever universal forces stopped me from finding it. I got him a drumset instead.
XD
My son got one of those for his first birthday (he’s 2 now), and I was *ecstatic* when the batteries ran out. That …thing… is fairly evil, I’m sure. It would randomly talk and make noise when there was NO activity ANYWHERE near it. Nobody walking by, nobody shaking the floor, not even anyone talking. Just sitting on the couch, surfing the web, being quiet, and suddenly we’d hear, “LET’S LAUGH AND PLAY GAMES! MUERAHAHAHA!” (Okay, maybe the laugh is an exaggeration, but I swear, it did it on the inside….) So now it’s sitting on the floor by the dining room, being simply a stuffed animal. That is no longer haunted.
All toys like that should have off switches! I have had more toys talking in the middle of the night…creepy!
My daughter LOVES this dog. And it ALWAYS goes off at the most inopportune times. Ours is overly sensitive and the songs cut each other off. I swear that dog is going to give my child ADHD. The love/hate relationship with this dog appears to be never ending.
My son received said Puppy on his first birthday. It still sits above his bed and we still use it for the three minutes of snuggle time before “night-night”. He’ll be 7 next month. “One minute, two minutes, three minutes til night-night” sigh.
I knew instantly what toy you were talking about before even seeing the picture! A friend of ours who is usually a rock and stick type of gifter gave us this, with the comment, “Someone gave us one and we thought you’d like it too” Maybe she was susceptible to the puppy’s powers of possession while she was in the sleep deprived post pardum state.. but thankfully none of my kids like the danged thing. It keeps trying to get our attention from the bottom of the toy box though. Creepy.
My son has this too. He only likes a few songs on it. So basically we get a dance performance to the same song over and over again. It is cute but I end up with it stuck in my head all day. When we travel to my in-laws(3 hours) he plays the same song over and over and over. I want to hate it but it too has grown on me.
I love this toy for the sheer comic relief it adds to our family. I’ll never forget right after our daughter got it for her birthday, she had accidentally left it in the bathroom after brushing her teeth. The night went on and we forgot about the dog. Well at around 3am my husband got up to use the bathroom. He stumbles in into the bathroom in the dark trying not to wake the baby in the next room and just as he sat down he hears “PEEK A BOO! I SEE YOU!!!” Scared the life out of him. As he explains “it was a good thing I was already sitting!!!”
I cried while reading your post. We have that dog, and I hate it. HATE it. Creeps me out, and it won’t stop talking. It was hidden in the closet where the annoying toys go, and randomly, it will make noises. Thank you MIL!!
We were given the dog when my son was born. We call it “inappropriate dog” since it started telling my son that it loved him before it even got to know him. Also, what’s with the alternative tune to “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes”?
Hilarious. Sometimes I am rocking my daughter (15 months) at night and the dog will just go off. And sometimes in the middle of the night, I hear the dang thing on the baby monitor “ruf ruf!”. My Pal Violet is a bit better/less sensitive… Great, now I have these songs in my head now!
You’ll feel sorry when he crashes his car and she has to raise the Crappy Kids all alone!!
Sounds kind of dirty…
YES!!! That caterpillar is worse than the dog!!
I had to take Baby Alive’s batteries out. She scared my 4yr old & made her cry, lol
Great post…laugh out loud great! My son got one of these as a gift his first Christmas. the batteries didn’t work and apparently it was one of the most popular gifts that year. So…no replacement for us. Apparently that was a good thing. 🙂
I just sent a complainy text to my sister in law telling her to get the *&$% out of the Disney store and please don’t ever buy anything from there for my daughter. I hope it went over well.
I learned the best trick ever from a friend! If you have a toy with an on & off switch you can SUPERGLUE the switch to the off position! Woo hoo! We have a LOT of McDonald’s toys in our car that make noise but some are so annoying that they make my skin crawl.Shortly after learning this tip, only the annoying ones don’t work (or perhaps were glued to the off position). 😉
MY sister-in-law gave one to my daughter when she was 1…that dog NEVER SHUT UP. Well it seemed to talk mostly in the middle of the night when we were all in bed and it was in the living room…ALONE! I named him Chucky like the little monster doll that killed people and ended up chucking Chucky over our deck and having my husband dispose of him the next day! Bye bye Chucky!
O M G you had me rolling! This was hilarious! I can so relate as I got this as a gift as well for my daughters. It would go off on it’s own in the middle of the night and we were frankly scared of it. So we shoved him into the laundry room where he sat and begged for someone to be his friend. One day I got the courage and shoved him into a bag, threw him into the car and took him on a one way car ride. Dropped him off at the donation box!! I know, horrible thing to do as someone else was going to end up with him, but I was happy to have him out of my house so I didn’t really care at this point. Why do they make these things???? It only scared the pee out of the parents.
We have Scout too. We mostly like it, especially because of the “off” button. But it’s rather creepy to hear it call my daughter by name.
Last year and inlaw gave one of my kids a “sing-a-ma-jig” for Christmas, and it taked for days before we opened it. It was the first thing we opened, because we were all so curious.
Lol! I knew where you were going with this before I even started reading. We have that dog and I have dubbed him, “The Singing Dog of Death.” I especially love him when I’ve finally nursed the baby to sleep and accidentally nudge him (or walk within 3 feet of him) and he starts up with his perky nonsense. One of our dogs apparently loves him – she lays on him then looks around confused at where the voice is coming from. Either that or she likes the songs and is playing dumb in order to hear them. Silly dog.
Oh I have 2 of these in my household. We have one that speaks English and one that speaks German. My husband is German and likes toys that interact with the kids in German as well (since they get so much exposure to English), so he had my inlaws buy another one. Just. what. I. needed.
oh and why is it the batteries NEVER die in this toy but somehow everything else eats up batteries like I eat chocolate
This is the most hilarious thing ever! We had this dog given to us by my MIL… both of the MIL’s (the real one and the stepMIL) love to buy all those noisy scary toys…. and this one was gone as soon as I could get rid of it! LOL
I still have dreams with the house. Somehow it would come on in the middle of the night (my door would swing open – i hope) and there would be singing in my basement. It creeped me out too many times.
This is hilarious and I love it!
same here….. love me some good ol’ duct tape!
Love it. I did the car deal too. I have a creepy story. My 2 yo was asleep in her room, door closed down the hall and I swear I heard him say hug me but I knew he was in the car do I bolted out of my room to hers and found her sheet in a knot around her neck and her trying to get it off barely breathing. Talk about freak out. Till this day I may have been dreaming but that dumb dog saved her life.
Our’s says, “I LOVE you!” That’s the creepiest line! I conveniently left that toy at my in-laws’ house. lol
My son, Owen, who is 2 1/2, has developed a fear of “talking toys”. He likes to play with them, but at night, he collects them from his room and asks me to put them in the living room. He’s especially freaked out by Alfie, a toy robot that talks.
That traffic report is kinda creepy, considering that poem about “The Rainbow Bridge,”(http://rainbowsbridge.com/poem.htm) the hook of which is that is what the pets use to get to animal heaven. Poem is popular with the animal cemetery/cremation set.
I have also assigned the talking electronic toys to the car! Though we somehow managed to escape this dog. We had a talking Teletubbies LaLa and a Buzz Lightyear though…
Every time I see one of these in the story I tell my husband, “that is the worst gift ever. Let’s get it for (insert name of person that just had or is having a baby).” All parents should feel the joy of the fisher price puppy.
YES! That dog was such a fixture in my house for years. We also got it as a baby gift & kept it stashed still in the box in her closet along with the rest of the toys she’d have to grow into. One night, as I was nursing her in the middle of the night, the damn thing said a phrase that I swear I’ve never been able to make it say again on purpose: “Peek-a-boo! I seeeeee you!” OMG…I about died! But, really, I think I only heard it say that particular phrase one other time (& I got VERY Familiar with all of those freaking phrases) Creeeeeeeepy!
So, fast fwd 7 years & what did I do? What any well-meaning Fisher Price Puppy former owner would do…my brand new niece is getting the exact same thing for Christmas this year. Mwaaahahahahahahahaha!!!!!
This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read.
Yes Counting Cal! I hate him with the red hot fire of a thousand burning suns. He lives at the gparents house. They happen to live next door and my mom has tried to secret him to our house several times.
OMG!!! I am still traumatized by the Talking Tina Twilight episode as well as the stabbing Tiki Doll Night Gallery episode!!! The toy that I HATE is Baby Alive! My daughter and her friend brought it everywhere with them. We got into a car accident and Baby Alive, a 10 pound piece of HARD Plastic, ran rampant around the passenger section and broke their faces (literally – broken right cheek bones on both of them)! I can’t forgive her for that!
We had these horrible twin dolls that would talk to each other and you pressed their bellys to talk and sat in a stroller. They eventually left the stroller and were tossed into the toybox. Every once in a while (always on nights my husband worked late) I’d walk past the playroom and one of them would start talking.
One day I just ripped the batteries out.
We also had a musical toy that had no off switch. WTF people?
I feel your pain. Keep the doggy in the car for sure.
Awww … why such hate for the little pup? My kid loves him, and I secretly also fear him. If I am really honest, I am almost afraid to get rid of him for fear I will open my door one morning and he will be sitting there … angry at me. Tickle Me Elmo was far worse – ours had a short in him, and he would turn on even when the switch was turned to off … I called the company, and they wanted to REPLACE him … oh Lord no … you can have him back … I thought maybe they had a special pit into the depths of hell where they dropped all the malfunctioning Elmos.
Oh gosh, does this sound familiar. We here have a possessed demonic ‘monkey’ that both boys are terrified of (we took the batteries out and they won’t go near it still – both the 1-year-old and 3-year-old. It rolls along the floor laughing ‘hysterically’ (ie, demonic crazed howling). It’s kinda freaky altogether! also motion-activated *sigh*
http://www.amazon.com/LOL-Laugh-Loud-Rollovers-Chimp/dp/B002TTBBDU/ref=pd_sim_t_3
sigh…I love our dog. Ours must be very well behaved though, she (yes, we have the pink one, but she still doesn’t move) only talks when asked to. The baby lights up every time she sings. It’s so sweet, and it keeps her entertained when I’m barely concious at 5am, but she’s wide awake…yay dog!
It’s so true about the creepy toys. My younger brother had a little truck that would spontaneously announce, “I dig dirt!” every so often. One night, when I was about 14, it woke me up from downstairs, and would not stop telling me about it’s dirt digging ability. I tried to remove the battery in the thing, but it was screwed in, so I buried it beneath a mountain of stuffed animals or something. At least muffled it didn’t keep me awake.
But having something like that in the car probably would not be so annoying.
LOL, this is hilarious. My kids got so many of the “Laugh & Learn” toys from well-meaning relatives. I quickly decided that this line could only have been designed by Satan himself. So last Christmas someone got my kids an accordion instead. *headdesk*
I am still floored that you put the batteries back in!
I had a friend who was a new mother and had been given some kind of electronic stuffed turtle (sounds bad already). Anyhow, she claimed that whoever gave it to her must have hated her because the thing was possessed by the devil. It would flash ominously and make deep, throaty sounds and vibrate. She said she would never give it to her kid. My kids, slightly older and wiser, took one look at it, opened it up and twisted the batteries back in place and turned it on. Would you believe that it twinkled, played “mary had a little lamb” (or something like it) and crawled across the floor. Her kid LOVED it! once it had new batteries.
OMG! We have the same toy and I honestly hate it! I eventually took the batteries out and hid it in a closet. That thing creeps me out!
Except when your two year old decides to sleep with him, rolls on him and (in our case, Scout) wakes up and says, “Hi Alex! Wanna play?” as to which the 2yo replies – “NO Scout, I trying to sleep!”
These toys need to come with a light sensor – if it’s pitch black in the room, don’t freaking turn on!
I hate the creepy doll aisle! I’m glad I have boys and rarely have a reason to walk down it, lol.
Yes! OMG! My MIL got my ODS several of those, and I stupidly put batteries in one of them (at least it was only one!), then when I turned the lights out at night, it would make all of these jungle animal sounds. I of course couldn’t find all of the pieces, so I had to use pieces of black construction paper to cover the sensors.
I am completely ungrateful for toys that people give my kids. At this point I don’t care. I think if you live in a society where 95% of people think it is ok to give you some made in China,crappy platic, lasts for 2 weeks then rots in a landfill toy you are allowed to be ungrateful 😉 I would also rather people give my kids rocks and sticks!
Toys that talk creep me out too. Lol!
Hilarious!!! I’m with you on hating big, annoying Christmas presents. I dread that part of Christmas every year. I know I can sound really ungrateful if I complain to friends about it, but come on, we only have limited space and I don’t want it used up with big, useless, crappy, plastic or stuffed toys! I would rather have them play with sticks. (And they sort of do, with the tree blocks…)
Oh and we also put the toys we don’t like in the car! Actually, they go there so they will eventually get to the thrift store but end up staying and work well as bribes to get kids in car seats. I hate when they make their way back into the house though…uuugh.
My kids saw me reading this, recognized the picture, and went and got their dogs. Yes, they BOTH have one (thanks, Grandma)!
I’ve never kept one in my car, but I have heard them talking in the middle of the night from the toy room. Freaks me out every time!
I’ve plead many times for people to stop buying them crappy toys. I don’t feel ungrateful, because it’s not just that these toys annoy me, but the kids don’t play with them. They might get played with once or twice, then they end up broken, or forgotten about and donated. I’d much rather that they buy my kids clothes or gift certificates for the zoo, dairy, or Chuck E. Cheese’s. My kids would enjoy that and would remember it forever. But there’s this freaking obsession about them having something to unwrap.
Ours is still in the box– and in the baseme3nt. I am so scared of it.
Yup, we have it–my son loves it. I don’t find it to be super sensitive, though. When it gets too annoying, I just turn it off 😉
ALL noise toys go to Grandmas, that way I feel good about what he has here, he always has exciting stuff at Grandmas so I don”t feel bad leaving him and I get some revenge on my Mother too! Ha!
We don’t do Chinese toys ;P
hahahahahahahaaaaa!! that would be me running away while trying to tell myself “It’s just a stupid toy! It’s just a stupid toy!….. aaaaaaarghhh!!” TOO CREEPY! My mum had a strange train toy that would randomly say “Heeeellllllo little one” in the freakiest voice. Frightened the tar out of me & the kids!!
I had that same darn toy for my daughter – which I immediately stuck in a bin because it kept talking. And then I sold it in a garage sale!! LOL You’re right, it NEVER shuts up!
Yep. Ours lives at Grandma’s.
Yeaaahhhh… that one went to the consignment sale immediately. Can you say creepy?! It kept making noises and talking in the middle of the night, so it had to go.
Ha ha ha ha! This is a great piece, thanks for the laugh. I was feeling like a bad parent because I’d never gone online to “personalize” the dog we received for our youngest. Now I’m glad I didn’t. All we get is a few somewhat annoying songs that mercifully end quickly…and my daughter really hasn’t touched that dog in months. Ahh….
We got one of those as a 1st Christmas gift for our oldest. It wasn’t out of the box 10 minutes and my husband tried to take it out to do some long range target practice.
We also got a second one a couple years later as a 1st Christmas gift for the 2nd kid. It went back to the store as soon as the doors opened.
After that I banned talking toys.
My sister had a Big Bird doll that called out, “Peek-a-boo, I SEE you!” at any movement or change in light. Sadly, she found him so annoying that he was relocated to a closet in my parents’ house… and startled my dad one day. Dad’s a cop, former Special Forces guy, and as soon as he heard “Peek-a-boo, I SEE you!” coming from the closet, he drew down on that son of a bitch before that bird could finish.
My daughter got given a talking Elmo toy for her 2nd birthday (smooth plastic). We’ve never changed the batteries and it still works. And talks…
Especially at 1am when I’m on the internet in the ktichen and the kids are sleeping or at their dad’s and suddenly I hear ‘Yippee-ka yay’ coming from the bottom of the toy box… O_o
Ok, absolutely no experience with that dog, but I just had to say that your drawing of the angry dog had me in tears and clutching my stomach for nearly 10 minutes! My three year old kept asking me whether I was laughing or crying she was so confused! Thank you for a wonderful post. I needed that today!
We had that issue! Puppy was in the next room with our sleeping 1 year old, and as we were going at it, a little voice piped up from the next room: Peekaboo! I see you!
Of all the things it could have said, it picked that one. It’s alive, I tell ya.
Is my daughter’s the only one that has an off switch? It’s on his back and you have to reach in past the velcro opening, but it’s there, and has two volume levels too.
Ours often doesn’t get switched off and then does all the abovementioned hilarity, but for those who seriously are going demented, check the back for a switch and don’t tell your kid it’s got one.
Our son loves that stupid dog!! Thanks a lot, gramma and grampa! It is currently ‘lost’
We have that same dog! And it totally creeps me out. The day we got it my son and I went over to my boyfriend’s house for the night. The next day when we were packing everything back into his car, he was holding it around the neck and it was saying “Yay!”. Even 3 months later, it creeps me out.
This is hysterical! I have tears down my face, I’m laughing so hard. Yes, we have one of those dogs! The hubby usually sits on him at EVERY moment we want complete silence (you know, you just got the baby to sleep).
Nope, don’t have it – but my sis-in-law is always great at buying those kinds of gifts for my son…I LOVE the machete thing. Nearly wet my pants 🙂
I need something for the car though, but baby is 4 months…and SCREAMS the whole car trip each and every time 🙁
My aunt bought my son one from England and it has an English accent, it’s one of the toys that I have to keep even though the kids have outgrown it.
OMG! Had such a great laugh! Thanks! I’ve seen this dog at play dates and this may make me a bad mother but I didn’t buy it for my son. I am sure he would LOVE it but it’s one of the most obnoxious things ever and I am sure I would end up running it over with my car and my son really does not need to see that.
My family calls it the posessed dog. My mother bought one to keep at her house since my son loved it so much and she was up late by herself and when she walked by it all of a sudden laughed and said “that tickles” She called me all freaked out and said she had a ghost in the house. I laughed and said yeah mom, that’s the posessed dog. Some days i want tp rip its puppy head off…especially when it randomly goes off really loudly (because it all seems to get louder) when he is napping.
This had me laughing so hard! My daughter received one of these particular dogs last year from my aunt. I felt pretty much the same way and like your dog, it ended up living in the car last winter. So every day on my way to and from work, that dog would talk to me and of course I started talking back to it too! Fun times!
bahahah! So true! This is the exact toy we bought Lil Man 2 years ago… and he thought it was creepy when it talked… he wasn’t happy until we took the batteries out… and so were we… course I have a habit of pulling out the batteries of gifted toys that make noise!
We just got a new one today- looking forward to many creepy nights!
And I thought you were going to lob the dastardly thing out of the window whilst simultaneously doing 80mph on the highway. 😀
We have a Leapfrog Scout which seems eerily similar…..
Oh my god, I am laughing so hard I am crying. Which is how I reacted the first post of yours I ever read. So, thank you, I really needed that.
Laughing so hard I’m crying! We have two now… The old version that my two year old got last year for her birthday and the new version that the baby just got from Christmas. The old one is so just like you described! I actually kind of like the new one though because his ears flap up and down and it makes the baby dance 🙂
Whoops–I just got one of these for my baby niece. Hope it doesn’t annoy everyone 🙂 Actually, she LOVES it!
I literally laughed out loud at this. We have a creepy Elmo chair that sometimes randomly laughs in the middle of the night. I banished it to the garage for a while…
Angry face “It’s Learning Time” FUNNNIEST THING YOU HAVE EVER POSTED. IJPAL. No A LOT. Thank you. Really thank you.
We have a very similar toy – I don’t know if it’s the same, but we can actually program our child’s name into it (which it seems to say very meanly) and choose the songs, etc.
It also lives in the car. And I now have one of its songs in my head…
Too funny. We’ll be sitting, after kids are in bed, watching TV across the room from where ours sits, and he’ll start to do his thing. My husband says it’s ghosts. Now we know it’s not just ours. I sent him to live in the closet. I’m in awe of your crappy pictures. If only I could draw so well.
HAHAHAHA! I was crying reading this. Now I’m emailing it to my husband because he will definitely agree. Oh my. I was NOT excited about this gift. Once my daughter finally agreed to donate it to Goodwill, guess what happened??? We got ANOTHER ONE in the mail. I can’t escape it. Help would be appreciated.
Bahahahaha! I had tears rolling down my cheeks over this post. Our FP dog currently resides in my car too. When his battery starts to die out, he gets pretty freaking sounding…”Huuuuuuuuug Meeeeeee” in a deep monster voice. This is not cool with me when I’m driving home on a dark road in the middle of no where! But my little guy loves him, so the dog hasn’t been put down…yet!
I have to revise my comment… We now do have the “possessed puppy” A well-meaning and super sweet neighbor gave it to my son for Christmas. Thankfully he was not as taken by it as I thought he would be and didn’t get upset when momma flipped the off switch. Could only take about 30 min of “learning time”
AHHHH I HATE THIS EFFING TOY!!!! This was given to us with great enthusiasm as a hand-me-down toy, and by given i mean shoved in my face. I thought it must be a great toy for her to be so excited about giving it to us, but I was none the wiser. Now I have handed down (er, face-shoved) the toy again to another unsuspecting Mommy.
we do not have that dog – I have been around it before and avoided buying one this Christmas/birthday.
We did however get our 12 month old a walker/piano thing. Which she is now using – GREAT!! …. until you realize there is no off switch?!?
You can however change it from English to Spanish if you would rather be startled awake in a language you are much less familiar with. 😀
It is very sensitive and once it goes off once it wants to remind everyone that it is still there…. so it keeps making conversation in hopes that someone will push it around.
♫ “Lets go!” ♫♫ ♫♫ “One, Two” ♫
Be glad your boys aren’t into My Little Pony… there are tiny talking, walking, crawling, crying ponies that say creepy things in the middle of the night like, “Play with me…” “Don’t you want to hold me?” “I’ll be your best friend” “Lets cuddle.” “Feed me.”
I seriously almost peed my pants reading this. Someone gave us one for my son’s first birthday and Ir emember thinking “this is the stupidest toy I’ve ever seen.” Every time it says “It’s LEARNING TIME!!!” I want to throw it across the room. Alas, my kid loves this damn thing. He will throw e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. out of his playpen, except the dog, and then over and over again all I hear is “It’s LEARNING” “It’s, it’s, it’s…” like a stutter because my son keeps pressing the same button over and over again.ha!
I love this post. We immediately nicknamed our son’s toy “Scary Doggy” and use it to horrify our friends by playing the ‘I Wuv You’ song for them when they come over. Luckily our son doesn’t seem too interested in him so far!
that dog is possessed i tell ya!
Here in Greece that dog has been voted my mums as a top toy in a blog ballot! Oh, God!
we have the same stupid dog! first generation too… let’s sing and play games! rrrruffff! love your blog, just found it today and i plan on getting a cup of coffee and a bunch of chocolate and reading for the next hour through the archives 🙂
hahahaha! sounds familiar!
Give a update Morgan! 🙂
I laughed so hard I cried. I think the singer and actor/ress for Fisher Price has to hit the martini hard at night. I do….just for having the toys makes me need one!
Reminds me of when my son called anything with a hook (like a hanger) a “hooker.” Awesome.
My above comment was meant for the dumper post. Ugh.
When my daughter was 1 or 2, my mom bought her this Mickey Mouse train toy to drag around – Mickey Mouse went up and down in the engine and it made loud noise. The joke was on her when it was recalled and I got some Jeffrey Bucks back to buy a quiet toy!
LOL! My 11 month old got one of the new ones for Christmas this year and the robotics that make it move are so loud it sounds like the Terminator is coming to end us all.
I was crying with laughter. ‘You’re my Friend!!!’
Ha ha! I am cracking up over here because we received that dog as a gift for our first child and we totally got rid of it before the second kid! AND we call that dog “Desperate Doggie” 🙂 — too desperate to be your friend!!!
woooooooooow, My son had the EXACT same toy as a toddler. That thing TERRIFIED me at night! My son would wake me up crying in the middle of the night, so I’d to go his room to see what’s wrong and I’d step on the darned thing everytime! Its would start singing “Heeeeeeeeead, shoulders, knees, and toes, knees and toes!” and of course i’d get scared and scream which would make my son cry even more. Needless to say..my good friends kid got a “gently used” gift. Muwahaha. ;p
LOL
I’m holding my 19-month-old as I read this and he pointed to your drawing of the dog and said “Elmo!”
Oh… Oh God. My son has TWO of these.
Once when I was putting him to bed and I was walking out, the thing said “Bye bye!” to me.
And my husband kicked it once and it made that whimpering sound.
He hasn’t kicked it since.
That was two months ago.
ROFL! I have tears.
This had me cracking up. We had one too and it only lasted for a few years. love the pictures.
LMAO! We used to have one of those dogs – it might actually be stored somewhere. Anyway, it’d go off in the middle of the night… but with the creepiest lines. “Peek-a-boo… I can see you!” Or just a random laugh. Even turned off. Damn that thing is just too creepy…
I work 3-11:30, so when I come home from work the house is usually dark and quiet. A couple of years ago, after being scared to death by a voice coming from my completely dark living room, I renamed the fisher price dog: Evil Puppy. I wish I had thought of limiting Evil Puppy to the car!
OMG! We had two of these, got one as a gift, and once we finally managed to get rid of it, someone noticed we didn’t have one and gave us a second one. First one went to top of closet, then garage, then thrift store. Second one — trash bag when DD wasn’t around.
hahahaha. I like how your methods of disposal changed between the two. I also don’t blame you!
My daughter got this as a gift from my brother…I refer to it only as Demon Toy. I laughed so hard at this post because I had the same thing happen. I try giving her every other toy she has in hopes shell forget about this one but no. And the paw she constantly squeezes in the most annoying one. And if you dont turn it off before bed it WILL go off im the middle of the night and wake up you, the baby, the dog, the cat, and I imagine the neighbors next door. Not the husband of course. And by the time you squeeze that one stupid paw enough for it to say bye bye, kid thinks its playtime and there goes my sleep!
That is very cute. You will really see someone’s creativity with this.
We got this toy for my then 15 month old for Christmas, he loved it. After a few months he doesn’t really bothered with it anymore and it never bothers me because I don’t know if you know this judging from your post, there is an OFF switch on the bottom.
That stupid toy used the go off in the middle of the night in my son’s room. Not only did it scare the crap out of me because it sounds 10x louder over the monitor, but I had to hold my breath in fear every time that my son would wake up and I would have to get him back to sleep at 3 in the morning.
I’m right there with you. I’ve avoided this particular toy successfully, but I have fallen victim to the Alphabet Pal.Twice.
We were given an Alphabet Pal for my son’s first birthday by my mother. Thanks Mom! I made a birthday video and sent it to all the grandparents. Alphabet Pal creeped out my husband so much he insured that it had an “accident.” For Christmas we were given ANOTHER Alphabet Pal….from one of the grandparents. Did they not watch the video I sent them just a couple of months ago? Seriously. We gave it away to set of expectant first time parents who would no know the evils of alphabet pal.
We have the first-gen and new models of the puppy. The off button is on the foot, LOL!!! Our daughter loved the original one so much that the “I love you” song is our family song that we all sing together! Our never goes off at weird times – although we have both a very disturbing Baby Alive Bouncin’ Babbles doll and a walking My Little Pony Pinkie Pie that NEVER shut up!!!!
Almost a year later and still what a great post! I just sent it to my friend. Got one when DS 1 was born four (!) years ago. I took to calling it “that b****”. After all, it IS a dog! Wouldn’t you know I got one AGAIN when DS 2 was born two months ago! From the same person!
My kids have one of those. We got it for my eldest when he was 1. Three years later, when my second was 1, it got passed to him (still functional with the original batteries… Energizer has nothing on these batteries!!) So the annoyance begins again, I don’t know why we bothered. Thankfully, however (for me anyway) the baby will not have the opportunity to annoy the shit out of me with it. Why, you ask?The internal electronics are broken, I think. And again you’re asking why (or maybe how? with a mischievous gleam in your eyes). Because my now three and six year olds love WWE (formerly WWF) wrestling. Their favorite things to pulverize while pretending to be wrestling superstars? A stuffed yellow monkey who was offensive because he used to shed yellow fur (ALL OVER MY HOUSE!!), and that confounded dog (sweet revenge, if you ask me. It annoyed the shit out of me, and now my children beat the shit out of it!!)
We have it as well and yes, it is stashed in the closet most of the time. It does have an off switch inside the back panel. I started turning it off when it would begin chattering to itself late at night, and only turn it back on when my daughter requests that I do so.
Just had to re-find this article, because we received our FORTH L&L Puppy for Christmas this year. *sigh* Why is this thing so popular??!
Oh I laughed so hard at your conversation with the dog….I would do that too :). You know, then, why my son doesn’t have one of those (and it isn’t because we don’t have a car LOL)
Our dog speaks Polish. We got stopped at the airport in Berlin, when we were coming back to the US because we forgot to take out his batteries and apparently the dog started singing…they let us go after they checked our luggage…creepy
the fisher price annoying dog has a little black switch on its back under the velcro on the jacket. Turn it off. i keep hiding it and my granddaughters keep asking for it. Its possessed.
You really make it appear so easy together with your presentation but I to find this matter to be really one thing that I believe I’d never understand. It sort of feels too complicated and extremely large for me. I’m looking ahead in your subsequent put up, I’ll try to get the hold of it!
Girl you CRACK ME UP – being a dog lover this seemed like a thoughtful gift we received…nope, it’s as creepy as those American Girl Dolls. I think this dog will need to live in husbands car, what an awesome idea, THANKS SO MUCH!!!
my son got a panda that you tickle and it makes weird noises. well it sometimes makes noises without being touched at all. we joked about it being possessed but it turns out if you e its back againist the wall it activates it. So now we have it on its face in the closet. creepiest toy ever
My husband and I were watching a movie the other day after our kid went to bed and the dog randomly decided to say “Bye bye!” right as someone in the movie was killed. Um, yeah… If we didn’t find it creepy before, then we sure do now! How did it know?
LMAO!!! Before my daughter (now 2) could even sit up by herself, I saw the commercial for the one that moves and I had to have it. I would get it for her for Christmas (in 7 months). Shortly after seeing the commercial, I got a package from an out of state relative- it was the same puppy you have. I LOVED it. Me and the puppy sang to the baby and played peek-a-boo and gave her kisses and it was awesome. And then like you and your friend said…it would. Not. Shut. Up. But I dealt with it. I kept in her room because we only played there during the day (we coslept). At Christmas my MIL got her the one that walks and talks, and it’s the same thing. Christmas is when I had the epiphany. She needs toys at her grandparents’ houses, too. Not only does SHE need them, my little brother had a little girl six months after she was born, and then my sister a little girl 6 months after that. My parents and inlaws thought they were clever buying large loud toys, until they were taken to/ left at their house. It has drastically reduced the number of obnoxious toys my parents and inlaws buy.
Amazing! Its really amazing post, I have got much clear idea regarding from this post.
Mine wasn’t a puppy, but I was given a toy that
was possessedwouldn’t shut up. I kept it for a while, but it was a train ride on toy, and apparently, ride-ons are the perfect toy for any three-year-old or under, since I was give 15 different variations for my first child. This one was annoying, so I did what any grateful daughter-In-law would do… I gave it back.I simply informed them that I had plenty at home and dropped it off with them when I left him for a weekend. When I picked him up on Sunday, I “forgot” to take it home.
Two years later, they told me I was cruel for leaving that toy there. Ironic, isn’t it?
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Haha!
We have this for our 2-year-old daughter, she got it from her grandparents on her first birthday. Funnily enough it has the EXACT same phrases in Norwegian. And I think it “accidentally” remained turned off (with the little switch on the battery compartment) and inside a cardboard box when we moved a few weeks ago. There’s a good chance it will stay in that box until she gets it out herself…
This is SPOT on. That thing creeps me out.
We kinda changed some of the words for when mam or dad step on it accidentally at night 🙂
“I love you, I love you, morning noon and night
I love you,I love you but you talk a lot of s***e’
We have this guy AND Violet- the purple dog with the usb port so you can plug it into the computer, tell it your child’s name, favorite color, etc. and then it can haunt your dreams forever using personal information about your children. Brilliant!!
Wow, there are like, a LOT of comments on this one. I think we can all relate. I disliked this toy greatly. Our first interaction was on the way home with the car packed to the brim from Christmas with the in-laws. We had to stop and rummage thru the back until we found it to dislodge the batteries! Too funny.
I made the mistake of getting this for my oldest when he was nearing his first year. We had an string of nights where he’d get up in the middle of the night for party time. I’d dragged my tired backside and my wide awake baby into the family room where that dog waited at around 3 in the morning. Eventually Kangaroo (his nickname) would want to crawl off my lap onto the floor. This ended the night that possessed pup announced “You’re my friend!”. I think I may have told him “No, Chucky Puppy. No I’m not.” and we evacuated to the bedroom. I kind of feel bad for donating Chucky Puppy. I probably should have buried him on holy ground or something.
My 3 year old got this dog for her 2nd Christmas. My baby LOVES it. I am ok with it except when I am sneaking into my sleeping child’s room and it starts singing as I walk & bump it. Then I close my eyes and pray “please don’t wake up” and try to find the right foot to turn him OFF.
My daughter got a talking Big Bird for Christmas one year. She had it in the backseat during the long ride home from Grandma’s. She had *finally* crashed after all the Christmas fun when the hubs and I learned another feature the bird had… It was light sensitive. So every time we drove by a streetlight we heard a creepy “I see you!” from the backseat. The first time it happened, I nearly drive off the road!
THIS IS US! I friggin HATED that thing but it makes an awesome car toy for trips that would be otherwise miserable to our babe.
Respect the dog.
We have 3 children with a 5 year gap between #2 and #3, and because of that we managed to be blessed with both this dog AND his machete-bearing younger brother. The original was good for a few minutes of play, but then got annoying and he mainly existed without his batteries. Chuckie dog scared my toddler, and he was immediately donated.
Anyone have Sweeping Sam? Now that thing is creepy. My husband was working an overnight shift, both kids were upstairs asleep, I’m on the couch reading a book and all of a sudden I hear at max volume “It’s time to clean up!” Scared the crap out of me. Sweeping Sam has since been donated.
Ha! Fisher price makes a train we got rid of three times. it would go off all the dang time. I found myself singing the song at random times. I hated that thing. we got it with the first kid and donated it. then again with the second kid and donated it. And like a bad penny someone gave it to us with the third kid – this time I just threw it away!
Hahaha We have THREE of those dogs!!
In the middle if the night, alone in a dark house, I heard “peek a boo! I see you!!” Creepy! I never liked the dog, but after that, I hated him…
We got this as a shower gift. It sat in its packaging on the top of the pile of gifts until the baby arrived. For no reason at all it would randomly say “I see you” at night. Only at night. Creeped me out so I refused to take it out of its box even when all the other baby stuff was put away. I figured without thumbs it couldn’t free itself and I hear the cardboard thumping down the hall if it even decide to come kill us. I think I was scarred by Chucky at too young an age.
You just made all of the nightmares just reappear. This toy frightened me many, many nights when he’d start speaking out of the blue. Why did I read this post?!
That is the one toy I can’t stand. It would talk in the middle of the night for no reason saying ” I love you”. It had to quietly disappear from our home.
We got the puppy 6 and a half years ago as a gift from my in laws….he is still here! My youngest (18mo) found him the other day, he still works!! 0.o
p.s. I totally read the dogs speech in his singy voice! haha
Like everyone else, we have the Fisher Price dog, too. I never thought much of it until one day I heard strange sounds through the baby monitor. Though my daughter was sleeping and we were in another part of the house, the dog started talking all by itself. Another time it woke me up in my sleep and other times it’s just creeped my out from the playroom. That thing is a menace.
My son’s first smile and first laugh were both because of that puppy. He absolutely adores it. We got him the moving one and the one you can push or ride for Christmas so now he will have a trio of puppies.
Our daughter got three of these last year for Christmas! One lives upstairs, one downstairs, and one inn the car. I can’t tell you the number of times I have been woken up in the middle of the night by this monstrosity…..batteries goodbye!
I leaned on this guy one morning when I was the only one awake. I would have sworn to you he said “Get off my toes!” Freaked me right out.
I do have a damn cute video of the babe at about 6 months dancing her little sitting self.
LMAO! My son had gotten not one but 2 of these for his first birthday. We had the receipt for one of them and it sat on the table by the front door waiting to be returned. Scariest thing ever Husband is out of town I tuck the kids in and go to bed myself with the dog next to me I hear a noise from down stairs. I go down to check it out. Nothing. I think I may be a little crazy. go back to bed. I could not tell you how many times I would wait to hear the muffled noise waiting listening. No sooner would I return to bed and the thing would go off again. The damn thing kept me up all night before I figured out at 5 am what the hell was making noises. Needless to say I returned both never to be seen until his second birthday! Ugh took out the batteries never to be heard again! HAHA I won.
LOL… my daughter looks at your crappy drawing and states, “Oh look it is a picture of one of our toys” This toy was super loud, quite annoying and very creepy when I’d enter my daughters room at night and hear…. Peak a boo I see you. Had to warn babysitters. 🙂
The trick is to give the kid the toy in the stage that they are fearful of everything…especially things that make noise. I do remember driving back from my baby shower and hearing something talking to me, at first I thought that I was hallucinating, and then I realized it was the stupid dog toy.
Of course since I was a Teddy Ruxbin kid I guess I deserved the fisher price toy as a parent…karma is a bitch.
The first time my son said “I love you” it was in response to this toy. I nearly eviscerated it on the spot.
My daughter got that puppy for her first Christmas (so it was also the unmoving, non-machete wielding version). My husband was sure that my daughter and the puppy were in an abusive relationship. She would punch it, kick it, sit on it, and it would reply with “I love you!” or “That tickles!” or “You’re my best friend!” This is not good.
Oh, I know exactly what you mean! I thought it was just OURS that was so sensitive! It’s just lying on the floor and all of a sudden “IT’S LEARNING TIME!!”. o.O AAAH!!
I got my daughter’s for free. Target coupon stacked with the manufacturer’s coupon AND a gift card from when I bought two boxes of tampons. The thing is, I didn’t know it talked SO MUCH and at any time. My step-daughter has one and brings it when she stays over…her mother, the genius, removed the batteries and told her it was broken. The batteries in my daughter’s died and we haven’t replaced them.
…but her aunt and uncle bought her the female one for Christmas. So now, it’s sitting in a gift bag under the tree…taunting me.
I laughed until I cried! But however annoying the dogs are (we have one too), I promise you, Elmo’s Shape Sorter is approximately 1 million times worse. Nothing like trying to fall asleep and hearing “Pull the Lever Please!” The best is when the batteries are dying. Then Elmo’s laugh switches from bash-my-head-into-the-wall annoying, to demonic-coming-to-get-you creepy.
As I read this, the sounds of that very toy (also a first generation passed down from big big brother) are coming to me through the baby monitor. Ours will still be here a while!
How about hearing it through the baby monitor after the baby just went down for the night? “I LOOOVE You!!” Nooooooooooooo!!! Who left that in the crib??
hahaha – my son LOVES this dog! Ours is at least a year old and, thankfully, does not walk or stab. I try to make sure that his limbs, heart and belly are not touching ANYthing when no one is playing with him.
We have a ball / bee that is much worse about playing music randomly. It scared the crap out of us for awhile.
My mother in law bought it for my first child. I’m sure she was trying to drive me insane slowly. I can still hear “head, shoulders, knees, and toes.”
My mom has four kids, that’s four of us, that have each had our own one of those, it started when my bro was a baby, it was a gift, he outgrew it, mom has me, dusts it off and lets me have it, it gets donated after a couple years, 11 years later, she has my sister, who, also got one, I’m not sure how, it also became donated eventually. Fast forward to three years ago, my mom just had another baby, we are shopping around, looking for cool “retro” toys for the new baby, and we find that dog, we said “OH! I remember that guy! He was so cool! What ever happened to our old ones?” we buy it, get home with it, and remember why the old ones got donated, he now sits in a box in the basement with other wayward toys waiting to be donated, and the cycle continues.
We have this dog too, the original, gifted to my now-5yo when she was 2. I also banished it (in our case, to grandma’s house).
Might be time to hand it down to my sisters little boy.
My work got one for our daughter’s first Christmas last year! They also got one for all the other 8 babies born last year. I will have to bring it up at our next baby work play date! The one night I walked passed it to sleep on the couch and it went off!! It’s bad because I know the crappy songs off be heart and hate the thing, but my daughter who is 5 months loves it. Must have been my works way of getting pay back for all us ladies who went on mat leave the same time lol
A couple mornings ago I awoke around 5am and came down stairs to start my day with some peace & quiet before everyone else woke up. Everyone in the house was sleeping. My grandson has a Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn Puppy that was on the sofa in the living room. As I neared the bottom of the stairs (in another room & about 20+ feet from the dog) it said, “peek-a-boo, I see you.” It didn’t say anything before or after that…kind of freaky. Sometimes I will be a few rooms away from the dog and will hear it go off. I am convinced that either it has been haunted since conception (like a chucky doll) or the ghosts in my house are using it to taunt me! Seriously. Which is why I googled “is fisher-price laugh & learn puppy haunted”!
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We have this puppy. And yes, it does the whole “talking when no one is even near it” thing. No matter if I’ve pushed the “OFF” section on the foot. Nope. “Peek-a-boo! I see you!” in the middle of the night. His batteries died awhile back and I’ve never resurrected him. I was tired of the near-death experiences.
However, my daughter (owner of said puppy) got the girl puppy for Christmas and she loves it. The voice is much more tolerable and she doesn’t just spontaneously request hugs when the house is pitch black and no one else is around. She’s actually kind of adorable!
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ATTENTION PARENTS!!!
it has an off button,
open the velcro seal on the back and theres a little button that you can switch the sound to normal, loud (why??) or, OFF!!
Hello,
I am looking into replacing the voice box with a recordable voice box. Has anyone done this? Suggestions of sound boards? Jack Black, napoleon dynamite, or Freddie Mercury?
Best,
Joe