>

Baby Alive Doll by Hasbro

I feel like I am in a bad “B” movie….. Because we got Bird a begged for bday gift, to her utter delight and to my dismay. Not that I can actually blame anybody for this, it was my choice to cave…. But we did, I did, I did it. I bought her a Baby Alive doll for her bday.

And oh does she love it.
She carts that baby here and there, up and down the stairs, hither and yon.
They are feeding the baby, changing the baby, dressing the baby in all sorts of getups.

And frankly, it’s creeping me out.

The food: it’s not edible (because that would cause all sorts of mold growth on the innards of this thing). It looks like baby food mush of some sort but in a nuclear accident sort of way. The diapers, they have pee stains that again, are like pee on some nasty antibiotic: neon. And don’t even get me started on the loop this links you into: the surely astronomical cost of these supplies that need replenishing (and nope, I’m not paying for that, and yup, I am cheap).

I know, on one level this is very great role playing for my girl. It is right up her ally to nurture and pretend all this, and on something that isn’t living and so it can’t be hurt or maimed.

But still…The creepiest part of this doll is the talking. The moving mouth, the blinking eyes, the singsong voice loops: “Mommy, I’m hungry. Oops, I had an accident. Let’s play. I need a change! I love you Mommy.” And as she says this you hear the whirring of her moving parts and she blinks her big googly disturbing eyes and it just makes me kind of cringe. It makes Sbird giggle in glee.

I don’t know. I am not a total Scrooge, I swear. I mean, I bought it for her bday, after much begging. I knew, kind of, what we were getting into (though really, it’s just way more disturbing in person than in a catalog pic). And now you all get to realize I have issues, I guess…

But this doll, she creeps me out. She’s like a little nightmare event waiting to happen in the house, huh? Every time she is playing with that doll, a voiceover plays in my head of the mid 1960’s announcer saying “It’s Aliiiivveeee.”

I have clearly watched too many Twilight Zone’s when I was younger.
But this doll: on that show, she’d be a star!