Holly jolly nightmares

You know what the best part of not having kids? Spoiling other people's kids rotten. And - bonus - I get to take their kids' Christmas presents on a "trial run" before I fork them over. So if you wondered why your kid's Play-Doh Fun Factory was full of glitter and cat hair... I plead the 5th. 

I never had a Teddy Ruxpin when I was a kid. At the time, I thought it was because my parents were horrible and didn't love me; I now realize they recognized animatronic evil when they saw it.

Hey kid, Uncle Teddy's got a
story for you.

For those of you who missed the long national nightmare, Ruxpin was a bear who told you stories from a cassette tape buried deep within his bowels while moving his mouth and staring into your soul with his cold, dead eyes. His inventor Ken Forsse originally gave him a name that would have better suited Satan's teddy bear, Simian Greep. Forsee rethought the name but apparently not the soul-eating robo-demon.

Teddy Ruxpin looks like Holly Hobby compared to this smooth criminal.

And no one's gonna save you
from the beast about to strike.

I refuse to believe that Japanese company Daishin CK had anything but evil in mind when they invented the cymbal monkey, which they named Musical Jolly Chimp.

Good old MJC stars in Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders, a crime against moviegoers if ever there was one. In the film, the world's worst dad buys his kid a cymbal monkey. Shortly afterward, people start dying, which I have to assume is pretty much what happens when you bring home a cymbal monkey. Funny thing, Merlin's Shop was a direct rip-off of the Stephen King story The Monkey. So not only were they not even creative enough to write the worst movie this side of Manos, Hands of Fate, they weren't even creative enough to rip off a good Stephen King story. 

Then there's this, presented without commentary.

Because I'm too lazy to write any. Instead, please enjoy this random passage stolen from Stephen King.

They float,' the thing in the drain crooned in a clotted, chuckling voice. It held George’s arm in its thick and wormy grip, it pulled George toward that terrible darkness where the water rushed and roared and bellowed as it bore its cargo of storm debris toward the sea. George craned his neck away from that final blackness and began to scream into the rain, to scream mindlessly into the white autumn sky which curved above Derry on that day in the fall of 1957. His screams were shrill and piercing, and all up and down Witcham Street people came to their windows or bolted out onto their porches.

From Answers.com, Wikipedia, GoodReads