My dolls are very generous with their time (meaning, all they do is sit there being dolls), so they were happy to do this historic re-enactment of the CREEPIEST doll in human history - the infamous Edison Talking Doll. This thing had a tiny record player inside it which had to be cranked, and which broke after only a few uses. The dolls were so frightening and expensive (something like $10.00, which would be like $200.00 now) that they only lasted a few weeks on the market. So the ones that were manufactured must have been warehoused somewhere - or collected by a few people interested in macabre artifacts. This was the pre-pre-predecessor to Chatty Cathy and other hideous "talking" dolls, so once again everyone claims Edison was "ahead of his time" - but I also found video of French dolls which laughed and talked using the same primitive technology. My feeling is that, as always, Edison stole someone else's brilliant idea, but he managed to botch it just the same.
