Just for the heckuvit, a very long discussion on talking dolls

This post is going to be a "just for the heckuvit" post, as I don't see much online about the history of talking dolls.  I'm not proclaiming myself as an expert on anything mentioned here in this post.  This is just something I wanted to put together, both to educate and entertain myself and hopefully do the same for y'all.  It is by no means an exhaustive research of the talkers in this world, but...well, hopefully y'all will learn something like I did.  This post is probably the longest one I've done, so fasten your seat belts, grab something to eat, and keep the eyedrops at the ready.

YOU SPIN ME RIGHT 'ROUND, BABY
As far as I know, the first talking dolls ran on internal records.  Most modern sources will attest that Thomas Edison was the first to create a talking doll, one similar in appearance to the French Jumeaux and the German Armand Marseilles that I love a little too much.  The dolls had a metal body with a crank-operated phonograph inside, and their sounds were so distorted that even Edison himself wasn't thrilled with the product.  The Edison talkers had metal bodies and pretty little faces, but their talking mechanisms were fragile and the dolls themselves were ridiculously expensive.  They were not a success, but the idea of a talking doll was now alive and well.  Jumeau had talkers, but I don't know how widely available they were since French dolls were EXPENSIVE back then, just like they are now.  This image comes from Carl Fox's lovely book The Doll and shows two bisque-headed bebes.  One is showing her talking mechanism, which appears to be an old-style phonograph.

Carl Fox notes in the commentary for this image that one of the phrases uttered by these dolls is "Good day, my dear little mother."  That's all well and good, but being Jumeaux meant that these dolls were out of reach for everyone except the rich, and I don't even know how popular these talkers were.  If they shrieked their phrases like the Edison talkers did, most buyers probably stayed away.  Most of the sources I've found list Mae Starr as the first widely available (and popular) talking doll.  Mae Starr is a large composition doll from the one and only Effanbee, and like the Edison talkers and the Jumeau bebes she uses a phonograph to talk.  The following photo is used with the kind permission of Dawn, from the Etsy shop CaughtInTime77.  Her lovely young lady is available for sale, as are several other nice composition and vinyl dolls.

Mae's phonograph is in her chest, and the crank for winding her up is out of sight under one of her arms.  The records powering Mae Starr, the Edison dolls, and the Jumeau bebes are not flat disks like we're used to seeing, but rather squat little cylinders (the doll above is holding one in her lap).  Put the cylinder in Mae's chest, wind her up, and she is capable of talking, singing, or praying.  She recited simple things that children of the era would be familiar with, like "Old Mother Hubbard," "Rock-a-Bye Baby," and "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep."  The doll above sings "London Bridge," according to the description.  Mae Starr is surprisingly hard to find nowadays, which is surprising considering her popularity in the 1920's, but the ones that do turn up are usually very well kept and can still talk if they have any of their records.  Similar to Mae Starr is Dolly Rekord, whom I unfortunately know very little about.  I do know that both Dolly and Mae have the same phonograph mechanism, and they both use the same type of record, though I don't know if they could share back and forth.  In fact, I think that Dolly Rekord predates Mae Starr a little, but I'm not sure on that either.  I've seen more Mae Starr dolls for sale than Dolly Rekord, so maybe one was more popular than the other?  I dunno.  Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places.

As we'll discuss in a bit, record dolls fell out of favor as the century progressed, but they weren't a total thing of the past in the sixties, as Charmin' Chatty shows.  Again, this Charmin' is not mine; this picture belongs to Janet Madrigal, proprietor of JanetsatticBoutique.  This young lady has since sold, but Charmin' Chatty isn't terribly hard to find.

Charmin' Chatty was a late addition to the Chatty Cathy family, and she sported a different mechanism from her smaller companions.  Well, she sort of did.  She had a pull string to activate her talking mech, the way many talkers of the sixties did, but inside her body was a phonograph player with switchable records, which was quite different from Chatty Cathy's fully internalized mech.  Charmin' came with five double-sided records that had twelve phrases apiece.  This gave her a hundred twenty things to say, which was more than triple the phrases that the original Chatty Cathy could say.  As with Mae Starr and Dolly Rekord the phrases were simple, kid-friendly things like proverbs, jokes, spooky stories, and animal sounds.  Charmin' had a short run, and there's not a lot out there about her, but I was at least able to find a commercial.  Tam has a little more info, as Charmin' had a slot in her A Doll A Day series a few years back.  I don't know what Confessions of a Dolly Lover would do without Tam's blog serving as a reference, y'all!  Charmin' also has something in common with more modern talkers like Amazing Ally and Amazing Maddie:  her outfits came with new records, which expanded her vocabulary.  One of her outfits had a shopping theme, and one of the phrases on the accompanying record was "Shall we buy a Barbie doll?"  Smooth move, Mattel.

The last record doll that I can name is another Mattel product, Best Friend Cynthia, not to be confused with Angelica Pickles's doll (LOL).  This time I didn't have to ask permission to use a picture, as this Cynthia is mine!  I hope I look as good as she does when I'm her age!

Tall, pretty Cynthia is like Barbie on steroids, at least in terms of looks and height.  I also threw in an American Girl for further size reference (and for shizzles, LOL).  Cynthia is a big girl, y'all!

My Cynthia no longer talks, but y'all can get an idea of how she worked.  Her back opens for batteries, NOT a pull string like Charmin' Chatty had.  Notice that my doll does not have her internal hardware, thus why I can't make her talk even though she has one of her records.  This record is labeled "indoor activities."

Her records slide into her torso under her left arm, like so.

Her dress has a slit to accommodate the records, kinda like Felicity's dresses have slits for her to reach into her pocket.

Apparently Cynthia's mech operated by pushing a button, because that's what she's got, in the middle of her back.

Here's her speaker, in her belly.

Cynthia could apparently share clothes with Ideal's Harmony, so I may have to take a look at that in a future Dolly Dress Discussion.  Anyway, Tam notes that Mattel took a "giant" step backwards with Cynthia, since most talking dolls were activated with pull strings by 1971 and did NOT utilize external records.  Cynthia also was not as verbose, as she only had thirty-six phrases as opposed to Charmin' Chatty's one hundred twenty.  But like Amazing Ally, Amazing Maddie, and Charmin' Chatty, her vocabulary could be increased with new outfits, each of which included a new record.  It would be interesting to find out Mattel's reasoning behind putting out a doll with outdated technology, but heck, all of the dolls in this post could be considered outdated with dolls like Ask Amy making their appearance!  For a more thorough review of Cynthia, check out Tam's post here, and go here for a sound byte.  

"MAMA" DOLLS
"Mama" dolls are composition dolls who holler "MAMA!!!" if squeezed or tipped over, and like the phonograph dolls they're nothing new.  Madame Hendren, the company that provided the mechanism for Dolly Rekord and Mae Starr, also provided the mech for these composition talkers.  Granted, the dolls only ever said "Mama," but that's still talking!  Mama dolls were affordable and popular, enough so that Doll Reference credits them with putting an end to the few remaining bisque doll lines.  Almost every company of the day, big and small, made "Mama" dolls, and not all of them are marked.  By the luck of the draw I may have three of these, all composition, all Horsman, all babies.  

Neither Sally, Lili Marlene, nor Anita make noise now, but if I palpate their chests I can feel their crying mechanisms.  I'm not sure if these are "Mama" dolls or if they just cried when tipped over, but either way they made some kind of noise.  This kind of mechanism is repairable, but one will have to dismantle the doll in order to do it, something that I'll leave to a professional.  I can't say too much about these since there's not a lot to them, but they were so popular that I figured I'd touch on them.

MY NAME IS TALKY TINA, AND I'M GOING TO KILL YOU
By the late 1950s record dolls were out for the most part and pull-string dolls were in.  Probably the best known example of a pull-string talker is also one of the first:  Chatty Cathy.  Poor love, my example could do with a new face-up.

I solemnly swear that my Cathy has her original dress.  She just looks so pretty in blue that I've left her in the dress Mama got for her some years ago.  Anywho, Chatty Cathy was THE ONE TO HAVE for the early part of the sixties.  I fudge a little bit when I say that she's a pull-string doll and not a record doll since she does have a phonograph in her chest, but her records couldn't be switched around like Charmin' Chatty's could.  Her cord sticks out of her upper back...

...and since my doll is a first-issue doll, her speaker is covered with a patch of flesh-colored fabric.  Later dolls had a grill-type chest plate.

Usually first-issue dolls are the most valuable (like Barbie), but with Chatty Cathy the exact opposite is true, as there were A LOT of these first-issue dolls made.  These early dolls had eleven random phrases that were activated by the pull string.  The phrases consisted of typical dolly prattle like "Will you play with me?," "Let's play 'House,'" and "I hurt myself!"  Uh...I HURT MYSELF???  Yeah, we all know that real kids skin knees and cut fingers sometimes, but is that really what anyone wanted to hear from a doll???  Anywho, later dolls had eighteen phrases, and they varied quite a bit.  They didn't all say "I hurt myself," for example, and though one of her more famous phrases was "Will you play with me?" not all of them said that either.  Indeed, the only phrase that every Anglophone Chatty Cathy uttered was "I love you."  Other countries had dolls that spoke in other languages, and Cathy's British and German selves were adorable!  The British doll was called "Rosebud" rather than "Cathy," while the ones who spoke French called themselves "Caroline."  Regardless of what she said or what language she spoke, Chatty Cathy was a huge seller and became Mattel's second-most popular doll after Barbie.  She underwent several cosmetic changes over the years and was popular enough to inspire murderous little Talky Tina in the Twilight Zone episode "Living Doll."

Talky Tina was a customized amalgamation of Vogue's Brikette and Ideal's Saucy Walker, neither of whom were talkers.  Tina's talking "mechanism" was activated in a way that I don't oft see, at least for talkers.  In this clip we can see Erich Streator, the object of Tina's wrath, winding her up.  Such a mechanism is pretty common for walkers and for music box dolls, but I can't say as I know of many talkers that wound up.  But then again, I don't know of many dolls that commit murder either, not in this world.  Oh well, anything is possible in Hollywood!  As an aside, "Living Doll," a spoof of Chatty Cathy, was itself spoofed in The Simpsons, during a Treehouse of Horror special.  Leave it to the Simpsons to spoof a spoof!

Alrighty, I've established that Chatty Cathy was a popular doll who set the paces for talkers of the 1960's.  In 1961 she was joined by "friends" Matty Mattel, Sister Belle, and Casper the Friendly Ghost.  Pardon the grainy YouTube screenshot.

Matty, Sister Belle, and Casper were soft dolls like Raggedy Ann, but they had the same talk mechanism inside that Chatty Cathy did, pull string and all.  June Foray voiced the three dolls, just as she did for Chatty Cathy and Talky Tina.  Like Miss Cathy, the three dolls had eleven different phrases.  I like Matty's the best since they sound like pastimes I enjoyed when I was a kid.  One of his phrases, which can be heard in the commercial is "Let's play 'Cowboy.'"  Oh man, I loved to play "Cowboy" when I was a little girl!  Had a stick horse and a red felt cowboy hat and everything.  Casper made frequent references to his status as a ghost, even inviting his owner to play "Ghost," another game that I would've liked as a kid.  As for Sister Belle, well...I'll let y'all hear her for yourselves.

Yep, that Sister Belle is mine, just like Best Friend Cynthia is.  My mom isn't a big fan of Sister Belle, LOL.

Justine-Marie seems to like her okay...

...but Suzie is a little freaked out by Sister Belle's ability to talk, so maybe Mama is on to something after all. 

Y'all can probably see Sister Belle's pull ring, sticking out of the right side of her neck.  Why it's in a different position from Chatty Cathy's is anyone's guess.

Mattel placed Sister Belle's talking mech in her head, which I think is smart since her soft body would've offered very little protection for her mech.  Like Chatty Cathy, Sister Belle says eleven things, and she said some of the same things.  So far my doll has said ten of her possible phrases:

*I love you.
*Let's play "House."
*I'm glad we're friends.
*Let's draw pictures.
*Please take me with you.
*Do you like me?
*It's time to eat.
*Sing me a song.
*I think you're nice.
*Will you play with me? 

I think the eleventh phrase is "I'm Sister Belle," but my doll hasn't said that yet.  LOL, I've had her since May 24th and she STILL hasn't said it!  I admit that "I'm glad we're friends" brought a smile to my face, because everyone likes to hear that regardless of age.  Sister Belle's voice is rough, squeaky, and indistinct now, and it's deteriorated some in the time that I've owned her, but she does still talk and I am very glad of it.  

Mattel didn't forget Chatty Cathy, of course.  In 1962 she her family grew to include Chatty Baby, with twins Tiny Chatty Baby and Tiny Chatty Brother and the aforementioned Charmin' Chatty appearing in 1963.  Cathy's last sibling to arrive was the nightingale of the family, Singin' Chatty.  With the exception of Charmin', all of these dolls had fully internal talk boxes that were activated by a string, and they all wore out with time.  Indeed, I've run into a great many of these dolls over the years, and I've never even once found one that still talks, thus why I was so pleased to find a Sister Belle doll that still works.  Luckily these dolls are easily repaired, provided you send them to someone who knows what they're doing!  

But Mattel isn't done.  Whaaaaaat, did y'all seriously think we'd get through this post without bringing Barbie into the mix???  No, Barbie has had a lot to say since she uttered her first words in 1968, and she'll be popping into this post a lot in the next few segments.  I should probably admit that I don't have an original Talking Barbie, but I do have New 'n' Groovy Talking P.J.  

My P.J. is not wearing her original outfit at the moment (I have it safely tucked away), and she doesn't talk anymore, but she does still have her pull string (Some of these dolls do not have their string intact).  Instead of the finger loop sported by Chatty Cathy and Sister Belle, she's got a daisy sticking out of her neck.

Yes, Barbie and P.J. talked, as did Stacey, Christie, Ken, Steffie, and Julia.  I have a full script of P.J.'s phrases in an old issue of Barbie Bazaar, but God only knows where that magazine is.  YouTube has a sound byte from a repaired doll, so that's something.

I can't talk about pull-string dolls without discussing one of my favorites.  Scooba-Doo was another Mattel product, and a fairly obscure one at that.  She hit store shelves in 1964.

Yep, y'all read that right.  She's Scooba-Doo, not to be confused with Scooby Doo, whom I loathe.  Seriously, I'd like to punch Velma in the throat, and I still feel that way now, even after the left tried to destroy her.  But Scooba-Doo?  She's a freakin' BEATNIK!!!  She talks and sings, if you want to call her racket singing.  I guess it classifies as scat-singing, which can be tremendously fun to listen to when it's done right, as Steven Tyler demonstrates at the end of "Rag Doll."  Anyway, Scoob scat-sings and talks, and her phrases are nothing like Chatty Cathy's or Sister Belle's.  She never hurt herself like Chatty Cathy and Matty Mattel did, for example (LOL), and she likes...no, she DIGS food.  I think my favorite phrase of Scoob's is a reference to her permanently attached black tights:  "Dig my CRAZY black stockings!"  I dig 'em, sweetie!  I used to wear black tights myself once, back when my legs were slightly smaller than thunder.

Mattel had other talkers, mostly babies and these weird little goobers called Talk Ups, but I'll just talk about just one more before moving on.  Baby See 'n' Say, Baby Secret and Teenie Talk all had mouths that move.  Case in point:

As I established in that clip, this is Baby Teenie Talk; Baby Secret looked a lot like her.  These three dolls have that same slack-jawed expression that Amazing Maddie and Snackin' Sara have, and yet they're pull-string dolls just like the ones above.  Baby Secret speaks in a whispering tone that can sound a bit creepy, even to a seasoned doll collector like me, so it's probably just as well that I went with Teenie instead.  Speaking of creepy, if any of y'all are in the mood for some Annabelle-type humor, this parody of Baby Secret's commercial is a riot.  Of course my little doll doesn't say "Daddy's pills taste like candy," but she does look a lot like Baby Secret in the face, and both dolls look a little cross.  I have a strange feeling that when I pull her string Teenie is going to say "You know what?  You really suck."

Maybe she's wondering where her missing hair plugs went, or why Tommy keeps photobombing.

Crazy ol' Tommy's always gotta be where the action is.  Sometimes that's cute and sometimes that's...not so cute, like when Tommy nommed on Lindsay's boot...a day after I'd gotten her.  Now the paint is peeling off and I'm gonna have to go over it.  I was so mad that I almost yelled "I HOPE THAT PAINT IS TOXIC!!!"  The little a-hole chewed on Sister Belle too, too the point that Belle now has a hole in her foot.  Sister Belle is unfazed by this injury, but I think she may admire and even envy Teenie Talk's clearer voice and moving mouth.  In fact, I have a feeling that they're plotting something devious.  Either that or Teenie is wondering why Sister Belle has a hair bow and she doesn't.

"I like that!  Where'd you get it?"

I've since fixed Teenie's hair and added in her very own bow, but I digress.  Guess what one of Teenie's phrases is?  "I hurt my finger."  Good grief, were Mattel's talkers a bunch of klutzes or what???  Chatty Cathy hurt herself too at some point, and so did Matty Mattel.  Teenie's phrases are more distinct than Sister Belle's are, but some of them trail off before finishing.  The "I hurt my finger" phrase is one of these; she starts to say "please" before petering out.  Luckily this video fills in the blank:  "I hurt my finger.  Please kiss it for me."  I also like "Hide your eyes...peek-a-boo!"  "Peek-a-boo" was a game I liked when I was super-little, and I still like to play it with any baby that comes into the library.

Before I move away from Mattel for a bit, look who's on Teenie Talk's tag.

That's Matty Mattel, kiddies!  Not only was he one of Mattel's dolls, but he was also Mattel's mascot for many, many years.  I think he was the mascot before he was one of their dolls, in fact.  I even remember seeing him in some inconspicuous place on Mattel packaging when I was a kid and wondering "Who's that and why is he there?"  Now I know.  This article discusses a few other Mattel dolls that talked during the 1960's, and a diverse lot they were!

Of course Mattel wasn't the only toy company to make pull-string talkers!  1971 saw the birth of a very special doll, Talking Tamu.

Tamu came from a then-new toy company called Shindana Toys.  She was not Shindana's first doll, but she was their first that talked.  She could cry and laugh, and her other phrases were things like "My name is Tamu," "Tamu means 'sweet,'" "Can you dig it?," "I'm proud, like you," and my favorite phrase, "Cool it, baby."  LOL, I heard "Cool it!" a lot when I was a kid, and I often yell it at my cats when they start to bicker (again, Tommy usually is the instigator).  I can't do much more than scratch the surface of Tamu without owning her, so here's Debbie Behan Garrett's post about her, and here's a recording of the phrases she said.  I freaking love this doll, by the way!  I don't have her yet, but I'm keeping my eyes peeled, just like I am for Scooba-Doo. 

Ideal also made pull-string talkers in 1971, namely variations of these two.

My Crissy and Velvet are the Look Around variety rather than the Talky variety, but as I stated in Crissy's review I like the talking gimmick better than the "look around" gimmick.  Velvet had six phrases, while Crissy originally had twelve.  Later Talky Crissy dolls had six or seven phrases (scroll down to 1971 if you click the link), and once in a blue moon one might find a Talky Velvet with seven phrases.  Twelve-phrase Talky Crissy made a bunch of hair-related comments, as well as a thinly-veiled advertisement for Velvet ("Velvet talks too!").  Six-phrase Crissy offered more relevant chatter, mainly responses to any questions or secrets that little girls might have for her.  As far as I know, Cinnamon never talked, nor did any of Crissy's friends or Velvet's friends.

Before I move on, I want to pay some kudos to Miss Debbie for the advice she gave in this post about her Chatty Cathy dolls.  She says that if you have a pull-string talker it's best to activate them once in awhile to keep their mechanisms from deteriorating.  It's too late for my Chatty Cathy, but it's not too late for Sister Belle and Teenie Talk.  Every morning and every evening I pick them up and pull their strings, and Sister Belle ask me to sing to her or take her with me.  Sorry, Sister Belle, but no more dolls at the library.  And you don't want to hear me sing.  "Slide Zone" does not sound great when sung in a Southern accent, LOL.

I HATE TECHNOLOGY!!!
Well, no I actually don't (unlike Patchy the Pirate), but I needed an opener for this next segment because talking dolls of the eighties got VERY technical.  Perhaps the best example of this was Julie.  If this is your picture let me know and I'll credit you.

Most of the Julie dolls I've seen don't look a thing like the pretty little poppet in her commercial.  Indeed, I think Julie is a little creepy, and that's saying a lot because creepy dolls don't usually bother me.  To be fair, I think Teddy Ruxpin is creepy too, which makes no sense because I don't think the puppets in Welcome to Pooh Corner were creepy.  Some folks did, LOL.  Creepy or no, Julie was very unique among dolls in general and talking dolls in particular.  Not only did her face move in tandem with her words like Baby Secret's face did, but she responded to external stimuli like temperature, light, and certain words.  Her mouth opened and closed, her eyes blinked, and she could "read" story books via sensors in her fingertips and in the specially constructed story books.  One could also "teach" her to listen to other voices by pressing a very, VERY small button in her back, and I think one could also expand her vocab with outfits.  The interesting thing about Julie is that she didn't rely on an internal phonograph or a pull string, but rather these cartridges that looked a lot like the old-timey cassette tapes.  Julie had a slot on her back to accommodate these.  These cards aren't mandatory to get Julie to talk, but they do add significantly to her play value, kinda like Charmin' Chatty's records did.

Worlds of Wonder made a great many talking toys, mostly stuff that ran on cassette tape like Teddy Ruxpin, Mickey Mouse, and Mother Goose.  As far as I know, the only noteworthy dolls were Julie and her predecessor, Pamela.  Pamela wasn't quite as advanced as Julie was, as her face didn't move and her sensors had to be activated by touch, but that's still a lot more than Chatty Cathy and Mae Starr could do!  Pamela ran on a similar mechanism to Julie, with cartridges that went into her back.

Coleco also got in on the talking act before Cabbage Patch Fever fully cooled down.  The Talking Kids were kinda like Julie and Pamela in that they could interact with their accessories and to a certain extent with each other.  Their mouths moved like the Snacktime Kids' mouths did.  There's not much else to say about them, as they're just...Cabbage Patch Kids that talked.  There are a few running around on eBay, but they're ridiculously expensive, especially for a Cabbage Patch Kid.

Of course a lot of these eighties dolls need something to power them, and that brings us to...

BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED
Most of the talkers during the nineties were Barbie and Barbie-type dolls, or they were baby dolls that played Ring-Around-the-Rosie, caught colds, jumped on trampolines, or peed their pants.  Oh, how I HATED Potty Dotty!!!  I don't know why, but I hated her.  Anyway, I didn't play with dolls during my childhood so I don't remember much about the decade's earlier talking Barbie dolls, but I do remember the commercial for Super Talk Barbie (year was 1994), and being floored when the voiceover said she could say over a hundred thousand things.  LOL, I remember joking to Daddy that this particular Barbie and I would be good friends, since at the time I didn't have an off switch.  I don't yet own Super Talk Barbie, but she shows how far Mattel came in three short years.  One of her predecessors, 1991's Teen Talk Barbie, said only four things.  There was a list of...I think it was thirty-six phrases, but each doll only said four.  My mistake, there were 270 possible phrases, WAY more than thirty-six, LOL!  My doll was sent with fresh batteries and thus talks perfectly.

Yep, this is the one that said "Math class is tough," and darn straight it was!  But as they love to do, the feminists all had a collective stroke over Barbie's admission that not everything comes easily to her.  As a result Mattel discontinued the phrase and offered a trade to anyone who had a doll that said the phrase.  The whole mess was spoofed in another Simpsons episode, "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy."  Perhaps the feminists should've been glad that Barbie didn't say "Math class sucks," like I did plenty of times during my high school years.  My particular doll has no reference whatsoever to math class, and it's probably just as well since dolls that say "Math class is tough" are now collectors' items and thus expensive.  My doll says the following four phrases:

*Help me pick out a new car.
*Who's your favorite rock star?
*Let's plan a ski trip.
*Music makes me feel great!

Who's my favorite rock star?  Depends on which decade of development I was in:
16-year old me:  I LOVE ELTON JOHN!!!
22-year old me:  ROGER DALTREY IS A HOTTIE!!!
33-year old me:  JOHN LODGE FOR THE WIN!!!

I doubt Barbie would know who any of those men are, but one can always pretend, right?  As for the new car, this chick is totally getting a Beetle, the car that I always wanted for Barbie.  The green one was my favorite, but my doll will likely get the blue one since it matches what she's wearing.

Super Talk Barbie is likely the most verbose Barbie doll we'll ever see, but she is by no means Mattel's last.  Dentist Barbie, Dorothy and Glenda, the riotously funny Talk With Me Barbie and Chat Divas, and Hello Barbie are some notable examples.  I owned Dentist Barbie for a short time during my teenage years, and she said dentist-flavored things like "Let's floss," and "Great checkup," plus mechanical, dentisty sound effects.  Shudder...I know we need dentists in this world, and I love my personal dentist, but does ANYONE like going to the dentist, even if they like their dentist???  Furthermore, when's the last time any of y'all saw your dentist wearing high heels in the office?  Yee-ouchie!  But then again, one of the ladies at my vet's office wears high heels and seems to do just fine.  LOL, I never will forget the sight of her in rainbow high heels, cradling my puppies in her hands and kissing them after they had their first round of shots!  Anyway, the Talk With Me dolls and the Chat Divas are hilarious because their mouths moved, similarly to Teenie Talk and Amazing Ally, and as a result they came out looking a little like Julia "Duck Lips" Roberts.  On the other hand, the Chat Divas talked, sang, and interacted with their accessories, making their goofy mouths a little easier to ignore.  Hello Barbie got even more technical than that, enough so that she belongs in the next segment.  I'll get to that in the next segment, but I can't really do it without discussing Mattel's non-Barbie, millennial group of talkers.

TALKING OUT OF TURN
Oh, the Diva Starz.  When the line was young they looked like this.  From left, they are Summer, Alexa, Tia, and Nikki.  Summer was later replaced by another blonde, named Miranda.

Betcha y'all can't guess which one my favorite was, with my love of red hair!  I liked the Diva Starz enough to voice a passing interest in them, but in the end they had too many bells and whistles.  Plus I was afraid that they didn't have an off-switch, like Furby.  Truthfully the dolls were kinda dumb-looking with their huge Blythe-sized eyes and heads, but they did have a significant amount of play value.  Their heads turned, their eyes blinked, and their lips flashed when they spoke.  According to their commercials these dolls could "feel" when their hair was being brushed, and they could interact with their accessories that plugged into their bodies.  They could also talk to their owners to a certain extent, with help from the flower buttons on their shoes.  With Miranda's introduction the dolls became your more traditional fashion doll, but they still talked.  Here's what Miranda looks like.

When Jenny and Emiko modeled a Diva Starz outfit I never dreamed I'd be owning one of the dolls, but I do now.  Now I have to dig that outfit out and put it with Miranda's stuff!  Miranda also fell victim to Tommy's lousy little teeth (two minutes after I unboxed her), but I stopped his baloney before he could do any damage.  Anyway, Miranda's lips light up like the robotic dolls' lips do, and she's activated by a button under the "skin" on the top of her head.  Her eyes look like they blink, but they don't.

Like Teen Talk Barbie, she speaks four phrases:

*Glow get 'em, girlfriend!

*Get real!

*Lights out, it's time to glow!

*Which dude is paging me now?

I'm not 100% certain about that last one, but that's what she sounds like she's saying.  Hmmm...where were the feminists when that phrase came out???  Anyway, these fashion dolls are nowhere near as advanced as the robotic Diva Starz were, and thus they don't interact with each other or with their owner.  Even then the conversation could devolve into jibberish with one doll talking to herself and the other singing, like Tia and Summer did here.  But not all conversations went bananas; in this video Alexa and Nikki communicate with no trouble.

Alrighty, that was Mattel's anti-Barbie.  Now...who is the millennial anti-Barbie that EVERYONE remembers???

Before the first decade of the new millennium was out the Bratz talked, and they were similar to the Diva Starz in that they could respond to some of your responses with buttons or yes/no cues.  Unfortunately the Talking Bratz appear to have been partially (or wholly) static like the Diva Starz were.

There were also genies, and their positions are different but they look the same otherwise.  Even though I hate modern/semi-modern pop music, I couldn't help humming "Genie in a Bottle" when I saw these.

These dolls apparently can come off their base, but it looks like their legs are stuck in their show-offy stances.  I'll stick with my non-talkers, thanks.  While MGA was piddling with the Bratz, Playmates Toys was releasing a whole line of interactive dolls, most of them with the title "amazing" attached.  I own Amazing Maddie from this line, and I had hoped to have her review done by now, but...no.  This is what she looks like.

Like the Bratz and the Diva Starz Maddie and her Amazing friends can interact with their owners via the pressing of buttons.  She's not as technical as Julie, in other words; Julie can recognize external stimuli to a certain degree, but the only way I can talk to Maddie is through her buttons.  

In theory I could also use Maddie's "creative padd," as she calls it.  This is actually what the manufacturers intended.  Maddie has a port on her left wrist...

...and this is where the cord to the creative padd hooks in.  The creative padd is this reddish thing with six little buttons inside. 

Maddie came with several cards, and each card slides into the top of the creative padd.  There are things for setting the date and time, as well as other odds and ends.  Here's where I run into problems, as her mechanism is a little hard to handle.  I'm not sure if the cards in her "creative padd" came warped or if that occurred with age, but either way the prompts don't always work when I punch the buttons.  One of Maddie's phrases is "Bummeroo," and usually when she says that it's because her creative padd can't read the card that's inside it.

See the warping?  I blame that for Maddie's inability to consistently read my prompts, but maybe it was always that way.  I dunno.  My point is that like some Julie dolls Maddie and Ally are glitchy.  I'm not sure about the rest of the Amazing line since they didn't rely on cards, but maybe they have the same problems.  Ally and Maddie took a page out of Julie's book in that their mouths move when they talk, and Allysen took it a step further.  Her eyes blink, her eyebrows move, and her mouth can change from a smile to a frown.  She's a little on the wrong side of Uncanny Valley for some folks, but she's got a cute face!

Maddie is a little quirky even when I do get her creative padd to work, as she sometimes likes to spout random phrases that have nothing to do with what we were initially talking about.  I haven't tested Allysen yet because I don't have Allysen yet, but I figure she'll do the same...or maybe not.  Maybe all the bugs Ally and Maddie had were worked out with Allysen, just like later issues of Julie had fewer glitches.

Last in this section, Hello Barbie.

Until I read this article, I thought Hello Barbie was just another Barbie that talked, minus the moving jaws of the Chat Divas, and without the cumbersome PC connection that Talk With Me Barbie required.  No, this Barbie looks like your typical dopey blonde Barbie, the kind that says "Hiiiiiiiiiii, everyone!" like Big Bird (no offense meant to Big Bird, who I still think is awesome).

Not so fast there, Moon.  Hello Barbie has an internalized WiFi connection that must be connected to an app (usually on Mom or Dad's cell phone).  She requires charging when her batteries run low, but when she's charged she can respond to her owner with one of eight thousand preprogramed phrases.  Eight thousand?  That's pretty wimpy compared to Super Talk Barbie's one hundred thousand phrases.  And unfortunately, there was a catch, as some parents and consumers worried about Big Brother problems.

WHERE WE ARE TODAY
All of the above dolls appear to have set the stage for this young lady, Ask Amy, from World of Magic Toys.

Somber-looking little goober, isn't she?  What I've read and heard about Amy is largely heresay, but folks are saying that Amy is the most advanced doll available...unless you count those robotic RealDolls, and those are NOT toys for kids.  Seriously, those darn things remind me of an episode of The Twilight Zone, something like "The Lonely."  Anyway, according to her website Amy can laugh, cry, talk, sing, and go to sleep.  She knows when you've got her upside-down.  She can answer questions, turn her head, move her eyes, and apparently her lips as well.  Hmmm...those lips don't look like lips that can move.

But sure enuff, there are videos on YouTube that show this doll's mouth moving.  Amy's speech is largely free of the slang that Maddie seems quite fond of, adding evidence to World of Magic Toys' claim that Amy is an educational tool as well as a toy.  Does that mean that Amy will be doing the frustrating task of teaching her owner multiplication???  Unfortunately, no, but reciting poetry is a good skill to learn too, particularly if one has a teacher who's big on that thing (I had a few like that).  These dolls can apparently do just that; the one in the green shirt reportedly knows eight songs and six poems, and while she doesn't teach multiplication she does sing songs about math and the alphabet.  And by Jove, she knows the old nursery rhymes that I loved when I was little.  Cool...I may have to grab one of these dolls for myself and see how good she is.  I wonder if I'll have to teach her to recognize my voice, like I'd have to do with Julie.  Pricing for Amy is...fairly reasonable.  She's bigger than an American Girl, and she does more things than an American Girl can, but the prices are about the same.  Not cheap, mind you, but not outrageous like Edison's early talkers were.  And as far as I know she can't be used for nefarious purposes like Hello Barbie could.

Outrageously priced or no, Edison's talkers may not have been the biggest sellers on the planet, but they certainly set the paces for the next century.  This post is absolutely not a comprehensive list of talking dolls; to do that would take years and a lot of research, and I'm too lazy to do all that.  But hopefully I've entertained y'all and presented some sort of information that might come in handy for your own collections.  Now I'm gonna try and get Amazing Maddie's review done!  She should be up on September 16th, if all goes well and life doesn't happen.  Let me know if there's someone I missed that you think should be here!

Happy reading,
RagingMoon1987