New Interactive Toys Have Something to Say : Dolls With Tape- or Microchip-Based Voices Mouth Words and Move Eyes

Did somebody down there say “Turn me over. Hug me, I love you, I’m sleepy?”

Could be it was two microchips dressed in vinyl and called Baby Talk. She’s 20 inches long, and all she eats is batteries.

When Baby Talk speaks, which is frequently, her lips and cheeks move in sync with her words. She demands to be turned over when placed on her stomach. If you do turn her over, Baby Talk goes to sleep--unless you continue talking to her, in which case she talks right back.

Request to Be Fed

She comes in black or white. She asks to be fed and, when obliged by having a bottle pushed into her mouth, responds by moving her cheeks and making sucking noises. She says “That was good” when she’s had enough.

Baby Talk is a fast-selling example of the newest category of toys called “animated interactive.”

The fact is that children have been interacting with dolls for centuries. But with the new breed of “interactive” toys, the dolls often talk back in their own voices and vocabularies while mouthing their words and moving their eyes.

In some cases, the dolls do almost all the talking.

For example, there’s Teddy Ruxpin, the fuzzy bear who last Christmas came out of nowhere (the company that makes him didn’t even exist 10 months before Christmas) to create a new market.

Unlike Baby Talk, whose vocabulary rests in a silicon microchip, Teddy Ruxpin’s wisdom stems from special tapes inserted in a player built into his back. His mouth and eye movements synchronize with the words of songs and adventure stories he tells.

If Teddy needs company, he can be wired to Grubby, an eight-legged, creature whose conversation and animation are controlled--like Teddy’s--by the tape in the bear’s player. Grubby, who became available this year, talks with Teddy.

The makers of Teddy Ruxpin this year have added animated Snoopy and Charlie Brown dolls to their family of toys with tape-recorded tales to tell.

Microchip-brain dolls tend to encourage more constant interaction than their tape-brain cousins because microchip vocabularies offer a word or phrase at a time, pausing to let a child respond. Some microchips require dolls to speak at regular intervals, others say something and then pause until the child responds by moving the doll or making a noise to trigger another phrase, and some dolls combine both features. The taped vocabularies run more toward stories and songs children can share by reading books that come with the dolls, or by following the taped instructions spoken by the dolls.

Some Dolls ‘Deactivated’

Kids can make anything into anything: sticks into guns, cartons into houses, tin cans into drums and animated interactive dolls into plain old-fashioned dolls of yesteryear.

Indeed, some children tend to “deactivate” interactive dolls; they turn off the dolls and turn on their own imaginations, observed Carol Dutton, a child-development specialist at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in West Los Angeles.

“As I walk by rooms I seldom hear the children playing them,” Dutton said. “Once the thrill wears off they tend to use the dolls in their own way.” That way, she continued, is for youngsters to switch off the interactive mechanisms, and invent their own roles and vocabularies for the dolls.

Interactive dolls cost about $25 to $100, depending on the store and the doll. The rush to clamber aboard the interactive bandwagon has spawned some unimpressive toys, and some that seem bound for success. The less impressive ones reveal obviously inferior materials and workmanship--in some cases their hair sheds, in others they sound as if they’re talking with a mouthful of sand. Better-made, easier-to-understand toys tend to sort themselves out and attract buyers.

“Baby Talk and Cricket are your two big (selling) dolls,” noted Lou Miller, recently retired vice president of Federal Wholesale Toys in La Mirada.

Cricket is a 25-inch black or white baby who looks up, down and sideways while her mouth synchronizes with such taped miscellany as stories, songs, poems, knock-knock jokes and Simon Says games on subjects ranging from vacation time to bedtime.

Any tape will work in Cricket’s player, though only the dozen designed specifically for her will synchronize correctly with her mouth movements. Some others come close, particularly those with high, childlike voices. Madonna vocals are particularly effective, though the doll goes a little crazy during instrumental breaks.

Lesley Kernochan, a 5-year-old Santa Monica girl who played with Cricket, declared the six-pound doll “too big and heavy.” But Lesley found the animation features mysterious and “neat,” and she took the doll to bed with her because its “Sleepy Time” tape “gets me to sleep when she sings her last bedtime song.”

Barbara Kernochan, Lesley’s mother and a Montessori School teacher, noted that “it was very interesting that whenever Lesley referred to the doll she called it ‘the girl,’ and she usually refers to ‘my dolly,’ or something like that. But Cricket was a new category of toy for her, something she could not readily place within an existing category.

“I think her initial efforts were kind of to make friends with the doll, but even by the third day she was starting to lose interest in it.”

Represents a Type

Careful consideration of Cricket is worthwhile because the doll represents a type (tape driven) that can be contrasted with silicon microchip dolls like Bingo Bear.

Bingo is a cuddly little puppet who talks when you open and close his mouth. He combines about 400 words into 100 phrases, some of which are intended to initiate responses (“Would you like to live in the forest?” “I won’t grow any more.”) while others are reactions to assumed comments from children (“Are you serious?” “That’s really something!”).

“I like Bingo better because he’s cuddly and he’s not as heavy,” said Lesley.

Her sister, Lauren, 8, also preferred Bingo because he was “fuzzy and cuddly,” but she added that “It gets boring when I just sit there and listen to him talk when I open and close his mouth. I’d rather treat him like all my other dolls and just talk for him, because then I can make up what he says.”

Finally, Lauren decided that “I think I want him like he is, and just every once in a while see what he says, but mostly I’d do the talking for him.”

A child’s need to use his own imagination was expressed in a different way by a 3-year-old patient of child-development specialist Dutton. Referring to a tape-driven doll, the boy said, “I’d erase the tape and then make a new one of my own.”

Regardless of how children use interactive dolls, the products are a commercial success.

“This is our first year in the interactive doll business,” said David Galoob, president of Lewis Galoob Toys Inc., which makes Baby Talk. “We expect to do more than $100 million this year, up from $57 million last year. In excess of half the increase is due to interactive dolls.”

Galoob added that he expects children to use Baby Talk both as an interactive toy and as a traditional doll, noting that “it works in both modes.”

A Wealth of Dolls

There is a wealth of interactive dolls on toy-store shelves. Among them is Pamela, who responds to noise and touch with more than 60 sentences to which children can relate. Special “voice cards” change Pamela’s vocabulary, allowing her to speak about specific experiences, like a trip to the zoo or a birthday party. When touched on her nose, ears, mouth or eyes, she makes a comment relevant to where she’s been touched.

One of the most charming interactive toys to appear for Christmas doesn’t talk and is not animated, but it surely is interactive. Heart to Heart Bear is a cuddly plush animal with an electronic heart. When the bear is hugged, the heart goes “ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump,” a bit of cardiac cheer that can be felt and heard. Anyone, young or old, who couldn’t go to sleep holding this doll is a true insomniac. He comes in two sizes: 18 inches for kids, and a huge, roly-poly 36 inches for big kids.

Dog lovers might cotton to Wrinkles, whose microchip brain gives him more than 1,000 phrases, plus some dog-like noises. Lay him down and he snores, shake him and he wakes up barking, jam a bone in his mouth and he makes slurping noises (advertising copy says he “munches and crunches,” but the sounds come out like slurps and gurgles). When he mentions singing, push on Wrinkles’ tummy and he barks out “Jingle Bells,” “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or some other tune.

Children into character recognition probably can’t do any better in the interactive toy field than Big Bird, the famous Sesame Street fowl whose electronic birdbrain synchronizes his mouth and eyes with 11 tapes like “A Birthday Surprise” and “Big Bird’s Day on the Farm.”

Smarty Bear is one of the most unusual interactive toys around, in that the little fellow in his plaid vest and Ben Franklin glasses relates to both a child and a TV set.

A youngster can play with the bear alone. Tickle him and he laughs, talk to him and he replies with supportive words and phrases like “Positively” or “For sure.” The comments often have nothing to do with the situation at hand, but they are supportive. Hold the bear by his feet, and he demands, “Turn me over.” Tickle him and he laughs. When he speaks, he moves his mouth, eyes and eyebrows.

Hooks Up to a VCR

The bear comes by himself or with a special “Smarty Box” that hooks up to a VCR. Once you’ve got it wired you can insert a Smarty Bear tape into the VCR and get a 25-minute cartoon to which the bear relates interactively.

For example, a kid can hold the toy on his or her lap while watching “Smarty and Argyle See the USA.” The film takes Smarty’s cousin, Argyle, all over the nation: New York, Philadelphia, Niagara Falls, Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Smarty and his cartoon cousin converse about the trip as little Argyle flies around the country on the backs of eagles and atop airplanes. He hops off at landmarks where he is superimposed on real-life locations seen on the screen.

Some interactive toys, like AG Bear, converse in “animal talk.” Say something to AG and he answers with short “bear talk” sounds in more or less the same rhythm as your own speech patterns. Jibber Jabber monkeys talk back to you in “monkey talk.”

Other interactive playthings answer you in your own words. Tell Baby Talks Back or Matey Parrot “You’re weird,” and the doll will accuse you of the same peculiarity.

PetSter is a furry, kitten-faced, hemispherical character on wheels who responds to sharp sounds, like hand claps, by moving and meowing. A single clap sends PetSter moving forward, two claps turn him left, four back him up and a clap-pause-clap-clap gets a “meow” out of him.

A DeLuxe PetSter is bigger and can be programmed like a robot with a series of commands. It comes with a leash that has electronic controls in the handle, so you can take the creature for a walk, which is sure to turn a few heads as you stroll along the avenue followed by a 13-inch-diameter fuzzball.

Vinyl babies that suck on bottles, bears that talk with TV cartoons and fuzzballs that follow you down the street are just the beginning of interactive toys.

Toy makers are no more inclined to discuss prospective products than are generals to discuss prospective surprise attacks. Some toy makers, however, will talk in generalities:

“I think a lot of people are trying to get voice recognition,” said David Galoob when asked what the future holds for interactive toys.

“For the first time, 1987 will give people the opportunity to put a device in their toys that will recognize about a dozen words of speech. For example, a child could tell a vehicle to go right or go left.

Lot of Potential

“If you take what I said and extrapolate it to a doll or a bear or an interactive system, you have a lot of potential,” said Galoob, whose company makes Smarty Bear and Jibber Jabber, as well as Baby Talk.

Don Kingsborough, chief executive officer of Worlds of Wonder, which makes Teddy Ruxpin, Pamela, and other interactive dolls, said, “We’ve talked about voice recognition and artificial intelligence.

“With artificial intelligence you say, ‘It’s hot outside.’ The doll could sense whether it was hot out, and could respond either, ‘Yes, it is hot out,’ or ‘No, I don’t think so. It’s cold,’ depending on whether it’s hot out.

“I think you’re going to see a lot of amazing new products.”

Amazing or not, the popularity of interactive toys, like hot toy categories of the past, will peak, crash, and then climb back to a lesser plateau, predicted Jerry Sachs, a partner in Sachs, Finley & Co., a Los Angeles advertising agency specializing in toys.

“Prices will go too high in a couple of years,” Sachs said. “Then they’ll tail off, and come back again at a lower level.”

Sachs noted that video games experienced such a roller-coaster ride, coming on strong in 1982, all but vanishing by last year, and returning this year with less fanfare and lower prices.

‘The next category to come back will be hand-held electronic games,” Sachs predicted.

“Like all hot toy categories, the demand for interactive dolls will eventually tail off,” he continued. “No one can predict when that will be. But I can predict that you won’t believe the amazing advances you’ll see in interactive toys during the next few years. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”