Tag Archives: teddy ruxpin

December 6, 2025

Dec. 6 – The Nostalgia Spot Christmas Special Countdown #168-158

By Joe

We’re back to the ranking posts, and following yesterday’s solo entry, it means our numbers are no longer nice and clean. This is also our first day with 11 entries and we’ll have a few more just as part of my organization. We’ll also never have fewer than 10 on these. It’s math, baby!

Today we slide a bit further into the “Hmm…okay,” category. There’s still stuff here that I am unlikely to ever return to, but there’s also some stuff in here that I watch just about every year. Now, I hesitate to call those particular specials good, but they obviously do something right or appeal to a certain part of me and flawed Christmas specials can be watchable. The first one on our list though is a bit murky.

168 – A Very Woody Christmas

Courtesy of the “new” Woody Woodpecker show comes “A Very Woody Christmas.” I could make this short and say this series had another Christmas episode, but I never watched it. I had my fill here. It’s not terrible, it just didn’t really make me laugh. It’s three segments: two Woody cartoons sandwiched around a Chilly Willy. I’d say the Chilly Willy one is the best of the three, but I always liked the little penguin. The third one is also in the discussion as Woody tries to get himself off the Naughty List by doing something nice for his neighbor, but everything just goes wrong. The show premiered in 1999 and it looks okay by those standards. Woody’s redesign is slight and not unsightly and I did like Billy West in the role, I just wish the cartoon was funnier.

167 – Bugs Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales

You could take a lot of what I just said about Woody and apply it here. One would think a Christmas special centered around Bugs Bunny would be pretty funny, but this is not. Perhaps one of the most disappointing Christmas specials I’ve ever seen, this comes post Looney Tunes shorts when the made-for-television animation was obvious and the voices started sounding a little different. It doesn’t look particularly good and too much time is wasted on a tired A Christmas Carol parody that does nothing clever. My affection for these characters has helped to prop it up all the way to this spot and the fact that my kids love Bugs Bunny has kept this in semi-rotation over the years, but this is the worst Looney Tunes Christmas anything on this list.

166 – The Mask – Santa Mask

We go from the Looney Tunes Christmas special to the superhero who wants to be a Looney Tune. The Mask is not a show I’ve spent much time with outside of this episode and I’m not likely to. Even so, this wasn’t bad even though it’s another “Character takes over for Santa” plot. Rob Paulsen is a good Mask and there were at least a few spots that made me smile. It also has Tim Curry and he’s great. I did enjoy the look of this one as it’s much better than the other Jim Carrey movies turned cartoons in that respect. And with this one, I can watch it and think, “This isn’t bad, but it’s definitely not made for me.” And that’s because it’s made for kids and if I were a kid I’d probably think higher of this. And had I been a little kid when this was on, maybe my nostalgia for it would have pushed it higher? Or not as we’ll see in a few entries.

165 – Back to the Future – Dickens of a Christmas

I avoided this one for years because of that title. “Dickens” implies only one thing when paired with Christmas and my appetite to watch unfamiliar A Christmas Carol takes is nonexistent. This one isn’t really what I thought the title implied. Instead, the Brown family (and Marty) travel back in time to find that A Christmas Carol is essentially a true story. They don’t really come to that conclusion, but that’s basically what it is. The Brown kids get mixed up with an Oliver Twist like kid and a Scrooge-type gets it in the end. It’s all right. A cromulent Christmas episode from a cromulent cartoon. There’s so little Back to the Future things outside the movies that there was a temptation to rank this one higher, but if I’m being honest with myself I’ll never watch it again.

164 – The Berenstain Bears’ Christmas Tree

Speaking of surprises, this one definitely surprised me. I knew the Berenstain Bears as a series of children’s books. I read and enjoyed them as a kid. I also vaguely recall an animated series. The only specific of the animated version I could recall was the opening title. An actual plot from an episode is just not something my brain can recall. I assumed this would be a preschool styled show and when I went to watch it for the countdown that year I thought there was a really strong chance I was wasting my time as I avoid preschool shows for this blog. There just isn’t much to talk about with them. I was wrong as this was really a straight-forward comedic show aimed at kids. It didn’t exactly win me over, but I was charmed by elements of it and came to enjoy the dumb father character. I think if this were in the 11 minute range it would have been stronger as I just got sick of it. The plot didn’t have enough meat on the bone to sustain the full run time, but it wasn’t bad. If my kids had been raised on this franchise then I would have been fine introducing this to them. Since they weren’t, I don’t have to.

163 – Dumb and Dumber – Santa Klutz

The last of the Jim Carrey movies turned cartoons I covered was Dumb and Dumber. Coincidentally, it was also the last to be released and the same is true of the movie and cartoon. And it’s also the best of the three, which I’d say is also true of the movies which is quite the coincidence. As for series, that I can’t attest to as I haven’t seen enough of any of them, but for Christmas specials I’m taking “Santa Klutz” over the other two. Part of the reason for that is the run time – this one is short. I like short. It is ugly as sin and I don’t really like looking at it, but unlike the other two this one did have some genuine funny moments. It can be hard to write stupid characters, but this cartoon did a good job with that. There’s some misdirection to jokes and the plot setup is also a strength. Reflecting on it, I’m almost talking myself out of ranking it here and moving it up, but I’m not here to second guess myself.

162 – A Cosmic Christmas

A Cosmic Christmas is a special that’s more interesting than good. I say that as someone who didn’t grow up watching it so my nostalgia here is nil, but the main plot beats are pretty standard Christmas stuff. The animation is rough, but in an artistic and interesting way. Some characters have weird flow or large blocks of color. There’s lots of smoking which is unusual in this day and age and some odd effects with the aliens and their spacecraft. I was never bored watching it even if the story wasn’t exciting. I also enjoyed the Christmas message contained in this one which is largely to help the less fortunate – the sort of thing a lot of high profile church people lose sight of. RIP Nelvana.

161 – X-Men – Have Yourself a Morlock Little X-Mas

Here’s the one I was mostly calling out in the intro paragraph as one I tend to watch every year. X-Men was my favorite show as a kid so nostalgia plays a big role. I was predisposed to liking any Christmas episode X-Men did. And this is a pretty bad Christmas episode, but it’s also intentionally bad. The writing staff was tasked with doing a Christmas episode so they tried to get every trope they could come up with into this one because, on the surface, Christmas with the X-Men is pretty absurd. It just wasn’t the type of show that was going to tackle the subject. The only problem here is the writers were almost too good at making a bad Christmas episode. There’s no sense of irony within the episode, you’re only in on the joke if you happened to read an interview concerning it.

160 – Teddy Ruxpin’s Winter Adventure

I don’t have a ton of nostalgia for the Teddy Ruxpin cartoon, but I did love my Teddy Ruxpin doll and the book this episode was based on. I feel like I can almost recite that story from memory because Teddy and Grubby told it to me so much. It’s not a true Christmas special as it’s one of those other world stories where they have their own customs that just so happen to resemble Christmas an awful lot. The only thing missing is Santa Claus. Teddy and his pals deliver gifts to their friends while the villain, Tweeg, tries to ruin their time, but he’s an idiot with idiot followers. It’s a little too syrupy sweet at times, but I was entertained.

159 – Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas

Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas was so good that they had to come back for another one. Too bad that along the way someone decided that this should be animated in 3D as opposed to 2D and the classic Disney characters just weren’t ready for that. This thing is Ugly. Mickey looks weird, Goofy more so, and it’s an all together downgrade across the board. The duck nephews who are tasked with carrying one of the longer segments of this one look almost monstrous. It’s also a weird setup where we’re going with what is essentially a 90 minute block of programming broken up into 5 segments of varying lengths. It does improve the pacing when compared with Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas, but the stories aren’t the best. The saving grace is the final segment where Pluto accidentally winds up at the North Pole and Mickey thinks he ran away because he got mad at him. It’s cute watching Pluto frolic with the other reindeer and it has a really sweet ending. It also helps that Pluto made the jump to 3D better than most of the cast. If you’re interested in this one, I recommend just fast forwarding to that part. The rest is filler.

158 – One Ham’s Family

Tex Avery’s contribution to Christmas is this short that’s also a sequel to the classic story The Three Little Pigs. Well, sort of. It doesn’t really matter, but we have two married pigs and their bratty son and old Mr. Big Bad is going to try and sneak into this home on Christmas. It turns out to be a bad idea as the little kid is a true screwball cartoon character with all the powers of the screwball. We get to watch this kid brutalize the wolf and get some laughs in the process. It’s light on your usual Christmas tropes, but there’s something there. What holds it back is just that, at this point in Avery’s career, there wasn’t a whole lot more he could do. It’s a lot of the same gags you’ve seen before and the attempts at making them bigger just lack imagination. I also don’t like the protagonist. I dislike his voice and most of his mannerisms so it ends up being one of those cartoons where you almost want to root for the bad guy. Eat the damn kid – he sucks!

Can’t wait until tomorrow for more Christmas? Check out what we had to say on this day last year and beyond:

Dec. 6 – The Cuphead Show! – “Holiday Tree-dition”

What’s next for a video game that looks like a cartoon? Why, a cartoon! Novel concept, huh? Cuphead is a 2017 video game created by Jared and Chad Moldenhauer heavily inspired by animation from the 1930s. It’s basically a hand drawn video game and a fully playable one, at that. It made waves when it…

Keep reading
by Joe

Dec. 6 – Silly Symphony – “Santa’s Workshop” (1932)

Back in 1929 Walt Disney launched the Silly Symphonies series of cartoon shorts. Unlike the Mickey Mouse shorts that were growing popular at the time, Silly Symphonies did not center on just one character or even a group of characters, but rather were fairly self-contained. Some shorts that became popular, like The Three Little Pigs,…

Keep reading
by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in christmas, Film, Television

December 5, 2017

Dec. 5 – The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin: Winter Adventure

By Joe

maxresdefault-12For a brief time in the mid 1980’s, there was a stuffed bear by the name of Teddy Ruxpin who basically owned Christmas. He wasn’t just an ordinary teddy bear, but a bear built around a cassette player with motors in his face. Insert one of his tapes and press play and Teddy comes alive to tell your kids a story, or terrify them which happened a lot. Teddy was the first hot item at Christmas that I can remember. He set off a craze not unlike the one for Tickle Me Elmo would a decade later. Parents did dirty, shameful things to secure one for their kid at Christmas, and it’s probably not surprising to hear that Teddy was able to make the jump from retail shelves to television screen.

images-235

This is what people were going nuts for in 1986.

Creating a TV show based around Teddy Ruxpin was actually pretty easy. The stories and books that the toy worked with could be used to storyboard actual episodes of the cartoon without the need for much additional writing. The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin thus largely stayed close to the source material and was created with the idea of going straight to syndication. For a show with so many episodes, it’s kind of interesting how it just sort of faded away from the public consciousness about as quickly as it arrived. Now in 2017, there’s a new Teddy Ruxpin at retail, but as far as I know there are no plans for anything beyond that.

Full disclosure, this episode is not technically a Christmas episode. It’s based on a story of the same name from the books and basically described a holiday that might as well be Christmas. To get you up to speed, if you’re not familiar with the world of Teddy Ruxpin, Teddy and his caterpillar-like friend Grubby are far from home on an adventure to find a treasure. They’ve befriended a human named Newton Gimmick, an inventor who was willing to share his house with them. There they live in the shadow of Tweeg’s tower, a villainous sort who’s very protective of his recipes (seriously) and has it in for Gimmick and his new friends. He frequently fires off cannons at Gimmick’s house, but his aim is notoriously bad and thus no one actually fears him. When they’re not at home, Teddy and his friends search for treasure in Gimmick’s airship.

2016618eb847757155953f163ebb1980--teddy-ruxpin-adventure

Teddy and his pal Grubby.

The episode opens with Teddy, Grubby, and Gimmick who are all freezing in Gimmick’s house. They realize winter has arrived when they notice the falling snow (which has already accumulated a lot so apparently they aren’t very observant) and decide to venture out and play in the white stuff after breakfast. We then get a brief scene of the chief villain of the series, Quellor, who looks like a pile of robes with horns. He’s distressed about the incompetence around him. This guy is basically after the same treasure Teddy is searching for, and leads an organization called M.A.V.O. (Monster and Villains Organization) which Tweeg is trying to gain entry into. He’s not real important for this episode, and we quickly join up with Teddy and his friends as they play in the snow and sing a happy song.

maxresdefault-13

The villainous Tweeg, who’s mostly harmless despite his best efforts.

While outside, Teddy and Grubby discuss a custom from their homeward where at the onset of winter it becomes customary to give gifts and treats to those you call friends (which is where our Christmas feeling comes in). Gimmick is not familiar with the custom, but he loves it and suggests they carry on the tradition here. The trio head into the house to start baking and getting to work on making gifts while Tweeg pops up to spy on them. He notices they’re using buttermilk, and Tweeg’s character is convinced he has a recipe to convert buttermilk into gold, and so he becomes very suspicious of their actions and is convinced his subordinate, L.B., gave away his recipe.

Tweeg returns to his tower to scold L.B. He’s naturally confused by Tweeg’s anger and denies giving his formula away. Nevertheless, Tweeg kicks L.B. and his fellow bounders (little red creatures with no arms and a horn on their head) out of his tower during which we get a canned sound effect that Hannah Barbera used to use all of the time on The Flintstones when Fred would start running. After the bounders leave, some M.A.V.O. goons show up. Their boss wants Tweeg’s formula and they tie him up and start trashing his tower in search of the recipe. They’re brazenly stupid and some-what proud of it. There’s a lot of attempts at humor, but I’m not sure any are laughing. There’s even our first audio screw up where the wrong voice comes out of the wrong character. During all of this, Tweeg is tied up and mortified about how his stuff is getting destroyed. L.B. shows up by the window, for no apparent reason other than the writers wanted him to, and basically mocks Tweeg as he leaves him to his fate.

lb087

L.B. the bounder. Notice the “Return to Tweeg” stamp on the cannon balls.

Meanwhile, Teddy, Grubby, and Gimmick are busy putting together their gifts. When Gimmick steps out he warns the other two not to go poking around in the closet. Grubby wants to almost the second the door shuts, but Teddy, playing the straight man, lets him know that isn’t okay and Grubby doesn’t put up a fight. The bounders soon gather around Gimmick’s house. They’ve apparently grown to miss Tweeg already, since he was the only boss they ever had. Teddy, Gimmick, and Grubby soon emerge from the house with their gifts for their friends and head straight for the airship, completely oblivious to the four bounders gathered outside the house (they literally walk right past them without batting an eye, bright red creatures against a white backdrop). They take off and the bounders head inside.

x240-3Jz

Teddy and friends deliver gifts to the fobs.

The heroes take to the sky and embark on a musical montage of them giving out gifts to their friends. We get brief cameos from the fobs (little fuzzy bird-rats that speak like Alvin and the Chipmunks), the Wooly Whatsit, the Grunges, and Leota the wood sprite. Afterwards, they return home to find the house all lit up and the back door open, the bounders having just escaped detection. Apparently they just needed some supplies to create a dummy that looks like Tweeg. How they managed to stick one together without arms is a true mystery. They return to Tweeg’s tower to find everyone asleep and Tweeg still tied up. The goons apparently fell asleep after wrecking Tweeg’s kitchen. After trading insults, L.B. agrees to free Tweeg and they replace him with the dummy. The monsters awake soon after they leave and happily scoop up the dummy to bring to Quellor.

Back at Gimmick’s house, the friends are exchanging gifts and are all really happy with the gifts they receive from each other. Soon they’re surprised by a knock on the door and all of their friends from the earlier montage show up with gifts for them. The gift-giving song from earlier is reprised and we get our dose of warm, Christmas feelings even though no one utters the word Christmas. Tweeg, in a very Grinch-like moment, hears the singing and decides he needs to fire a canon at the commotion. The resulting canon blast creates an avalanche and Tweeg and his co-horts are buried in the tower. Teddy and company load up the airship and bring Tweeg some hot chocolate and seem to sincerely give him a shovel to dig his way out of the mess, rather than in a mocking fashion, before departing with a “see you in the spring.”

maxresdefault-11

Gimmick, Teddy, and Grubby deliver a gift to Leota.

After they leave, Tweeg apparently was able to free himself and is bit by the gift-giving bug and gives the bounders snow hats for saving him early. They reward him by saying his name properly (all episode they’d call him something like Dweeb instead of Tweeg, a running gag throughout every episode). They comment on how this is the nicest day they’ve had, then vow to go back to being mean and nasty the next day. L.B. remarks how all of this niceness can make a guy gag. We then take a quick trip to M.O.V.A. headquarters where Quellor is gifted with Tweeg, which turns out to be the dummy. He’s irritated and demands the recipe book with the buttermilk to gold recipe. His lackeys soon realize they used the recipe book as wrapping paper for the dummy, but assure their boss they can glue it back together. Quellor then slumps back to his throne wondering why he didn’t just collect stamps instead of dummies before going out with a “Why me?” as so many 80s cartoons villains before him.

s-l300

The source material.

That’s Teddy Ruxpin’s “Winter Adventure.” It basically feels like an 80s time capsule with typical animation, humor, and characters from that era. Virtually all of the enemies are dumb, and the only ones with an ounce of intelligence seem to only rely on imbeciles to do their dirty work. Meanwhile Teddy and his friends are pretty sterile. I find Teddy’s voice so saccharine that it’s grating. It’s the same voice actor as the toy, but in that format it never stuck out as much. This episode is mostly in-line with the book it’s sourced from. I should know as I still have the copy from my youth. Basically all of the stuff with Tweeg and M.O.V.A. was added for television as the book was basically just concerned with the gift-giving concept. The songs are even from there as well, and to be honest, they don’t bother me. I even kind of like them, but maybe that’s nostalgia.

91T4+veABHL._SL1500_

If you want more Teddy, the entire series is available on DVD. All 65 episodes. Just make sure it’s what you really want.

The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin obviously are no longer on television and haven’t been for a number of years. If you’re interested in checking out “Winter Adventure” you can either watch it on youtube or purchase the DVD set of the entire series. You’re not likely to find it in a big box store, but amazon carries it. I can’t really recommend the DVD set. It’s 65 episodes of a forgettable cartoon with a pretty subpar transfer (I’m sure the masters weren’t in the best working condition since who ever thought this show would merit a home video release down the line?) and no special features. The packaging is kind of nice relying on some stock images from the books. The show was presented in a serialized format, so plot points carry over from episode to another which is pretty cool for an 80s cartoon. It’s still not enough to make it very interesting, so unless you’re really nostalgic for the show or have a kid that somehow got into Teddy Ruxpin, there’s almost no reason to purchase the set. Teddy Ruxpin would eventually tackle Christmas properly in the books, but never on television. Still, this feels like a Christmas special, which is why it’s here.

 

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in christmas, Television

November 21, 2017

Teddy Ruxpin 2017 Toy Review

By Joe

TeddyRuxpinLogoIt probably comes as no surprise that the author of The Nostalgia Spot has a real soft spot for the toys from his youth. One of my favorites was my Teddy Ruxpin story-telling bear and his companion Grubby the octopede. I don’t remember receiving him, but I know it was a Christmas gift and I was terrified of him when he was first powered on, as I assume was the case for many kids in the 1980’s. Today it’s not hard to find a stuffed animal that talks, sings, and moves to pre-recorded material. I even purchased my son a talking Elmo last year that knows his name and interacts with him. In 1986 though, this was cutting edge stuff and kids just weren’t used to their toys simulating life in this manner, hence why it could be terrifying.

teddyruxpin0011

A still from an early Teddy Ruxpin commercial.

I warmed up to Teddy, as did my sister, and using him was a treat. It wasn’t an every day thing, since he was limited by how many stories he had and by how quickly he devoured batteries. I would eventually receive Grubby as a birthday present necessitating even more batteries each time we wanted to hear a story. It’s not that each session would kill the batteries, but Teddy could be a little greedy when it came to power. As I mentioned in the lead-in, Teddy was pretty sophisticated in 1986, but by today’s standards he’s actually pretty basic. Teddy Ruxpin was essentially a stuffed bear with a cassette player in his body. As a result, he was pretty bulky, and kind of heavy. He wasn’t the type of teddy bear you would sleep with. His head housed some basic animatronics. His mouth opened and closed to simulate speech and his eyes would blink too. Connecting him via a special cable to Grubby enabled Grubby’s eyes and mouth to function as well. Grubby also had his own internal speaker, like Teddy, so it really sounded like he was talking with Teddy. Other voices in the stories would emanate from Teddy’s speaker and Grubby and Teddy would just sit stoically while they spoke, occasionally blinking their eyes.

Different_Teddy_Ruxpin_Outfits

Kids had plenty of options when it came to Teddy’s wardrobe.

Teddy came with one book and one cassette tape and various other book and tape combinations could be purchased at retail. The books had some nice artwork and were fairly conventional children’s tales. Owners could also buy costumes to dress Teddy in, like a rain coat or a Santa Claus suit to pair with his Christmas story. Teddy was a pretty big hit and one of the first Christmas toys parents were seemingly willing to kill for. He was the main property for toy company Worlds of Wonder, but the company would eventually go belly-up in the 90s. Teddy was re-released in various forms throughout the decade, getting updates to the original model and also receiving a new “backpack” version that used something like 8-tracks instead of cassettes. He had a companion animated series that had a full syndication order, but apparently it wasn’t enough to sustain Worlds of Wonder.

Now in 2017, Wicked Cool Toys has brought Teddy Ruxpin back for a new audience. Unlike prior attempts to revive him, this Teddy is entirely different. Sure he’s still a bear, has brown fur, and tells stories, but he no longer is saddled with a cumbersome playback device. He’s noticeably smaller, and more cuddly than his predecessor. He’s also not designed to utilize a line of books but rather a companion app available for tablets and cell phones that substitute for an actual book. He likely has some sort of internal flash memory for storing stories and comes pre-loaded with three tales with more available for purchase through the aforementioned app. He’s basically what you would expect Teddy Ruxpin to be in 2017.

159702_4Wicked Cool Toys either hired the same actors who played Teddy (Phil Baron) and Grubby (Will Ryan) back in the day or they found individuals who sound just like them. Or everything is old material. All of the stories are recycled from the original run, as best as I can tell, so Wicked Cool Toys not only acquired the Teddy Ruxpin license, but the back catalogue as well. “The Airship,” which I believe is the original story that came with Teddy, is included and it’s kind of a trip to revisit it. The stories I remember most from my childhood, “Uncle Grubby” and “Winter Adventure,” so far are not available but it wouldn’t surprise me if they show up eventually. This means if you still have any of your old books you can basically use them with this new Teddy. I’d love to find my old copy of “The Airship” just to see if any new dialogue was added.

Operating Teddy is pretty simple. He runs off of AA batteries (not included) and is powered on with a switch on his back. He has two volume settings, and additional controls in both paws and beneath the emblem of his vest. The right paw activates Teddy and can cycle through the stories while the left paw is a pause/unpause button. The button in his chest advances the page. There’s a blue tooth connection button located near the power button. To sync with a phone, you simply open the app and then press the button and follow the onscreen prompts. There’s also a factory reset button if he ever starts acting weird. I have yet to purchase additional stories so I don’t know exactly how that works, but you do it through the app. I assume it must “unlock” the story which is already stored in the bear. He does have a micro USB port, but as of right now, there’s really no need to utilize it that I’m aware of.

IMG_1881

New Teddy’s eyes take some getting used to.

When Teddy powers on his eyes light up and his mouth starts flapping and the familiar “Come dream with me tonight,” still introduces each story. The motors are a lot quieter than the old ones and Teddy should seem less intimidating, so long as the eyes don’t freak you out. They take a little getting used to. Instead of animatronics, Wicked Cool Toys opted for LCD screens that display Teddy’s eyes and animate them as well. This means his eyes are capable of a much wider array of expressions, including cartoonish ones like heart-shaped eyes and stars, but at the cost of looking kind of fake. They also glow, and when Teddy is turned off they go completely black. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to stare into the blank void that is Teddy’s eyes.

IMG_1885

Don’t look into its eyes! Don’t look into its eyes!

When Teddy is not in use, he has a little sleeping mask he can wear to protect his eyes and hide the creepiness. The standard Teddy has an orange shirt that isn’t removable with a tan vest that goes over it. He sports some fashionable jeans to finish off the ensemble and it’s a rather “hip” update to his old onesie and vest combo. If you’re really nostalgic for that look, Target sells a special edition Teddy that features his classic outfit. I haven’t heard plans for additional outfits, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they become a thing if this toy is a hit.

IMG_1884

Phew, he’s sleeping. We’re safe. For now.

Naturally, I’m a man in my 30s so I didn’t purchase a Teddy Ruxpin for myself. I bought it for my one-year old daughter and it’s become her favorite toy. She practically explodes with giddiness every time I turn him on and sometimes we have to hide him when we’re sick of listening to him otherwise she’ll just keep gesturing for us to turn him on. Since she’s only one, she mostly likes the songs and the fact that he talks, but my older son likes to watch the companion stories on my phone, when he’s in the right mood to be sitting still. I do plan on adding some additional stories, especially the Christmas one, in the not too distant future. I expect the experience will be seamless, but if I have any issues I’ll update this post.

IMG_1882

The gang’s all here!

I have so far encountered one issue with Teddy and that’s the pause button in his left paw (paws button?) has stopped working. It’s troublesome for me because my daughter likes pausing and unpausing him because she seems to get a kick out his expression freezing in mid sentence. Now that it isn’t working, she gets frustrated with it quickly which is unfortunate because it partly ruins her enjoyment of the bear. I contacted Wicked Cool Toys via email and they got back to me within an hour and offered to replace my unit with a new one at no cost to me . I’ve been quite impressed with their customer service as a result. These things happen, so as long as companies stand behind their product I find it hard to get angry or discouraged when something malfunctions.

IMG_1883

Maybe Grubby could be Yoshi to Teddy’s Mario.

Teddy Ruxpin is looking like he’s going to be a pretty tough find this holiday season, which is partly why I’m making this post. At least in my house, he’s a home run and my kids really like him. They are kids, so it’s impossible to say how long they’ll stick with something, but for now they’re pretty happy. The prospect of adding new stories should help keep him fresh, and I even think they’ll only enjoy him more as they get a little older and can interact with the stories on a higher level. I do not know what the future has in store for Teddy Ruxpin, if this is it or if his buddy Grubby is in development, but it’s pretty neat to see him back in the spotlight after more than 30 years. Teddy retails for about $100, but most of the major retailers have him marked down to $90. He’s been going in and out of stock since he was released in August, and it might only get more challenging to find as Christmas draws near. If you’re after the Target exclusive, you’ll probably have a harder time tracking him down. I casually looked for one to get my nephew, but I wasn’t having any luck so he’s getting the standard version. It’s possible Wicked Cool Toys has been withholding stock for the holiday rush and he’ll start becoming easier to find. There should be plenty to go around, so don’t cave and resort to the secondary market. And if you do opt to get one for your kid this Christmas, hopefully he or she enjoys Teddy as much as my kids do.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in toys