Noisy Toy Tutorial

Perhaps you are not yet familiar with the noisy baby toys. The toys which operate on the principle that Chaos! and Noise! and Lights! equal 'Learning'.

These toys torture my sensibilities and seem to magically appear in our home at Christmas or at Birthdays when people who don't have children gift us with them.

Here's a helpful tutorial for secretly quieting those loud toys.

Step One:

Step Two:

Step Three:

Step Four:

Watch for my next Tutorial titled: Oops, it's broken! : What to say when the batteries die.

Comments

[jenB]

i think i love you

and now i can't get that david cassidy song outa my head

[jilbur]

You should get a MacArthur fellowship just for that.

Thank goodness we had elves that 'disappeared' such toys periodically into boxes in the basement ...

[Anna]

I always find that given a drumset or trumpet to the neigbourkid of those people (who gave your kid a loud toy) does wonders!!

[Nicole]

Because I don't have kids YET, I make sure to give quiet toys (books, stuffed animals, clothes). Unfortunately, my boyfriend goes out of his way to find the loudest, noisiest, most annoying toy he can find. Because of him, we're going to have to live with our children in the woods away from civilization until they're 18.

[psquared]

Try clear packing tape over the speaker.

Enjoy!!

[Melissa]

Oh, oh, oh Psquared!

But we did and the toy became a game....a game of removing the packing tape.

In my experience the muting must be secret.

[psquared]

The trick is to cut the packing tape so it PERFECTLY fits the speaker thus covering it completely. and uh...if Eleanor starts pulling the packing tape off her toys...I'm going to know who let the cat out of the bag!!! ;-)

All her noisy toys have always come that way so she doesn't know any other way. Cotton on the speaker though ROCKS. I plan to use that for round two.

[Wendy]

Thanks for the tip. Now...
What do I do about the toys that talk in this really annoying, satanic voice and repeat the same things over and over again until you want to run screaming into the night and find a bridge to hurl yourself over?
And don't say to put them on the "Take it. It's free" table at a garage sale 'cause I've tried and it doesn't work.

[jilbur]

What I find especially heinous are the toys that talk when neglected. Just when you're about to drop to your knees and pray to the nonexistent Deity: Thankyouthankyoushe'sfinalllyput it down ... it pipes up: Hey! Dontcha wanna play with me any more? What kind of friend are you?? Are you suuuuuure?

[Marissa]

I like the ones that you use to learn how to spell, but don't let you spell 'bad' words. Like you'll type in F U C * and it won't let you choose K, and says, "try ANOTHER word!" That's censorship!
I suggest taking the toy to your local Radio Shack and asking them to make it stop talking. The geeks there should like that challenge.

[psquared]

wow...I've got a lot to say on this topic!!
Best gift ever for someone else's child....Big Bird with photo sensitive eyes....put it in the corner of a room, turn out the lights, when the lights come on Big Bird says Peek-a-boo in eeevil big bird voice. Same bird in the back of your car going down the freeway, go under a bridge and come out again on a sunny day....Peek-a-boo....

Made my sister-in-law de-battery the bird...best thing was it was really cute the first 3 days of Christmas..

[Karen]

1. I've noticed that most of our noisiest toys were gifts (quite a few from my in-laws, come to think of it). We learned early on to buy nice, quiet toys for our own kids.
2. I too go the packing-tape-over-the-speaker route.
3. We once received a toy that was furry, so you couldn't put tape over the speaker, and on top of that, it wouldn't stop making noise until it was done with its song or whatever. The toy soon vanished vanished -- imagine that!

[Melissa]

We have one toy, it's a Kipper doll and it says lots of things but one sounds like, "I'm going to KILL you." (Really it's 'I'm going to Kiss you.") God it cracks us up....well it did, the first 134 times.

And Jilbur, MY GOD yes! I find myself leaping to shut the instigating toy off before the children hear it. "Just let it be!" I scream at the toy. "Move ON!!!"

[kalisah]

wow...you're a freaking genius. Too late for me, though; we're past the noisy toy stage. Any solutions for a noise governor for the TV?

[Lil' Sis]

A message to all parents reading this- if you honestly have toys that speak in frightening/satanic voices, send them to me. Seriously. ESPECIALLY light-activated ones! With your help, I foresee my a-hole roomate "deciding" to move out of his "haunted" room pretty darn quickly that way! And if he wets &/or craps himself on the way out, I will send you $200. Swear to God.
That's so friggin' cool.
Miao.

[Marcia]

I wish I had known about your tutorial before. You're upcoming seminar, Oops, it's broken!, reminds me of a similar thing I do when shopping with my kids. Invariably, they want some clothes item that I don't like and I'll say (feigning disapointment), "I'm sorry, sweetie, they don't have it in your size." Sometimes it's easier than arguing.

[Christie]

Nice. I'm waiting for your "Noisy Children" tutorial.

[Charla]

I *might* have to pull all of my son's noisy toys out of the top kitchen cabinet and actually let him use them again. On second thought, what he don't remember won't hurt him!

[aurora]

i've done the removing of the batteries and the clear packing tape. but the cotton. that is just sheer genius! thanks for the tip!!!

[emily]

I think I'll try this on Seth's radio/cd player.If I hear "She'll be coming around the mountain" one more time(at top volume)I can not be held responsible for my actions.

[mumsie]

We also have one of those annoying toys that talks and lights up when it's been neglected. And whatever we do, we can't make it stop harrassing us. My son threw it in the tub full of water, once. You'd think that would be the end of its lip. But, nooooooo. Instead all that happened was it started speaking in french. I even tried leaving at a friend's house, but she gave it back...

[Amy]

I know it's late in the game, but I had to comment on one toy my mom actually got my daughter (it was a bribe/reward for sitting for a professional picture at that awful place where the "photographers" wear propeller beanies). It was a hobby horse unicorn that sang!! Oh joy! It started with "I'm a magical unicorn" then 2 or 3 more lines of unintelligable garbling, then the last line, I SWEAR, said "And I'm going to drive your mom insane!". I couldn't for the life of me think of anything else it could be saying that sounded like that! I thought, wow, whoever recorded that hit the nail on the head!