Toys making noise when nobody is around to play with them is a pretty common “ghost” encounter. We had one ourselves with a Sesame Street Ernie doll that would randomly say “I feel great” in an empty room , in the middle of the night, etc. caught it on video once triggering with the doll just lying on the floor.
Turns out when battery voltage gets low (but not yet dead) this can happen in a circuit. I swapped out the batteries and our ghost never came back. Not surprised to hear it happening in a store where stock just sits there for a long time.
Pretty creepy though to hear that when you are lying in bed
I was in the house a couple of weeks ago when I kept hearing a voice coming from upstairs every so often I couldn't track down because it never happened when I was up there.
Which is to say, nowadays we have some toys that spontaneously speak in the middle of the day with no input too, by design. It didn't "freak me out" or anything, it was clearly an electronic sound from a speaker. Did make me ponder the idea of leaving some sort of speaker with a software-defined-radio wired into the mains so I could do a drive by of my old house a few years later and start transmitting things into it around Halloween or something, though.
One wonders, how the engagement economy will transfer the talking toy industry. A/B testing has confirmed that screaming "Fire!" or yelling "Everybody on the floor, this is a robbery!" - creates instantanious engagement and is thus superior to classic toys engagement.
The best part is those older toys with low batteries would have an extra creep to the voice because of the low voltage. We had one that sounded absolutely possessed by a devil. It was truly terrifying to hear that in the middle of the night :-D
This effect still happens with cheap battery-powered cat toys that chirp. Some are rechargeable... others are not, and keep squawking pixelated noises of various pitches for years on end. Ask me how I know.
I remember waking up as a kid to the sound of "Me scared!" because our Furby had fallen off the bed as I drifted to sleep. It's one of the audio clips the Furby plays when it is placed upside down.
I used to work for Toys R Us, so here's a random anecdote no one asked for. When you called the store and were put on hold there would obviously be hold music. The music that played? It was the same music that was playing in the store. I remember calling in one day to get my shift assignment and the music was super weird, I told me coworker and he was like "yeah that's the music they are blasting in here, it's awful."
That's pretty common, a lot of older phone systems will literally have a line input where you can hook up a looping music player, Muzak receiver, a radio (illegal but common anyways), or whatever else to provide the hold music feed and for the most part if the business has overhead audio they'll want to use that as their hold music as well.
It was Yanni Yonson who got me fired as a Christmas Temp for aligning the plushies to mount each other. It was him, I swear. 17 year old me thought the plushie orgy was hilarious.
The manager not so.
I got rehired due to the lack of staff and got put on entertainment. Guitar Hero had just came out and I got called up by their parents complaining for not letting their son win.
The store was on the skirts of a rich area which encouraged a lot of rich entitled parents.
Other antics were in the bike isle where I let a kid ride a bike who then rode it in to the board-game shelf. I didn't get rehired the next Christmas.
We had the "built on an Indian graveyard" trope about our local little league fields. Turns out, true story bro. Ref attached 1960 newspaper story, "From an Ancient Indian Burial Ground":
When I went to the UK for the first time I was blown away at how much old stuff you guys have. I was allowed to walk through a centuries old castle by myself. I could have taken home a castle rock if I wanted to. Here if something is 300 years old you can look at it from 6 feet away behind a velvet rope.
It was pretty wild to me going to a toy store that was itself older than America.
I was a young teenager, full of knowledge and a sense of what’s cool. I was chatting with my neighbor, another kid about the same age and temperament.
My buddy’s dad, sensing an opportunity to bond with the teenagers, approached to tell us about last nights episode of the show ( which he knew we liked ). Marshaling all of his cool factor, he walked up and asked if we had seen “This is Incredible”.
Turns out when battery voltage gets low (but not yet dead) this can happen in a circuit. I swapped out the batteries and our ghost never came back. Not surprised to hear it happening in a store where stock just sits there for a long time.
Pretty creepy though to hear that when you are lying in bed
I had forgotten my son bought the Nintendo Talking Flower: https://www.nintendo.com/au/products/talking-flower/ Usually his door is closed when he leaves but that day it had been left open.
Which is to say, nowadays we have some toys that spontaneously speak in the middle of the day with no input too, by design. It didn't "freak me out" or anything, it was clearly an electronic sound from a speaker. Did make me ponder the idea of leaving some sort of speaker with a software-defined-radio wired into the mains so I could do a drive by of my old house a few years later and start transmitting things into it around Halloween or something, though.
At the time: ME ALSO SCARED.
This made me feel young again and part of the Zeitgeist. Someone else thinks of "That's Incredible!" and "Real People" all the time as well!
The manager not so.
I got rehired due to the lack of staff and got put on entertainment. Guitar Hero had just came out and I got called up by their parents complaining for not letting their son win.
The store was on the skirts of a rich area which encouraged a lot of rich entitled parents.
Other antics were in the bike isle where I let a kid ride a bike who then rode it in to the board-game shelf. I didn't get rehired the next Christmas.
Good times.
The USA: Here's a haunted toy shop that opened ten years ago.
The USA: "See, there once was this weird Janitor..."
Although to be fair, "it was built on an indian graveyard" was a gift that kept on giving alot ;)
https://www.nyshistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=sfcn19600623-01...
https://www.fireislandnews.com/history/long-islands-native-a...
It was pretty wild to me going to a toy store that was itself older than America.
Me: My city is old - maybe 250 years old
Him: My city's a thousand years old
He wasn't Swiss, but:
https://www.chur.graubuenden.ch/en/chur-oldest-city-switzerl...
I was a young teenager, full of knowledge and a sense of what’s cool. I was chatting with my neighbor, another kid about the same age and temperament.
My buddy’s dad, sensing an opportunity to bond with the teenagers, approached to tell us about last nights episode of the show ( which he knew we liked ). Marshaling all of his cool factor, he walked up and asked if we had seen “This is Incredible”.
We howled like hyenas.
They had super discounts on Chucky Dolls and sets of steak knives.
I guess all sales are final since it disappeared right after I walked out.