My wife had some points from using her credit card, and one way to use them was to buy baby toys.  Anyone who knows how much money you spend on baby toys will understand the appeal of using points to get “free” toys, so that’s just what we did.  One of the toys she got has got to be literally (yes, I mean literally) the worst baby toy in the world.  It at least wins the “most annoying toy in the world” award.  The toy I’m talking about is the Vtech Spin and Discover Ocean Fun.

Basically this toy has a lot of potentially awesome features.  It has a star that when you press down on it the thing spins, and various buttons and songs that the little one can make play.  There are also four sea creatures on it that also activate music and words when the little one interacts with them.  So what’s the problem?

First, the music is annoying.  Ok, ok, all baby toys have annoying music.  But this is enough to drive any sane person to the brink.  And then there’s the voice on the thing.  What kind of voice should it have?  Maybe a playful voice of a man or woman, or even a boy or girl.  Maybe someone who sounds nondescript, accent free.  Surely that is what they went with, right?  Nope.

The voice that sings and talks to the little ones is almost a parody of some kind of cockney British accent.  It’s as if they went to a screening of Charles Dickens in a really rough part of town, and picked the only kid who wasn’t walking around wearing an Adidas track suit, and asked him to do the voice for this toy, and paid him with a ticket to the local soccer game (not 2 tickets, they had a budget!).

Seriously, when you press the dolphin, you would expect to hear the word “dolphin.”  But nope, my little guy is hearing the word “doughfin.”  When pressing the turtle, he hears “tartl” and so on.  If you think I’m making this up, go to this youtube clip and see for yourself, skip maybe to minute 3:00 and you’ll hear it all in action.

So, my advice would be 3 parts.  1) If you love your child, do not give them this toy.  2) If you love someone else’s child, do not give them this toy.  3)  If you really want to be a punk, and give the worst gift ever, hurry up and order a few and keep them in stock for gift season, you will win all the “bad gift” competitions at Christmas and it’s a good way to pick on someone who might have a child coming soon – for example a brother and his wife 😉