Afishionados,

For reasons that I cannot explain, the memory of a toy from my childhood popped into my brain tonight. Specificially, my brother’s (Drew) Teddy Ruxpin from the late 1980s.

Teddy Ruxpin was a toy bear that featured a moving mouth, blinking eyes, and the ability to tell stories. I can’t recall specifically what Teddy’s overall quest was, only that he encountered various creatures and made many new friends along the way.

Two of his best friends were Newton Gimmick and Grubby, a crazy old human inventor and a large yellow caterpiller-like creature respectively. They cruised around in a bad-ass airship in search of new adventure. I wish my life could be that cool.

The original Teddy Ruxpin toy had a cassette player built into his back. His stories came with a color picture book and a cassette tape. Simply insert the tape into Teddy’s back, sit back, then watch and listen as he shared his tale. Teddy was also in cahoots with the battery industry, as he sucked down four C batteries like Homer Simpson chugs beer.

As young kids, my brothers and I did not have our own cassette player. We did, however, manage to own one music cassette tape between the three of us: an illegal copy of the Top Gun soundtrack, transferred via my dad’s record player no less. Ah, how I miss the sweet, sweet sounds of the popping and crackling of vinyl transferred to the cheapest cassette tapes that K-Mart sold. Those were the good ol’ days…

So, what do kids with one tape and no tape player do? Slap that sucker into their Teddy Ruxpin, of course!

When it came to Teddy’s own tapes, his mouth only moved when he spoke on the cassette. But when Kenny Loggins started playing “Highway to the Danger Zone”, Teddy flipped the fuck out. His eyes twitched, his mouth jittered, and he sang his little heart out in joyous, epileptic fashion.

Sadly, thereafter Teddy was never the same again. His eyes and mouth continued to twitch horribly (ironically, I now share Teddy’s reaction when I hear Kenny Loggins music) and he no longer only spoke when his character talked on the tape. Kenny Loggins killed our Teddy Ruxpin.

Teddy has since been through four various companies but has been resurrected once again. He now uses digital cartridges instead of cassette tapes and uses four AA batteries vice the original four C, but he still looks like the lovable bear from my childhood.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Awesome, Family, Make Believe, Nostalgia, Toys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.