Baby Secret was another one of those innocent-looking dolls until it talked, or worse, whispered. Back then, our breakfast cereal was promoted by clowns, our chaaawwwwclit milk was sold to us by a scary dummy, and somehow, nobody thought any of this was strange.
Mattel’s Baby Secret came out in the mid-1960s and looked sweet enough at first. She had a baby face, rooted hair, a soft body, and moving lips, but the big gimmick was the pull-string voice box. Unlike other talking dolls that spoke out loud, Baby Secret whispered her little phrases, like she was sharing something just with you. Cute idea in the daytime, maybe. At night in a dark bedroom? That’s a whole different story.
I know she was supposed to make kids feel like she was telling them a private little secret, but a whispering doll beside the bed sounds like the kind of thing today’s kids would need therapy for. We just called it Christmas morning.
Creepy puppets, talking dolls, ventriloquist dummies, clowns selling cereal, and commercials that got stuck in our heads for the next 50 years. Maybe we weren’t tougher back then, maybe we were just too busy watching cartoons to realize half our toys and commercials were nightmare fuel.
