I have never likened my beloved Santa to the devil living inside the Earth’s core until I had a kid of my own. Only Satan would create the creepy, demonic voices of Elephant bounce and strides, strobe-light baby laptops, or anything labeled “Vtech.” So without further adieu, here’s what a possessed Santa brought Andrew this year:

Fisher Price 3-in-1 Bounce and Stride

The elephant sounds like a screeching chimp blowing its nose. When it does speak English, it also sounds like a little boy imitating Dumbo or with the flu. And it’s a bitch to put together, especially when you’re trying to attach the elephant head. For a few days, Andrew rode his decapitated elephant until my father screwed it into place.

Vtech Sit-and-Stand Learning Walker

This toy was cool for about thirty seconds. When Andrew hung up the plastic phone, some bitchy New Yorker shouted back “Thanks fer cooaaalling!” Also, the faster you turned the plastic gears, the more torturous the cries of cows, birds, roosters, dogs and cats along with the 1-2-3 strobe lights seemed. On sound alone, I’d like to rename this toy as “My First Animal Processing Plant.”

Vtech Sit-to-Stand Alphabet Train

An elephant serves as the conductor of the the alphabet train (the elephant sounds off instead of a horn?!). I mean, is Andrew destined to grow up thinking elephants live inside a train’s smokestack? I’m NOT over-thinking this. Can’t they have a cute dog or something? At least a dog can fit on a train. But, I do appreciate this toy’s attempt to teach the alphabet, although it’s in awkward sentence combinations. For instance, when Andrew matches the lettered blocks in the alphabet book, a little kid says: “The egg (E) is next to the fish (F)” Huh? Is the fish laying eggs? Or are we making some weird fish omelet? Stop being lazy Vtech…

Vtech Baby’s Light-Up Laptop

The screen is like a 70’s inspired LightBright with the English and Spanish alphabet. Whomever is commissioned to write and/or voice Vtech needs more creative scripts other than the “The chicken is in the yellow diamond.” You’re trying to kill three birds (chickens) with one stone Vtech… The keys sing “Do Re Mi” with all the trappings of a computer synthesizer. Auto tune would be so much cooler. For $20 bucks, I think I’m expecting too much. At least someone is learning Spanish…me!

Vtech Alphabet Activity Cube

I saved Satan’s best Vtech torture device for last. This little gem takes all of Vtech’s best hits- alphabet blocks, creepy childlike voices, nefarious gears, phones and hideous computer-synthesized music- and stacks them on all five sides of a cube. It’s exactly like the horror movie, Cube, when a hapless teenager moves the pieces of the cube to reveal the devil’s minions. Okay…maybe not exactly like the movie.

But try listening to all five toys in unison, buzzing, beeping, bopping and screeching and you’ll start wishing for a demonic presence to take you away from it all. Or put you out of your misery.

See/buy any torture-device toys lately?