Show us on the doll: Creepy, weird, and just plain disturbing dolls for children you completely and utterly hate

Dolls are considered by many to be one of an unholy trinity of unnecessarily disturbing things aimed toward children. Clowns and puppets typically take the number two and three spots (though some might argue that ventriloquist dummies deserve an honorable mention) but I'll save those two for another day. Today we are talking about dolls.

As anyone who has followed me on Facebook for any amount of time knows, I have a thing about dolls. Maybe the power of suggestion is particularly strong in this one, but I tend to agree with the many folks out there who find them creepy. Don't get me wrong; there are plenty of dolls out there that are perfectly adorable playthings and attractive, well-crafted collectibles. Nonetheless, it would seem a lot of folks out there in internet land agree there is something unsettling about humanoid objects that can't blink...always watching...watching you sleep...watching you in the can (assuming you keep dolls in the bathroom...you freak). Not cool. So in that spirit, today I would like to show you some dolls. Not just any dolls though...

Fucking Creepy Dolls From the Depths of HELL

Somewhere out there, a therapist is enjoying a new boat. And if I continue making things like the above GIF, mine will be as well.

Not plotting to leave my severed head in your bed, if that's what you're asking...just sayin'...

Here, let me fluff your pillow for you...

I can do that but I don't wanna.

"I've got your head on a string, I'm sittin' on Death Row..."

This one's interesting because it appears to be an Asian take on Mattel's highly controversial "Pregnant Midge." But whereas Midge had the privilege of a C-section, this gal is pushing the proverbial watermelon through the keyhole. Also, Midge had no stretch marks. 'Cuz like she's Barbie's BFF, you know? 

This one lives a little too close to home for comfort. A friend sent me this pic of this one of a kind piece, which apparently resides in a junk shop downtown. I immediately thought of this when I saw it.

Cool, right? But wait, there's more! In addition to these generic dolls, I also have this bonus assortment of dolls that have interesting backstories. Pleasant dreams...

You Can Shave the Baby

This one gets an honorary mention because it's not real. Or at least it's not real in the sense that it has never graced the shelves of any toy store. "You Can Shave the Baby" is a piece of conceptual art created by Polish artist Zbigniew Libera in 1995. According to his bio, this and other pieces of Libera's art "play with the stereotypes of contemporary culture." In an intellectual way, he assures us. A difficult sentiment to take seriously coming from a man who also created this. WARNING: NSFWS (not safe for work or soul).

Little Miss No Name

Sweet baby Jesus on a Ritz. When I first saw Little Miss No Name on List of the Day (I know, I'm so original) I assumed that, like The Hirsute One above, she was only "real" in the sense that there are some assholes out there trying way too hard to create something weird and unsettling to fuck with people like me; you know, people with not enough to do who intentionally seek out weird and unsettling things. It would certainly make more sense than a legit toy that looks like this.

As it turns out, there was something more underhanded afoot. Hasbro launched Little Miss No Name in 1965. Her gimmick was that she was the antithesis of that privileged dick receptacle Barbie; orphaned, afraid, clad in a potato sack and wordlessly pleading for mercy from the passersby. It seems Hasbro was laboring under the assumption that little girls wanted to feel empathy for their toys and would be won over by something so clearly deserving of their love. As an added bonus, they could lord their uber-sensitivity and social conscience over Mattel. After all, their doll just wanted a loving home. Mattel's cash cow wanted a pink convertible and shoes to match each of her 2,498 outfits. Any child who would choose the latter clearly would grow up to be the type who would cruise right past an orphan on the street in her own hot new convertible, soaking the poor thing with cold puddle water while yelling at her to "get a job".

Of course this is all mere speculation. It was the 60's after all, a time of ardent social awareness, so maybe it made sense at the time to Hasbro to hedge their bets on something a little unorthodox. The public wasn't buying it, though, figuratively and literally, and the doll was discontinued sometime in the late 60's. Naturally, since the line was so short-lived it remains a highly-sought collector's item on eBay to this day. Miss No Names with their original tear still in place are worth more, perhaps because so many of them are sans teardrop nowadays.

And sans panties.

So why is such a disturbing-looking doll so popular decades after the fact? Well it would seem that Miss No Name found an audience after all. A quick Google search will turn up hundreds of nostalgia blogs where post-menopausal women gather to share stories of how this heart-rending moppet saw them through their own childhoods filled with abuse and abandonment. She's the classic parent line "there are starving children in China" condensed into one hell of a guilt trip in doll form. Oi.

Baby Laugh-a-Lot

Because your eyes shouldn't be the only body part that suffers. The double-take the little girl does upon hearing the deranged cackling is a nice touch. If a doll absolutely HAS to make noise, why must said noise be something one might hear as they helplessly watch a toaster come flying into their bathwater? Ye gads.

Joey Stivic

Not 'creepy' in the sense that the other dolls on this list are creepy; it's creepy in the 'anyone who bought this should be on a watch list' kind of way. I'm being facetious, of course. Saying that this doll is creepy because it possesses a God given body part is juvenile and would make me no better than the predecessors of the modern soccer mom whose cacophonous clucking got the doll pulled from shelves not long after its 1976 debut. The truth is, the fact that it exists at all is the creepy factor, in the sense that one has to question the thought process that brought about its existence. All In The Family wasn't exactly kid-friendly television, so "Why is this a thing?" is a pretty valid question to ask when one learns that such a show inspired a toy.

According to commenter briank at Gen Xtinct, the doll was allegedly inspired by a scene in which the baby's penis was briefly shown on screen as Archie was changing his diaper. One might argue that such a scene was merely the show's creators grasping at straws to find one more provocative thing to throw at viewers who had long since been desensitized to the kind of controversy that AitF typically offered, and that the doll was just more of the same. I wasn't around in the 70's, and there was no internet for people to vent their horror and disgust and OMG won't someone PLEASE think of the goddamn children, so I'm just going to accept this as the most feasible explanation. I'm also going out on a limb and assume that if the internet did exist in the 1970's all of this would be a nonissue, since there would no doubt be plenty of real penises for the pearl-clutchers to get their panties all atwist over. Giggidy.