I’m showing my age a bit with this one, but the first toy I remember having when I was a kid was the loveable doll known as My Buddy. This doll was made by the Hasbro Corporation in 1985 and it was basically a doll marketed toward little boys to promote friendship and sharing. Before the Tickle-Me-Elmo or Harry Potter craze there was My Buddy. It even had a cute little song for the commercial. I loved this doll and I took it everywhere that I went. I was happy for the next three years.
Those were the halcyon days.
In 1988 MGM released a horror film, Child’s Play. This horrible, nightmare-spawning, celluloid, 87-minute torture session was about a serial killer who puts his soul into the body of, you guessed it, a My Buddy doll named Chucky. Unsurprisingly, Chucky comes to life and proceeds to plunge sharp implements into the necks and chest cavities of scores of hapless victims. The scariest part is that when it’s done stabbing the life out of people it just lies still and pretends to be a doll, thus avoiding discovery… f*&#ing horrifying. Look at the My Buddy doll and then look at that monster in the film and tell me that the similarity is not on purpose.
Now this is bad enough on its own, but my mom was a terrible parent and she took me to see Child’s Play at the local movie theater. I was five. Who takes a five-year-old to watch an “R” rated movie? Worse yet, who sells this woman and her five-year-old child two tickets for this movie? At any rate, I saw the movie start to finish and it decimated my childhood. Looking back, it was like taking my mental well-being and shooting it in the face at point-blank-range with a shotgun loaded with nightmares.
I didn’t want to go home. I knew that doll would be there… waiting for me.
I would walk inside my room and it wouldn’t be where I left it. It would have animated and hidden itself because it would know that I was on to it.
It would ambush me and stab me to death with a screwdriver.
I had to do something. Mom clearly wasn’t going to help, so it was up to me.
I mustered all the courage a five-year-old could and burst through my door. I threw a blanket over the doll like I was netting a wild animal. To this day I remember it kicking and writhing under that orange, woolen blanket. I opened the closet and threw it inside. I put half of the furniture from my room in front of the closet and trapped the doll inside.
I knew that the closet was now dead to me.
Over the next week, my dreams were filled with terror and I awoke to check on the closet fortifications multiple times a night.
The closet barricade had held and I hadn’t been stabbed to death yet, so I began to relax a little.
Then my cousin came to visit. My cousin was about ten years older than me and had the emotional capacity and moral aptitude of Ted Bundy.
I awoke one morning to find the furniture moved and the closet open. The doll was sitting there… staring holes into me with its beady little eyes.
I screamed for three solid minutes.
Grandma finally calmed me down and then she proceeded to scold my cousin.
I put the doll back in the closet (it was safe with other people watching and in the daylight) and I reset the barricade.
Three days later I woke up with the closet open, the furniture moved and this time the doll was in the bed with me.
I screamed, but I’m not sure for how long. I blacked out with fear and I don’t remember my cousin coming to visit us ever again.
I didn’t see The Godfather until years later, but I still don’t think that if I had I would have found my cousin’s allusion to the horse head scene amusing.
THE END.
P.S. We finally sold the doll shortly afterward.
P.P.S. I go to therapy only twice a week now.
Live, Nerd, Repeat 
“My Buddy, My Buddy….wherever I go, he wants to go” Man, along with the “Problem Child” movies, the ’80s were not kind to the plight of the Ginger. Good stuff, I am terrified to this day of the “Letter People” (80’s kids show with muppet-style characters spelling out words with the letters on their chests) that show was just creepy, and it was educational….nothing scarier than educational children’s programming!
I think that might be why people were always trying to dig up dirt on Mr. Rogers, Captain Kangaroo and the like. They all creep the heck out of me. 🙂
I’m guessing you didn’t see Child’s Play 2 and 3 or Bride of Chucky or Seed of Chucky. Oh yeah, you should probably know . . . they’re releasing the remake next year.
Sorry about that, but your post really had me rolling and I just couldn’t stop myself.
Did I say that I went to therapy twice a week? I meant everyday… 😦
Absolutely hilarious…and all too true. My Buddy and his female cohort, Kid Sister, were terrifying as anthropomorphic pieces of plastic could be. And I think Teddy Ruxpin was in league with those evildoers too.
At least My Buddy couldn’t speak… creepy. I always wondered if Teddy Ruxpin would speak if you put a Dr. Dre tape in there… hmmm. I know what I’m doing next weekend.
I would try and play other tapes..idk why they didn’t work
I stumbled upon your page ..cause I thought my buddy and good guy doll looked a bit alike. An I just watched The curse of Chucky
I had a My Buddy AND Teddy Ruxpin growing up. One night I was drugged up on cough medicine and Teddy Ruxpin started talking to me. I’m surprised I dont go to therapy.
I think the only reason you were safe was the fact that Teddy Ruxpin and My Buddy were too busy fighting each other over your soul. 🙂
One of my next door neighbors growing up had the Kid Sister doll and that thing freaked me out. I still remember the theme songs for Kid Sister and My Buddy though.
Yeah… no matter how much I drink I can still hear them too. 😦
This post is just TOO funny. I am sorry your childhood was ruined, however it made a good read 🙂
Thanks for sharing!
Glad you liked it. Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
Worse than the Wizard of Oz’s flying monkeys! Holy Guaca…
Far, far worse… thanks for stopping by. 🙂
Dude, you’re not alone!!!! Chucky terrorized my childhood!!! I’m 28 and I sleep well now, but I still have dreams about Chucky, mostly of me kicking the shit out of him. My babysitter thought it would be funny to play a prank on me. So she popped in the vhs to part where he says, “Hi I’m Chucky wanna play”, and I screamed bloody murder!!! My aunt bought me a My Buddy doll after I saw Chucky and when I saw it sitting on the couch I took off to my room.
Your babysitter was a sick, sick person. At least you’re doing better now. Thanks for dropping in. 🙂
I totally grew up on horror films, and yes, I probably shouldn’t have been watching “Night of the Living Dead” when i was >>>5<<<, but I would beg to be able to watch it again the next day. These movies did give me nightmares, but I still relished them. "The Stand" mini series and "Poltergeist" (1 and 2) were two of my favorites.
They just don't make scary movies like they used to. Or maybe I'm just too desensitized. X-)
I’m gonna go with option #1. Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
man, i completely forgot about my buddy, and the chuckie relationship. that song is now flying around my head and will likely haunt a dream or two. i was a bit older but still deeply disturbed by that movie…though the follow-ons lost their edgy thrill for me.
i read your post with horror trying to imagine the impact of that whole experience on a five year old. you could have become your very own doll-obsessed jason equivalent, maybe amassing armies of loyal dolls to carry out your villainous plans. or something more terrestrial but equally upsetting to the general sociological environment. therapy works sometimes…i just graduated to “as needed” today. seriously. my peace goes out to you.
Thank you. It was a humor post, but it was still pretty traumatizing. Thanks for the empathy. 🙂
This post is f’ing hilarious, although I feel slightly bad for laughing at your misfortune and ruined childhood. Just slightly. Not enough to actually stop laughing.
Fair enough. I can’t argue with that. This post was like the psychological equivalent of watching a fat kid fall down on YouTube… universally hilarious. 🙂
My college dormmate had a doll that looked like Chucky. She brought it to the dorm one day. I “adopted” it for a week or so and washed and conditioned its hair and put it on my bed. Dunno. Maybe I was kind of making up for an almost-dollless childhood.
It’s not still near you is it? If it is you need to lock it up before it animates and does something horrible. 😉
Have you ever seen the Robot Chicken sketch, “My Buddy I Experimented At Summer Camp With”?
It’s ALMOST as funny as this!
I’ll have to look that one up. It sounds hilarious. 🙂
This made me laugh so hard. I used to do that to my sister and her Barbie dolls. Not in a mean way. I convinced her that Barbie and her friends would move around in the night and turn into dolls when the morning came, so every night I waited for her to sleep and moved them into different positions. This happened for 6 months!
Oh yeah, I think I’ve seen her in my group therapy! 😛
Just kidding. 😉
That orange hair s.o.b. scared me when I was young too and sometimes my mom used his name to scare into doing something. Now looking back it’s pretty funny but as a kid it was pretty horrible. I’m pretty sure I was more scared of Chucky than I was Freddy.
Freddy Krueger could only get you in your dreams. That little monster could get you at anytime… much more terrifying. 😦
That’ sad. It shows how parents have to be totally responsible with their kids. But that kind of childhood rocks when you become an adult! haha Thanks for sharing
I like to think that I when I was living inside my own head as a kid (as a direction reaction to all the horrible crap happening around me) I was really cultivating a “garden” for later in life.
Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. 😉
Thanks for dropping by.
Very amusing! I’m sorry for your childhood, but your story is among the best ones I’ve heard lately. Haven’t seen the chucky movies (I loved horror movies as kid, but my parents didn’t let me watch them…I used to sneak up to watch X-files at night) but I’m very tempted to do that now.
The Chucky movies don’t have the same effect that they did when I was five, but I think it has to do with the concept delivery more than anything else. I think the idea of a friendly doll coming to life and then trying to murder you was horrifying at first… at least in the 80s that is. 😉
I had the 1 that looked like chucky also.stupid me desided 2 watch childs play from behind a doorway.my dad got rid of it cus after I saw that movie that doll became so evil looking 2 me.p.s I killed my barrny doll by throwing him into a grill when it was lit when I was 6
Chucky ruined my love of dolls when that movie came out. Thankfully I didn’t own a My Buddy doll or I probably would have set it on fire… and shortly thereafter started on a path to arson. http://www.lolaloop.com/2013/10/how-chucky-ruined-my-childhood.html
Good Voice: Don’t like it, it’s scary for a five-year-old to watch an R-rated movie about his favorite toy. Bad Voice: Screw it. They sold the doll in the end. Like it.
*Listens to Bad Voice and likes it, and shows it to my brothers.*
Oh I didn’t know there were others on this sphere like me!
Yeah man, my friend had a my buddy doll and after we saw child’s play we beat the hell out of that doll in the daytime. But when you’re a kid with poor and strict parents you can’t tear your toys apart or just throw them away, you put it inside something and barricade it in so it doesn’t come alive at night and kill you. We repeated that process until he moved I think.
I was also born in 83, but I’m a girl so I didn’t have a my buddy. But I always thought he was cute. As for the Chucky series as a horror film lover it is quite the admission that to this day I have never watched a Child’s Play movie all the way through. I had an awesome sister who thought it would be fun to with a friend hold me down and make me watch it. About 10 minutes in the adults caught then and let me out. I don’t think I’ll ever get enough courage to watch one through but maybe someday.