Teddy Ruxpin appears as Franken-Teddy,  strapped helplessly to a chair and pummeled with sharp bolts of electricity with that same stupid yet gentle smile on his face.  Meanwhile, the mad scientist (and a kid) observe as this fails to make Teddy do anything but keep smiling.  We discover soon that Teddy requires 4 D Duracell brand batteries.   Not Energizer, not RayVac or any of that crap.  Not even those super advanced energizers can compare to 4 D sized batteries.  I mean, come on, they’re the biggest ones.  Why on Earth do people make things fit those ridiculous, giant D cell batteries?  They’re cumbersome, in my toys they always corroded,  and even looking at them makes me feel wasteful.  Anyway, I digress.

Teddy Ruxpin was a cool toy from the 1980’s with some clever technology:  Instead of using the cassette with left / right for stereo, they adapted one of the tracks for mono audio and the other track for Teddy’s mouth movements.  This kept him talking in sync to what was coming out of the speaker.  There was an extra notch in the Teddy tapes so the cassette player in his backside would know if it had an audio tape or a Teddy story tape.  He told stories of his adventures with all of his pals including Grubby, a strange centipede-like creature with the same stupid/gentle smile who also became a toy.