Why Won’t My Doll Sell on eBay?

From Chatty Cathy to Pee-Wee Herman, to the movie Chucky, sentient dolls have occupied the imagination of children and adults in literature, photography, theatre, and film. The photographs I have selected here, taken straight from eBay as found and produced strictly for the idea of “selling” a product — has, as Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling once said in a rather famous phrase: “unlocked a door with the key of imagination.”  When you look at this selection of “as found” eBay pics, you’ll know what I mean.

In a 1963 Twilight Zone episode, the beginning narration goes: “Talky Tina, a doll that does everything, a lifelike creation of plastic and springs and painted smile. To Erich Streator, she is the most unwelcome addition to his household — but without her, he’d never enter the Twilight Zone.”  

It was this episode where actor Telly Savalas plays Eric Streator, the mean and bitter father of a little girl who was given a doll by her mother. In it, we witness the doll resisting the father’s attempts to throw it away by always (somehow) returning to the house. The father eventually gets what is coming to him and ends up on the wrong side of a vengeful, Satanic doll. You can probably guess his fate.

Tip: Always be nice to dolls.