Fast-forward 200 years to 1985, when Teddy Ruxpin was introduced with technology that had been around for decades. Talking dolls had only existed for as long as the history of recorded sound. From The New York Times’ obituary of Teddy Ruxpin creator Ken Forsse, who died last year: [Forsse’s] technical breakthrough was coming up with electronic decoders to stuff in the faux animal’s plush head. They caused the bear’s face to yawn, frown and giggle in conjunction with the words emitted by a tape cassette implanted in its back. To create the effect, he used the same technology that produces music on a phonograph record in stereo, on separate tracks. In this case, one track carried sound and one track directed facial expressions and movements. Those facial expressions, as people who have been in the same room as Teddy Ruxpin will tell you, are what made the toy unsettling. “Teddy Ruxpin is notorious for this,” one commenter wrote on a TV Tropes forum about toys in the uncanny valley. “It’s not the character design that pushed the toy into the valley… The feature that pushed the toy into the uncanny valley here is how his mouth moved combined with his static facial expression. In other words, an inactive Teddy Ruxpin is fine. A working one isn’t. Especially when HIS BATTERIES ARE LOW.”