Cricket dolls
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Cricket is a talking doll that was first unveiled in February 1986 at Toy Fair in New York. It was the first major offering by Playmates (Toy Company), which until that time had mostly imported toys from overseas and distributed them for the U.S. market.
Cricket was designed by Larry Jones at California R & D Center. The idea was to create a talking doll, as opposed to a teddy bear or other animal such as Worlds of Wonder's Teddy Ruxpin and Mother Goose dolls. Scripts and songs were written for the doll by Robin Frederick and Jay Tverdak. Her catchphrases, including "Are we having fun or what?" and "I'll be talkin' to ya!" were written by Larry Jones. Cricket was voiced by nine-year-old Laura Mooney.
The Cricket dolls operated in similar fashion to Teddy Ruxpin, but with two-sided tapes instead of ones with sound data on one track and movement data on the other track. The doll required four "C" batteries for the player and 1 9-volt battery for the mouth movement.
[edit] Related Characters
Cricket had a younger brother named Corky, voiced by seven-year-old Edan Gross and released in 1987, and an older sister named Jill (voice actress currently unknown), both of whom operated in pretty much the same way.
Cricket and Corky were available in African-American versions as well. The African-American Cricket doll was released with two different versions. One featured hair similar to the caucasion version with two curly pigtails tied with pink yard, and the other had short hair with no ribbons. The African-American Corky was nearly identical to the caucasion version.
