Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, October 11, 1993                   TAG: 9311110364
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

YOU CAN'T BE TOO CAREFUL WHO YOU INTERACT WITH

That's right, friends. Toby Terrier - the kind of a dog Leonard Nimoy would love - looks at television featuring himself and talks, barks and, lovable thing that he is, wags his tail.

Tiger Electronics makes this technological wonder, and as far as I can figure out, good old Toby has these things inside him that allow him to interact with the video tape then being played. It's more complicated than that, but you don't want to know.

You go right out and buy your kid Toby Terrier for fifty bucks and then watch his or her mind go bad. I mean, whatever happened to watching television with a real dog named Androcles?

I don't think for a moment that Toby is going to just sit there and be cute. No, sir. One of those things he has inside him is going to go fittzzzzzz! when nobody is listening, and Toby is going to start giving your kids all kind of bad advice - as in robbing liquor stores.

I've seen enough science fiction movies about toys that go nuts to know what I'm talking about. And I beg you to take that 50 bucks and add another 150 and get your kid a nice live non-interactive Labrador retriever named Trixie.

I know what you're thinking, pal: Why take advice from an old fool who is almost over the edge? He hasn't had any kids around the house since 1966.

Just don't come crying to me when you wake up to find little Dewey, the kid you want to become a rocket scientist, straddling your chest and holding a very sharp bayonet.

Little Dewey's eyes will be glazed and he will be saying: ``Toby Terrier says kill Da Da. Toby Terrier says Da Da no good. Toby Terrier says then kill parrot, and split life insurance with Ma Ma.''

If you're lucky, the kid might be all right after several years in analysis and counseling.

I would also like to advise certain Puritan groups in this country of future development using this dangerous technology.

It's not going to be very long, my fellow Puritans, until we awake one morning to find that an obscure Hollywood starlet named Kandy Moonlight has made a series of videos and that for $1,500 you can get this life-sized replica of Kandy to set in front of the TV.

It would be my guess that Kandy will be wearing a black teddy. It may seem to some that Kandy should bark like Toby Terrier when she interacts with her own video.

This obviously will not be the case and, as a matter of discretion, I won't discuss the other things she may do when she interacts.

And we all know that something is going to go zinnnngggg! in Kandy and she is going to tell everybody that she and her master have been living it up outside the limits of video land and this will be her big mistake.

The female helpmate of the household will hear Kandy's lies, and one morning there will be a big pile of wires and black underwear in the back yard.