When Good Toys Go Bad

If you have or know kids, you know that every toy in the United States is now legally required to have batteries and play annoying music - blinking lights are optional. Or at least this is my understanding based on the estimated 1 billion toys cluttering my living room, as well as the million or so in Eddie's bedroom. Most also talk, including all stuffed animals, books, balls and the boxes the toys come in. Besides the fact that I have spent half my disposable income (always hated that term, I try hard NOT to dispose of my income), on batteries of various sizes, this is a problem as the batteries begin to die. Because, course, it's never like one day it works and the next the batteries are dead. Oh no, you have to live through several days of "is this bad enough that I should put new batteries in it?" You don't want to change the batteries until you have to, since it definitely starts a trend. All the other toys suddenly realize that they need new batteries too. But the longer you wait, the scarier the noises and "music" get. At this very moment, the Husband is changing the batteries on Eddie's Chair (of course a chair talks and sings and has batteries!!) because the low batteries made the voice warble-y and anytime the music was supposed to play, it made a really loud awful buzz/hum noise that scared the dog so bad he hasn't come downstairs in almost an hour. I suspect that the manufacturers do this purposely to get you to change the batteries fast. They're all in it together, you know. Eddie, in the Chair that talks, sings, counts, blinks and scares the dog.