Chatty Cathy- Talky Tina’s Older Sister

Rockylou gets a Chatty Cathy doll for Christmas

Did you know that @IamTalkyTina and her brother @IamTalkyTodd had an older sister named Chatty Cathy? Yes siree… The infamous star of the DS106zone and the 1963 Twilight Zone episode, “Living Doll” was patterned after the very popular talking Chatty Cathy doll first introduced by Mattel in 1960 to the delight of little girls everywhere. Including one little Rockylou who you see above opening hers on Christmas morning and who most likely watched this 1960’s commercial preserved and posted to YouTube. (Fun fact: She cost around $20 back then, with inflation that would be $148 in 2013 – inflation calculator)

My doll was a rarer brunette with brown eyes and when you pulled the ring on her back she randomly “spoke” one of 18 phrases (not the original 11) that were played from a type of record player in her chest. I actually remember her saying most of these while playing with her.

I love you.
Do you love me?
Give me a kiss.
Let’s have a party.
Please change my dress.
Please brush my hair.
Where are we going?
Please take me with you.
I’m hungry .
May I have a cookie?
Will you play with me?
Please carry me.
Let’s play house.
I hurt myself!
I’m so tired.
What can we do now?
Let’s play school.
Tell me a story.

I also remember fondly, oddly enough, how curious and fascinated I was when her talking mechanism broke and my dad took her apart to show me how she worked. I still like doing things like that today. 🙂

Talky Tina with little Rockylou

I knew that Talky Tina seemed more familiar to me than she should. Even after I had created a video tribute and lengthy blog post a few weeks back [link here] about the DS106zone ‘relationship’ with Talky Tina, I had no idea that Chatty Cathy was the inspiration behind the “Living Doll” episode with June Foray providing the voice talent for both. My journey to making the GIF below and finding all of this out had simply started on a whim to find the picture of me with my much loved Chatty Cathy doll and replace her head with Talky Tina’s. (See image.)

Chatty Cathy & Talky Tina are sisters.

@IamTalkyTina in her ds106 Radio t-shirt

Creating the new image was trickier than it may appear. Simply using the lasso tool to extract Talky Tina’s head from a photo and ‘pasting’ it on was not going to work. The hair styles were different with Chatty Cathy having her pig tails on top of her head. This problem was eventually solved by flipping Talky Tina’s head and using the clone tool to ‘create’ extra arm and dress for Rockylou. The arm was especially tricky because I had to extend the brown shadow at the top of Rockylou’s arm to a new part of the arm that was now magically visible.

1. Original Photo 2. Edited using clone tool to extend arm & create more dress