In Popular Culture
The very same pull-string talking mechanisms were used in all other Mattel talking dolls and toys of the 1960s and 1970s. These included favorites like talking Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Mrs. Beasley, Drowsy, Herman Munster, Dr. Seuss characters, and all the See 'n Say toys. When Mattel introduced Baby First Step ("the world's first walking doll") in 1965 and the doll sold well, a talking version was later released. Other Mattel dolls which "learned to talk" were the Baby Tender Love line (1970), which eventually included Talking Baby Tender Love, and the Baby Beans line (1971), which spawned a Talking Baby Beans. Barbie and her many friends and relatives appeared in pull-string talking versions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is worth noting that the Woody, Jessie, and Stinky Pete dolls based on characters from the Toy Story films (PIXAR 1995), had a pull-string as well but they were not made by Mattel.
Chatty Cathy was the inspiration for episode of The Twilight Zone entitled "Living Doll" originally broadcast November 1, 1963. June Foray, who had been the voice of the original Chatty Cathy, provided the voice for Talky Tina, the episode's evil doll. One of her phrases was, "My name is Talky Tina, and I'm going to kill you."
Sometimes the term "Chatty Cathy" can be used to refer to a particularly talkative person. In the 1987 John Hughes movie Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Neal (Steve Martin) scolds Del (John Candy): It's like going on a date with a Chatty Cathy doll. I expect you have a little string on your chest, you know, that I pull out and have to snap back. Except I wouldn't pull it out and snap it back - you would. Agh! Agh! Agh! Agh!. Also, the How I Met Your Mother episode Spoiler Alert (How I Met Your Mother) shows the main character Ted dating a very talkative woman named Cathy.
In 2007, Hallmark released the Chatty Cathy Keepsake ornament. A GEICO commercial from 2007 parodied the Chatty Cathy commercial with the dolls saying phrases about their car insurance rates.
The Chicago rock band Chatty Cathy, formed 2007, was named after this product.
Read more about this topic: Chatty Cathy
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)
“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.
“In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,—not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)