Here’s A New Thing To Be Creeped Out By: Cold Start

Maybe it’s got something to do with that Uncanny Valley I’ve heard so much about and bought some time-shares in, or maybe it’s just some other bit of human nature, but whatever it is I can’t deny that old ventriloquist dummies and similar sorta-real vintage dolls creep me the fudge out. If you feel you’re immune to such creepiness, then I’d invite you to browse these images of these sorts of dolls and dummies in vintage pedal cars, as seen in a pictorial in the 1974 Volume 12, number 1 edition of Automobile Quarterly.

I love Automobile Quarterly, and respect their willingness to cover things like pedal cars as they did in Court van Rooten’s excellent article, Putting the Kids on Wheels, but whomever’s idea it was to stick ventriloquist dummies into the pedal cars for the pictorial part was one savage, cruel mothertruster.

I mean, just look at them. Look at that one up top, into the strange, dead eyes of that dummy and tell me that little freak isn’t going to ride squeakily up to your bed in that pedal car one night and try to extract your soul out of your nostrils, because you know that’s his devious little plan.

Or how about this one:

You know she’ll rotate her head slowly to look at you and say some shit like “let’s play…forever!” in some high, squeaky voice, and if you’re even remotely human, you’ll flood your pants with piping-hot fear-urine.

Gaaaah! I do not trust this fucker. No way. That sawdust-filled bastard is sizing you up, calculating every bit of value he can get by kidnapping you and selling you for gods knows what to gods knows who. I think that particular dummy is known as Mortimer Snerd, one of the famous Edgar Bergen’s unholy homunculi, and seems to have some sort of idiot persona:

Yeah, I don’t trust that dummy one bit. Of course, Bergen was best known for his use of this wealthy-looking dummy named Charlie McCarthy, who also makes an appearance here:

Yeah, he’s creepy too, but he looks more like he’ll pay some goons to work you over instead of doing the deed himself.

Then we have this peculiar two-page spread of a large Mr.Magoo doll, jowls and all, in a large pedal car. And for some reason, Mr.Magoo is wearing a GE-branded sweater? Did GE ever work with Magoo?

In case you’re unfamiliar with Mr.Magoo, he was a character in a ’50s-era cartoon about an old rich guy with terrible vision, and that near-blindness forms the basis of pretty much everything that happens to him, which usually revolves around him getting into situations that almost get him or the people around him killed.

He also seems to have been a vintage car enthusiast, as you can see here:

How is this man licensed to drive? And those roller coasters and railroads need to drastically improve their safety and security systems.

I do like that this pedal car article includes this bit:

They let some kids try them out, and the best part is the graph of the acceleration curve up there. Is the jaggedness of that curve related to the cycle of the pedals being depressed?

Anyway, sorry to creep you out so vigorously this morning, but I had to see these, so, you know, you have to also. Them’s the rules.