Speak-N-Say

Speak-N-Say turns up as exactly what the toy shelf promises: a small plastic novelty with a pull-string and a limited, cheerful vocabulary. It exists to be pulled, to answer in its stock phrases, and to be funny in the background of whatever chaos is happening around it.

The joke is entirely in the gap between the tiny, mechanical thing it is and the big, blithe confidence with which it speaks. Tress MacNeille gives it a flat, toy-box cheerfulness that lands harder the more absurd its context becomes — a one-note gag played with perfect comic timing.