Excellence in Advertising: Baby Laugh A-Lot by Remco

Before God invented Netflix and PVRs, you had to sit through a battery of commercials every time you turned on the idiot box. Most of them made you wonder why the hell Philo Taylor Farnsworth didn’t also invent something to block out commercials. Like Netflix or PVRs. 

But occasionally, a television ad struck gold to where you’d sit through a seven-hour Cannon marathon to see it again. And now, thanks to the magic of YouTube (which we can thank God for inventing) you can relive the magic at the touch of a mouse. Here’s today’s nomination for Excellence in Advertising.

Before there was Chucky and that horrible clown from the first (and best) Poltergeist, there was Baby Laugh A-Lot. Actually, in hindsight, Baby Laugh A-Lot might have actually given birth to both Chucky and the Poltergeist clown, not to mention Freddy Krueger and that the thing in the cellar in the original Evil Dead.

As shown by the circa-1971 clip below, the manufactured-by-Remco Baby Laugh A-Lot was marketed under a somewhat-false moniker. Baby didn’t laugh a lot as much as cackle uncontrollably. Even the kids in the commercial seem traumatized.

Eventually, though, they also start laughing maniacally, no doubt driven completely and totally insane by fear thanks to Baby Laugh A-Lot.

Urban legends abound about Baby Laugh A-Lot. One of the lesser-reported ones is that the doll used to sit there howling away until dark, at which point it crawled out of its chair and began systematically murdering everyone in the house. While laughing uncontrollably.

But that’s probably just a myth. After all, as everyone who’s seen Child’s Play knows, dolls don’t do anything but sit there silently once the kids have been put to bed for the night.