Jibba Jabber

Jibba Jabber came from Ertl, the Dyersville, Iowa, company better known for die-cast farm toys and the Bumble Ball. It was a soft doll with a round body, a long neck and a wild mop of hair in red, blue, pink or green; Ms. Jibba Jabber had a pink body and nose, the male version a black body and a yellow nose. The whole toy was the sound: a groan-tube mechanism in the wobbling head that produced a choking, strangling gargle when you shook it. Ertl pitched it partly as an adult stress reliever and a gag gift for corporate executives, and the box put it plainly: "Try me! Grab my neck and shake my head."

That line was the problem. After a Milwaukee physician criticized the toy in August 1994, and child-abuse prevention groups objected that a doll you play with by shaking its head was modeling exactly the thing that kills infants, Ertl halted shipments, stickered over the phrase on boxes already made, and redesigned the packaging. David Davenport, Ertl's senior vice president of marketing, told the Deseret News that December: "It wasn't until we launched the product that I even knew about the heinous crime of shaken infant syndrome." The company worked with the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse on warning labels, and the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect later noted that Ertl added a package insert explaining that while Jibba Jabber is for fun, shaking a baby is a lethal form of child abuse, with a list of seven positive ways to respond to a child instead. Some advocates wanted the doll pulled entirely; a year later USA Today was still writing it up as an executive gift.

So the Jibba Jabber survived as a 90s oddity: a genuinely funny noise, with a commercial in the afternoon-cartoon ad breaks, and a toy that shipped with a child-abuse pamphlet. It has since become a thrift-store curiosity, usually with the pamphlet long gone.