Talky Tina or Willie The Dummy?
Willie
shareTina
shareIt's more debatable as to whether or not Willie is even real which makes him, at least in my estimation, more interesting.
But I will concede Tina has the better catchphrase.
"My name's Talky Tina and you better be nice to me!" I'd be pretty scared if I heard THAT coming out of a doll! lol
I'm sure this was a nod to a popular doll of the time, Chatty Cathy. I had one of those but she had no homicidal tendencies.
I think the Talky Tina episode could be taken in two ways. First, a total supernatural creepy episode with an angry doll who had real powers.
The other possibility is that Eric was a bit unhinged. He indicated that he and his wife couldn't have children. Since she had a daughter, it was probably an infertility problem on his part. Christie was his stepdaughter. She called him "daddy" and seemed to love him, but Eric was so resentful and bitter about not having a biological child, that he lost his mind. He "heard" the things that Tina said because of his own unresolved guilt over his cruel behavior towards Christie. He may have put the doll on the stairs without realizing it. Later he "tripped" over it and fell to his death because of his guilt over the way he treated Christie. Either that or Christie put the doll there in the hope that stepdad would trip over it!
Interesting that the names Christie and Tina are both nicknames for Christine. I sometimes think that Tina was Christie's alter ego and in her teen-age years she would no longer have put up with her stepfather's abusive behavior. She would have done something bad to him. But this way, the doll took care of her problem for her.