TakaraTomy's Issho Ni Nenne puts baby to sleep, forever

TakaraTomy won't be happy until their robots can raze raise our children. Their latest is the ¥5,229 ($45) Issho Ni Nenne (pictured on the left) manufactured in collaboration with Disney. The plush toy features a digital audio player loaded with womb sounds. That's right, apparently an internal microphone was stuffed into a living womb while music played in the room. Just put baby on a bender of sloshing fluids, heartbeat, and muffled music and he'll be out faster than you can say "pass the Thunderbird." And what happens when baby wakes to find he's been duped by a giant mouse? No worries, a "baby mood switch" will sense the babies cries and generate an audible "curiosity trigger" to make baby forget why he was crying in the first place. Another cocktail of womb music and he's back to sleep. Feed, cuddle, repeat. Magic.

[Via Digital World Tokyo]

[HEADsoldier07 @ Mar 19th 2007 10:00AM]

so now someone has come up with a queefing plush toy - what's next?

[Wonderboy @ Mar 19th 2007 10:07AM]

This is actually kind of genius... though I can kind of see an interesting scenario when the kid grows up.

"Hey babe, welcome to my place, make yourself comfortable, I've just gotta turn on my Mickey Mouse Womb Machine before we go to bed."

"Your what?"

"Mickey Mouse Womb Machine, I can't fall asleep without it. You don't mind, do you? The sloshing fluids, heartbeat, and muffled music do the trick every... Babe? Hey! Where'd she go?"

[Sam @ Mar 19th 2007 10:12AM]

@Wonderboy
I laughed out loud when I read that

[Anthony @ Mar 19th 2007 11:14AM]

To: Wonderboy.

The amusing part of this is that it's quite possibly true-

My wife can't fall asleep w/o her noise maker which was put in her room when she was an infant & has been there ever sense.

It's some sort of spinning air thing & always causes a hassle @ airports.

(Sky Mall for all those interested in old-school sound dependence).

[tchiseen @ Mar 19th 2007 10:16AM]

TakaraTomy, turning your offspring into vegetables since 1942!

btw Wonderboy if there was an award for best comment ever, you'd win it. onya.

[Gary @ Mar 19th 2007 10:18AM]

The Japanese name means "Bed time together".

[Paul D @ Mar 19th 2007 10:31AM]

Gary beat me to it. :) Although the English translation completely misses the nuance of "nenne". "Beddy-byes buddies" would be a good equivalent.

[o.reilly.com @ Mar 19th 2007 10:42AM]

Little off-topic:

Ever noticed that whenever the word Disney is mentioned, somehow, somewhere, sometime the word 'Magic' is mentioned too. If it's a DVD with an intro, or it is a cover or an commercial even here on Engadget....

That worries me more than robots raising any baby. The relation between Disney and Magick.

- Unomi -

[Sinbios @ Mar 19th 2007 10:43AM]

So, uh, how does it put the baby to sleep "forever"? When I saw the headline I thought it was some nefarious device that kills babies.

[TS @ Mar 19th 2007 11:01AM]

Excellent Thunderbird reference! I'm am always heartened when I find a fellow connoisseur of the finer things in life. The fact that you were able to reference "The American Classic" while discussing putting young children to sleep makes it that much better.


What's the word? ...

What's the price? ...

[FrankTheCrank @ Mar 19th 2007 11:02AM]

yeah, you guys out to change the title of the story.

Sounds TERRIBLE.

Putting a baby to sleep forever doesn't exactly sound nice or funny.

[MEAT! @ Mar 19th 2007 11:04AM]

This sounds sadly allegorical to life in general; when you find yourself suddenly aware that you are not safe within a nourishing cocoon of love, that life is, in fact, painful and gritty and nasty, something distracts you. It only takes a Mickey Mouse doll when you're in infant, but pretty soon it's money, gadgets, a sexy pair of legs attached to a body (or detached, in special circumstances). It lulls you back into a sense of security, and you are, for a moment, blissfully unaware that you are not safely embedded inside of a warm womb.

Teach 'em this lesson while they're still young, I say!

[aeo @ Mar 19th 2007 11:06AM]

I'm going to invent some sort of fish tank based sleep aid just so Engadget can write a headline like, "New device leaves baby sleeping with the fishes".

[umijin @ Mar 19th 2007 11:31AM]

Ummm.... Well. I live in Japan and have half Japanese 4 month old - I'm skeptical this thing will work on any kid for very long.

We have 'womb noise' option (common here) on our crib mobile and it only worked in the first month and a half to calm her down or make her sleep. And when she's really tired, any crap like a 'baby mood sensor' would be useless when she reaches the 'shrieking' stage (happens several times a day). My kid isn't so atypical.

I'd suspect this is another hunk of overpriced gadget junk from the land of gadgets.

[crackpipe @ Mar 19th 2007 11:37AM]

If a robot seems a little expensive, you can always go old school and hit the baby over the head with a mallet. Works 60% of the time, every time.

[Tim @ Mar 19th 2007 11:43AM]

FYI.. none of this stuff works any better than rocking a baby to sleep all by yourself. Yeah, it's a horribly manual process that actually requires you to hold said baby for an unknown, yet hopefully finite period of time.

[Lebeu @ Mar 19th 2007 11:44AM]

I don't think this will work with premature babies - they left that hole for a reason ;-)

[chickin @ Mar 19th 2007 12:21PM]

My mom bought something similar to this for my brother
when he was born more than 26 years ago, not exactly new tech. Made horrible sounds, but it worked like a charm.

[Darryl @ Mar 19th 2007 1:13PM]

Is it just me, or is that baby's ear unnaturally large? I hope the poor kid grows into that.

[Beamey @ Mar 19th 2007 2:37PM]

I slept with the sheets over my head until I was 17 for the simulated womb. I know it keeps the baby sleep but what about the monsters?

[some person @ Mar 19th 2007 5:51PM]

Isn't that a little TOO effective? The baby needs to eat and whatnot, right?

[Kozzi @ Mar 19th 2007 7:55PM]

Don't know how good is the product but the picture sure makes me feel relaxed

[moory777 @ Mar 19th 2007 7:59PM]

This is JUST what I've been looking for all these years. SIGN ME UP, dude, where can I break myself off a piece of THAT? Suweeeeeeeet!

Seriously, though, I'm tired and I need a sleep aid, and you can't cuddle Valium, am I right?

[Tamyu @ Mar 20th 2007 1:29AM]

The thing that I find funniest about this... Most babies in Japan sleep with their parents anyway, so this thing would probably only ever be used as a naptime aid.

We have a few things that had a "womb noise" option, and it just freaked my son out. Then again, he didn`t spend much time in the womb to get used to it. We`re personally totally against toys with Disney or other popular characters on them, so if only for that reason this thing makes me cringe.

[patd @ Mar 21st 2007 11:31AM]

This is all over blogs, but no one has an actual link to BUY one, rendering the whole thing useless...

[ktc @ Apr 10th 2007 1:35PM]

I saw a link to this article on my Gmail, and I also have to say the first thing I thought of was that someone had invented a baby killing device. Needless to say it caught my attention!

Anyway, this seems like another excuse for parents to ignore the actual job of parenting. We don't need any more so-called "parents" who only know how to reproduce but not how to take care of their kids. What's so wrong with actually spending some time with your child?