Voice Acting on Children’s toys

When I really got into animation a few years ago, I started appreciating a lot of the aspects of animation that people don’t even realize took work. For example, in a live action movie the set designers can go buy chairs and lamps and lights. Everything in an animated work has to be created from scratch. Although Disney feature films tend to put a lot of emphasis on the voice actors, most TV cartoons are voiced by people who only we animation geeks know. Giant Bomb brought video game voice acting to my attention with their discussions over the last three years or so about how Nolan North is in so many video games that they were able to have an entire Game of the Year section called The Northies in which they decide which of his roles was best acted. (Unfortunately, the joke wore thin and it won’t be there this year.) Giant Bomb was at it again in this clip in which they consider baby/kids toy voice acting. ( at the time I’m writing this, there’s a bug that doesn’t show the play button. Click left of the left-most numbers)

Of course, someone had to do Teddy Ruxpin’s voice, but I never thought about it. Scarlett has at least half a dozen talking toys and I never stopped to think about the people who recorded those samples until hearing this discussed in the Bombcast.

( It’s definitely sad hearing Ryan’s voice knowing that he’s gone, but I’m glad his work is immortalized in the Bombcast)

• Giant-Bomb
• Giant-Bombcast
• Nolan-North
• Toys
• Voice-Acting