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Germany told parents to destroy this talking doll

Ellsworth Toohey
Jul 22, 2026
∙ Paid
Bijay Chaurasia / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons) — illustrative; not the actual doll

In 2014, a talking doll named My Friend Cayla was voted Innovative Toy of the Year. Three years later, the German government was telling parents to destroy it. Cayla listened to a child through a hidden microphone, beamed the audio over Bluetooth to a phone app, se…

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