If you grew up in the 80’s you probably remember the Hasbro doll “My Buddy.” Released in 1985, three years ahead of the first Child’s Play, it became the real life source of nightmares for kids who were aware of the film’s Chucky and either owned a “My Buddy” or knew someone who did. My gut tells me that the makers of the Child’s Play remake were very much aware of this phenomenon and leveraged it when developing the new film, which is why they’re introducing us to Buddi.
On a new website promoting the film, bestbuddi.com, Orion Pictures shares all the details on Buddi, the modern take on the classic “Good Guy Doll” from the original Child’s Play franchise. Buddi has all the modern amenities we’ve come to expect in kids toys these days; cloud-backed voice recognition, sophisticated algorithms, high resolution image recognition, and so much more, but most importantly he wants to be your best friend.
While there has been a lot of backlash about the Child’s Play remake, the new details around the modernization of the doll could make for a really interesting film. Beyond being a super sophisticated piece of tech, like so many devices these days, Buddi can connect to virtually any of your smart home devices. And like we learned from the horror short Whisper, there’s nothing more terrifying than something evil messing with your smart devices.
What’s interesting about the new site is that it also introduces us to Kaslan, the apparent maker of the Buddi doll, which appears to be like a Google or Amazon in the new Child’s Play universe and the maker of smart home devices and similar products. The bestbuddi.com site links to kaslancorp.com, but the site simply says “Website Coming Soon.”
The Child’s Play remake hits theaters June 21, 2019.
