Meet Smifi! - Inspiration

Why does Smifi even exist???

Do you know about that one Elmo toy that hates James?

My Worst Friend Smifi is kind-of a parody of aforementioned Elmo doll, mixed with a bit of My Pal Scout/Violet + Cody/Cora the Smart Cub action in there for good measure. 

The toy is made out of the finest quality fiberglass, as it is known that fiberglass can irritate the body. Since Smifi was designed to be given to those you hate, this is a good thing. When the victim snuggles with the unassuming Smifi plush, Smifi will sing "I really hate you, hate you, hate youuuuuu~, [NAME]" while shedding fiberglass around. Squeezing Smifi more increases the hatred level, from harmless "i hate yous" to any hurtful word/slur programmed into the toy at any given moment. It truly is the worst thing in the world. How long until Zetto bans this thing? Probably immediately. He regrets voicing the thing after figuring out that it can say some pretty gnarly things. 

The difference between My Worst Friend Smifi and the Elmo Knows Your Name doll is that Smifi was intentionally designed to say gnarly things.

The manufacturer, Dark Ends, is a parody of Bright Starts... and why? When I was working on the audio component of this comic, listening to the Smifi music, I used the stacatto flute patch... the patch SUSPICIOUSLY sounded like a 2010s Bright Starts toy, as they almost always used a flute staccato-type sample in their toys' music. It sounded suspiciously close with a bit crusher. So I JUST had to parody them...

Another note: 

As someone who grew up with unrestricted internet access, I THRIVED on those "top 10 recalled/swearing/inappropriate toys!!" videos when I was younger. There was the mishead do-re-mis of the Laugh and Learn grand piano, the British English release of the My Pal Scout/Violet (2009, numbers on collar variant) where people misheard the "bark" as "fuck" in the Happy and you Know It song, the Vtech phone that would swear if "9 3 5 3" was repeatedly pressed... AND "Polly the Insulting Parrot". Why was I even watching those and listening to the 30sec amazon previews of The Toilet Bowl Cleaners around the same time? (There was another Urinal Blues, a different song by The Incompetents when I was TRYING to find the Toilet Bowl Cleaners one. The Toilet Bowl Cleaners one didn't get posted to YouTube until 2015 or so...) 

Why did I look up inappropriate things in 2014? Is this why I'm messed up?