Annoying cube toy, or "crack for babies"

The "roll and rhyme" melody block, available from all Woolworths for about a tenner. If you hate someone with a baby, get them this. Briefly, it's a cube bigger than a 5 month olds' head, with animals on each side from different continents and cultures. So far, so PC. A fish from the Pacific, a Lion from Africa, polar bear, fox etc, and oddly, a moon for South America. Each side plays a tune or a rhyme from that culture. They are of an astonishing inanity. "Red fox, running about, are you in or are you out?". Apparently a reference to the cloth fox on the cube that can be pushed in and out of a little pocket, but secretly, I think, given the hideous American accent the woman sings it in, a reference to the "Red Fear" of the McCarthyite era and Communist threat. Or how about this little gem: ""Blue fish, with scales that shine, if i pet you will you be mine". WHAT? A reference to animal love? That bloke who fiddled with a dolphin on a kids toy? Or just weird lazy rhyming? The "lion" (which actually looks like a cat crossed with a seal, only yellow) has a crinkly mane and apparently loves being tickled. Again, a secret justification for invading Syria maybe? There have to be secret messages hidden in these rhymes surely, or they serve no purpose, certainly not to the English language. Plus it would explain why you find yourself walking round singing about how polar bars are slipping and sliding away: It's subliminal crap eating into your brain. In an American accent. Witha frog dressed in a jumpsuit on each side. It frightens me a bit. Thankyou friend who purchased him this.

However, Seth is obsessed with it. The small blocks designed to encourage co-ordination, the educational yoghurt knitted toys are abandoned in favour of this. If he can see it, he wants it. He uses it all the time and has, hideously, figured out how to turn it on, so now the noise never stops. As the rhymes change depending on which face is uppermost, and he rocks it to balance himself whilst sitting, I have listened to "red fox / green leaves / red fox / green leaves" for about ten minutes straight now. Soon, the batteries will be "lost".