The holiday season has come at last, and soon the world will be filled with the noise of children waking up their parents at 4:30 in the morning begging to be allowed to open up the loot Santa brought them. Little boys and girls will be playing with talking action figures and dolls, listening to every word they say. These talking toys carry a potential beyond the understanding of the six-year-old mind, and I intend to use that large potential for the greatest plan to take over the world.

If you think for one nanosecond that I'm planning to fill the minds of the world's young with strange ideas from subliminal messages, you have got to be a frozen fruitcake. That technique is too obvious and easy to foil. Besides, I don't want to govern a world of minds warped by their toys. No. Instead my plan is much simpler and direct.

It will all begin on a dark, stormy night somewhere in Taiwan when warehouse security guards are too scared to do more than munch their donuts and stare at their security camera monitors. I will sneak into toy factory warehouses and steal all the voice boxes that will go in talking toys. I will replace these perfectly functioning voice boxes with something slightly defective, a voice box programmed to fail on Christmas morning. The toy makers won't even notice the difference because my devices will work perfectly until the time they are programmed to die. I will do this in every toy warehouse in Asia.

You can probably guess what will happen next. When little Susie opens up her Scream for Mommy doll and finds out it doesn't work, she will throw a wild tantrum. Mommy and Daddy will have no choice but to test the device with seven different sets of batteries and then call the toy company the next day. Phone lines at all the toy companies will be jammed with calls complaining about action figures not shouting their war cries and dolls not crying when they wet their diapers. Parents will be demanding their money back, toy companies will begin to go bankrupt, and that's when I will step in and save the day.

Some time around St. Patrick's Day, when the toy company's are desperate for relief, I, being the kind, compassionate person that I am, will offer my services as a business consultant to save the toy companies. They will gladly accept my offer and listen to everything I have to say. I will suggest they put out a new talking toy line to save themselves. The new toys will be mad scientist dolls that ramble on and on about how great it would be take over the world with rubber spatulas.