About this episode
Our intrepid sound designer, Matt Reed — musician/composer extraordinaire —recently became a dad. He picked up a Glo Worm for his baby son, Sam. It's a plush musical baby toy made by Hasbro that's been around for decades. It plays standard, well-known lullabies like "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," "Frère Jacques," etc. "Straight hits," as host Ben Brock Johnson says in this episode. "Straight hits." But there's one melody on the toy that was a complete unknown to Matt. It's in a minor key, it's slow. Is it creepy? "Yeah, it's definitely got that vibe," Matt says. "Funeral zone." So, he brought this idea to Endless Thread's pitch meetings where we throw around episode ideas. "I turn to the internet like most weirdos do, I guess, when they're obsessing over their child's toy to figure out what song it is," Matt says. "And there's other people on the Internet who are also... curious? Confused?" There are two Reddit posts about this creepy music, a YouTube video, several unhelpful emails from Hasbro to concerned parents, and numerous guesses and theories. "We were concerned by the addition of an unlisted song too," writes YouTuber deefrontier5798. "It's creepy and sad, and the fact that the creators withheld information puts up a red flag." In this episode, we ask Hasbro directly and try alternate routes. Sometimes Endless Thread doesn't get to the complete bottom of Internet mysteries. But this isn't one of those times. We hope you like nursery rhymes. :) *** Survey alert : Tell us what you love about the show, what you want more of; what you could stand a little less of. And if you complete the survey, we'll send you an extra episode (what Ben's calling a "dashboard confessional") in January. Take the survey here: wbur.org/endlessthreadsurvey Thank you!