Despite his misgivings, Matt has decided to add some extra sci-fi apps. It’s a little too soon to talk about it, but … “One of the bigger things I’ve been plying away at is integrating some sort of minor intelligence into the dolls where you can communicate with them,” he says, like an unusually mellow mad scientist. “Some minor expression, verbal interaction, moving eyes, stuff like that. I could have released stuff [in 2013], but it’s not quite where I want it yet, and until I get that technology to a point that I feel it enhances the doll instead of making it a little spooky or just awkward, I’m not going to do it.”

Yet he’s in the process of forming a separate company dedicated to doll robotics. “I want the doll to retain its beauty and the design and movement, the whole thing,” he reiterates. “We’ve all seen clumsy animatronics, even at Disneyland: the Indiana Jones character at the end of the ride, his eyes are a little wonky and something looks wrong with the way his face moves—I don’t want the doll to do that. I don’t want it to be like that. I want it to be surreal and pleasant, and maybe less is more. So the face doesn’t have to do all these movements if it’s interacting with you. Just enough to convey that feeling.”

I ask him about an enhancement that didn’t take off, the Hip Actuator, a device that could be put inside a doll and activated by a control box with different sequences. “The doll would basically start writhing around and moving her hips,” Matt recalls. “It was kind of neat.” It was also kind of loud, expensive ($3,000), and heavy. It made the doll stiff in the torso, so that when the machine was off, “she lost the ability to sort of relax.” Not everyone thought the Hip Actuator was a cool effect. It was a nightmare to install, so Matt discontinued it.

Another disappointment was the “Interactive Response System,” in which small, very sensitive sensors were put in erogenous zones of the body. A bank of canned audio files would enable the doll to verbally “respond” based on where she was touched. During the development phase he touted it as “very interactive, to the point where there is an intelligence there,” and envisioned “thousands of responses and they will randomly mix together to form almost limitless combinations.”

It too was a nightmare to install and turned out to be like an X-rated Tickle Me Elmo. Instead of “That tickles!” the doll said things like “Ow!” and “Oh, that feels good” or simply moaned. “We did that for a while and it was cool—some people loved it,” Matt recalls halfheartedly. Others didn’t think it was worth the $1,500. “But more people said, ‘Well, I don’t know if I want her to talk.’ I kind of like that it’s just a doll, and that’s kind of where sometimes I feel I am. You start adding all these other things, it’s not really just a doll anymore.”

The thought of getting back into robotics now is exciting but also intimidating and anxiety-inducing: “I feel like 10 years ago when I was doing this, I was completely content. I made dolls and I made them as beautiful as I could and it was a very free feeling. …. I guess in a sense it makes you long for the simplicity of what used to be.”

It’s Alive!

At the end of The Stepford Wives, the evil, Dr. Frankenstein-like head of the Men’s Association—nicknamed “Diz” because he once worked in Disney’s animatronics department—responds to one of the last utterances of Katherine Ross’s doomed character, Joanna. “Why? Because we can,” Diz informs her. “We found a way of doing it that’s just perfect, perfect for us and perfect for you…. See, think of it the other way around: wouldn’t you like some perfect stud waiting on you around the house? Praising you? Servicing you? Whispering how your sagging flesh was beautiful, no matter how you looked?” Then the sexbot, an exact replica of Joanna except for its black, doll-like eyes and gravity-defying breasts, tightens a stocking and strangles her with it.