However much your own parents might have messed with you, they never brought a creepy doll into the house and told you it was watching your every move.

I thought you were half-kraut, like me...
I didn't have this particular creepy doll but I'm pretty much sure I was in the last generation to grow up with a non-ironic presentation of Struwwelpeter. And the Mainzelmaenschen, who had a sinister edge round our way.