You make them creepier, apparently. The New York Times is running a story on Amazing Amanda, a surprisingly Chucky-esque robotic doll that has RFID proximity sensors for her accessories, mechanically controlled facial expressions, and she even bonds to her owner via voice printing.

As an aside, David Riley of the NPD Group provides an accidentally hilarious perspective on gender:

"I think girls have more active imaginations than boys do when it comes to play," Mr. Riley noted. "If girls have a button on their doll and can feel an engine inside it, that takes away from their ability to imagine."

He said that from what he knows of Amazing Amanda, Ms. Shackelford and her company appear to have overcome such problems, noting that Amanda appears to be more doll than robot.

So... engines produce some kind of anti-imagination field in girls? Fascinating.