Why aren't kids' toys a turn-off?

With 2 kids under the age of 2 in the house and an above average number of grandparents, aunts and uncles, we have, to put it plainly, a lot of crap.

Mostly it's colourful plastic crap, sometimes it's wooden or fluffy crap but whatever the construction material everything has one thing in common. They make irritating noises!

Some of this stuff seems explicitly designed to piss off the parents rather than stimulate the child. Some have no off switch or volume control, others have motion sensors that would put pentagon security to shame - you only have to fart in another room and music starts playing in the kids' bedroom.

It's not even limited to the toys, half the books make stupid noises too.

We wander around constantly humming tunes that have been drilled into our heads like some aural Chinese water torture. Once or twice at daycare I've heard other parents humming the same tunes, so I'm pretty sure it's not just us that is plagued by this problem.

So if you work for a company that manufactures kids' toys, here is a plea to you. Please, please, please, consider the poor parents and at least install an off button, lest we think it's a ploy to ensure that more toys get 'broken' during clean-ups purely to improve your sales figures.