it works!!

Back in 2006, Justin Yoshida blogged about a Japanese commercial for Takemoto Piano. The commercial seemed to have a special power: it caused babies immediately to stop crying.

Today, a coworker brought her adorable, six-month-old baby daughter, Shi-yeon, into the office for almost two hours. The wee little girl was fine for most of that time, but as nap time approached, she naturally got cranky, and was acting the way any normal baby would: she bawled, not quite sure what she wanted. On a whim, I asked the babysitter (a college student) to bring the baby over to my work station, and I called up the Takemoto commercial straight from YouTube.

Sure enough: as soon as I hit "play," little Shi-yeon stopped crying and watched, enraptured. The moment the video ended, she started sniffling and began crying again. I hit "play" one more time, and boom-- she stopped crying.

So: while I can't speak for all of babydom, at the very least I can vouch that the Takemoto Piano commercial does indeed make at least one baby stop crying.


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