Ah hah, I see it now

Makes sense

From the other comments, it could be a novelty hat that speaks or makes a sound effect when the button is pressed. I’m curious to find out what the original sound would have been!

Quick question: Where does the battery go? Is it the corroded part in the first internals image, or was that the button?

I feel like this is something that arises organically in each community; on bigger r*ddit subs anything older than a few hours usually didn’t get read or responded to, but on Mastodon I’ve seen plenty of convos come back to life after weeks. If you have something meaningful to add, go for it. If nobody sees it, oh well