Songfacts®:

• More than one music journalist claimed that Harry Nilsson's song "Cuddly Toy" is about a gang bang, but that seems like a stretch. The song finds Nilsson taking a girl to task for thinking he actually cares about her when she's merely one of his conquests. He sees her as just a cuddly toy he can discard at any time.
  
  The scathing lyric is a stark contrast with the buoyant melody, which in most cases would encapsulate a joyful love song. But Nilsson was a very unusual and often subversive songwriter, so it's not out of character.
• The most popular version of "Cuddly Toy" is by The Monkees, that daft band put together to star in a 1966 TV series that ran two seasons. When he wrote the song, Harry Nilsson had a sensible job as a computer specialist for a bank in Van Nuys, California, and was pursuing music on the side. When The Monkees released the song and used it in their TV series, Nilsson got a fat royalty check that allowed him to quit the bank and become a full-time singer-songwriter.
• The Monkees version is sung by Davy Jones and presented like a glass of sunshine, even though the lyric is rather harsh. Most Monkees fans didn't pick up on this discrepancy and just assumed it was a sweet song with a teddy bear theme.
• "Cuddly Toy" appeared in the September 25, 1967 episode of The Monkees TV series. Weeks later, Nilsson included it on his album Pandemonium Shadow Show. The Monkees version was released that November on their album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.
• Not long after this song was released, Harry Nilsson struck up a friendship with John Lennon and became a popular solo artist. He had a big hit in 1968 with "Everybody's Talkin'," and a huge hit in 1972 with "Without You." He also developed a drug and alcohol habit that debilitated him, and in 1994 he died of heart failure at 52.