A) Congratulations to Dave and hope everything is going well with the family. (I'm late to listening, so only catching up now.)
B) I enjoyed the story, though in the back of my head I had this episode of 99% Invisible about the creation of the teddy bear and the also-ran toy, billy possum (
http://99percentinvisible.org/post/13210762740/episode-40-billy-possum).
C) I perfectly enjoyed the "several episodes in the life" structure, where we get to see the lives of different children and how Sundae does or doesn't protect them for a while. And who doesn't love a heroic death? But as interesting as it was to see some of those fights between innocence and experience--the old woman who holds onto some innocence despite the horror she's been through, the child whose imagination of escape is quashed by the abuse she can't escape, the children who move too early into digital pastimes--I wasn't quite comfortable with how easy the story switched between those.
I mean, being cyberbullied is bad (if that's what happened to the older daughter in the story), but just having access to digital entertainment? As a child of the 80s, I'm very loathe to say "pre-packaged entertainment kills off imagination and innocence."
Also, the idea that children are innocent and imaginative sometimes gets under my skin; for all that I don't love
Ender's Game, it does get right that children are far from innocent.
So a fine story that starts from a premise I find distasteful (children=innocent) and includes a current cliche that I find maddening (digital/pre-packaged entertainment kills imagination). Let's say a solid B and you can dance to it.