Gah! You're right. That was much scarier in the mid-90's when I was using it. Same concept, though. Take something seemlingly innocent and give the players just enough info that they know something is horribly wrong.
Step 1: Allow Emotitoys RAW. Go with the logic on this and pretty everyone who uses social skills frequently will own one. Don't bother with too much description but every time the party meets a Johnson, a Fixer or any corp type at all, casually mention that the character has an emotitoy on a necklace, a Share Bear drone on his shoulder, whatever.
Step 2: For the next run Mr. Johnson is a cute Emotitoy and no matter how hard they try the team tech types can not find an incoming signal controlling it. If they're rude enough to try and hack it, the toy fries itself the moment they break through. He has the team do something quick and seemingly innocuous on the first run. Like pick up a car at location x and drop it off at location y. Don't open the trunk. 5,000ny for an hour's work. There's a numbered account and an escrow, so the team doesn't even need to meet again for the second half of their pay.
Step 3: The job goes down without a hitch and the team gets paid with no problems. Then something terrible happens. SCIRE's doors break open, a bomb blows up in the middle of a shopping center killing a ton of civilians, whatever. Whatever it is, its clear that the easy money run was part of a bigger plan. Further investigation (and it will take a lot) determines that a dozen teams were all given innocuous instructions. No one thing caused the event but the collective total of the actions added up to something awful done in such a way that no surveillance systems saw a thing. Stranger still, everyone got their instructions from a talking toy drone. If they dig too far, whichever character is drawing too much attention may wake up in the middle of the night to find half a dozen toy rats drones (the famous Desnai Rat) with chainsaws surrounding his bed.
Step 4: Let that sit for a while, but every time the characters see a cute fuzzy toy drone in a store display, in a kid's hand, on some Johnson's shoulder (see above for how common they are), point it out, especially if its the same model as the one they took a job from or its a playfully cute rat (sans chainsaw). Further investigation of the proprietary emotitoy software and production may reveal certain anomalies. Basically, get them thinking that every Tickle Me Jojo is out to get them.
Step 5: Those other Runner teams that helped set up the Bad Event start disappearing one by one. Are those omnipresent emotitoys watching them as they pass? Does anyone in the party have one of their own?
The enemy is everywhere. It can't be captured (if the toys attack in the night, any that are disabled fry themselves). There's no way to tell a good one from a bad one. They're cute and no one else is ever going to believe a story that the emotitoys are plotting a revolution. They only strike when the characters are weakest and more often than not, there's no direct proof. They have the resources to blow up an entire shopping center without leaving any evidence. The implications should put the shakes in even a hardened Troll.
