I have seen many a toys using just discrete components and IC's to produce songs (with words and everything!). I want to gift someone a piece of electronic art in which I want to use such a circuit. Does anyone know of these? I don't think those toys use uControllers to produce speech so there has to be some cheap alternative. What can it be? Please suggest.
Edit
For anyone who reads this question afterwards, I found all the answers very much doable and these are great options. The reason I had marked Leon Heller's answer as my accepted answer is just that it was very very easy to do. And can be implemented using the cute little Attiny uControllers.