Getting Rid of Imaginary Friends

you can put them in the parents inventory or the kids inventory if you don't want the doll to appear at that time I usually do it when I want them to get around for school than I put the doll out during the day so when they come back the doll comes back.

I think in the inventory of the sim that owns the doll there is a glitch where the doll can be accidently removed from the inventory and it will look like both IF and real sim all at once. So if your sim family that has an IF doll make sure you take them out of their inventory if you want that sim to be played by the computer.

Edit: The IF dolls should automatically reset when owner of the doll days the IF friend no longer exists in the game world and a new sim can use the doll for the full potential; However, the doll in toy form even in non mystical mode will still give any sim the IF playing moodlet as long as they are toddlers.

Guaranteed to turn your sim into a lifelong schizophrenic.

I do not like them! My sims are obsessed with them, and if I don't control what they do they will only play with their IF. :# hehe I didn't know you could delete them though!

I delete them immediately. I hate them. They are so creepy. And mean. I turned one IF into a sim, and he was really.....mean. so, I always get rid of them. I cheat to delete them.

I like them for some sims, and not so much for others. I have this mod installed so that I can control which kids get them.

Or, in a couple of saves I built a basement that no one can access (because I have issues with stairs) where I put all sorts of rewards & equipment that aren't currently in use, nectar racks, recolors that I didn't save & may want later, diplomas, degrees, etc. These holes in the ground also contain a number of unwanted IFs.

I think they are really creepy. I remember having a invisible friend being a child (IRL), but these dolls are just nothing like it.

I have tried to sim with them: let the toddlers play with them, make them real, incorporate them into the family; but they do get in the way, and their looks as adult big dolls... it's just scary and does not fit my play-style (except in apocalypse-challenge).

I try to not pick up the mail when I have a newborn (that's when they arrive, and I always choose Life Time Reward 'no bills' from Ambitions EP first, so I don't bother with the mail). I cannot stop the toddler from playing with it but avoid it later in the sim's life. But this particular sim I have now, constantly gets messages to 'repear relationship' with it, and I dont know how to get rid of the doll. I do not use mods and don't like to write cheat codes (I think it eventually corrupts the save?)

Does anybody know of a 'legit' way of removing them?

It's like the developers had the knowledge of the cultural phenomenon of a childhood invisible friend, but from the parent's or a fright-focused culture's perspective, so it just borders on the "scary clown" - IT-movie, chucky, gremlins etc. Or maybe that was the point...

Dun-dun-dun!

@Auroraskies - Mods (properly crafted ones, and suitable for current patch levels) do not corrupt games, nor do cheat codes. Not generally, anyway. The dolls can be safely object deleted using testingcheatsenabled and a shift-click if they have never animated. If they have animated at least once ever, then there is an underlying sim to go with that doll and force-deleting them will then cause problems.

NRaas MasterController offers a way to safely delete both the underlying sim and then the doll, and Retuner offers a way to reduce or eliminate the default chance (70%) of them ever appearing in the mailbox. But that of course won't do those averse to using mods any good.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Imaginary%20Friend

If you leave the doll in a mailbox and ever switch active households, it may try to animate in there and get stuck because it can't. That can cause severe game issues as well, although players won't see the errors actually reported on if they don't have NRaas ErrorTrap. I don't think that ignoring the mailbox completely is very good for the game's performance either as other things besides bills and dolls throughout the game are also sent to our sims by way of the mail system and they will get clogged up in there after long amounts of time.

I'm afraid the only "legitimate" way meaning no cheat codes, no force object deletion, and no mods, is to embrace the Imaginary Friends or get rid of the Generations EP and start a new game. There are many game features like this that players do not care for or do not care for the over the top ways in which they were implemented. But the ability fix or do away with many of these features using only in-game click interactions is very limited.

Thank you for your answer and for the warning about the mail box, I will appearantly have to suffer the little evils.

I have seen in many instances that simmers warn against using cheats, if it is harmless as you say, then why the commonplace warning?