Let me paint you a picture. You’re seven. You are full of naïve excitement for this super cool world because you just had a birthday party and you are full of ice cream and cake. One of your gifts was a Furby. Mom and Dad were concerned when you opened it, but your excitement convinced them to keep it.
And so you kept it.
Now, every night, Furby, the psychotic, clingy ex whom you can’t believe you actually dated is an animatronic ball of fur that you cannot get rid of because you, as a seven-year-old, consider it your child.
Furby was the toy that nobody realized they didn’t really want. It was an adorably needy, plush friend that would always stick with you since, hey, it’s a computer! It can’t make rational choices.
This ’90s craze petered out in the early 2000s, and by 2001, the craze had ended. Bear in mind, however, that in 1998 — just two holiday seasons prior — a limited edition Furby could go for $100 (with inflation, that’s $136).
You’re probably thinking, “What the hell is wrong with our society? How could a Furby go for $100?” Well, you’re right. All the heads hung in shame stopped hitting the toy stores because they probably never slept anyway and couldn’t operate machinery.
Soon, though, a fresh generation of naiveté arose, and in 2005, Furby was revived. This time, Furby not only blinked, but it also showed emotion. This means that the made-up language that Furby spoke could now be contextualized with tears, cackle-y laughter or probably just tears. It also danced, so you could take it to prom. Furby could honestly do anything it wanted. It was an independent machine that could make its own choices.
Yet the market did not take well to the new Furby. Children recycled their older siblings’ Furbys, but were smart enough to realize that Furby was pretty much useless. Next, Hasbro introduced special Furbys that sparked special interest groups, like Doctor Furby, Cowboy Furby, and many others.
All in all, Hasbro has spent a lot of time and money on Furby, which makes me wonder why. Its 1998 peak was very strong, with McDonalds carrying mini-Furbys in Happy Meals. Then, as most novelty items do, they faded out of the mainstream.
That’s probably because it was such a simple concept, but didn’t have a strong target audience. In terms of gift-giving, girls will receive dolls and boys will receive cars and action figures and anything strange (there are literally toys called Hex Bugs which are little moving bugs that interact with each other, and I’m not even kidding — how disgusting?). Furby kind of bridged that gap — you took care of him/her. While a bit weird Furby, was also a cute little monster guy.
Hasbro struck gold. The item was fresh, robotic and cute. But, unlike Legos which can adapt to anything — Pirates of the Caribbean, aliens, dollhouses — Furby was stuck being Furby. He couldn’t become Captain Furby Sparrow, nor could he (unrealistically) be a father/mother figure. He was just Furby, stuck in a vacuum.
So now Hasbro tries again, updating their Furby with LED eyes to show a much larger range of emotions and personality, all in an attempt to identify and connect with target audience. If you download a Furby based app on your smartphone, you can translate from Furbish — Furby’s natural language — to English, so you can hear all about how your prisoner Furby is coping by developing Stockholm Syndrome! The sad part is that: this trend is only continuing Hasbro’s formulaic approach to Furby. Throw in some tech elements, partner that with a designer to make a cool app, throw it at a bunch of children and watch them scream and throw glitter and all that good stuff. Because, hey, a Furby is the ultimate plush toy, right?
I’m worried.
The 2012 Furby is going for $54 at Toys R Us. For $54, you could feed a twelve-year-old girl for a week (according to USDA information from March 2012). You could placea down payment on a fridge. But why Furby?
“Auntie jc” from Houston, Texas writes on ToysRUs.com that, “[t]he Furby is my nephew’s new friend and confidant.” Ryegue from Grand Rapids, Michigan admitted that the Furby is the “mos [sic] awesome toy they could ever invent.” Others have similar feelings, saying that it’s a nice friend and a great source of play and entertainment.
So, I guess, who cares? In the end, it is a toy for children. As long as Hasbro continues to put out the Furby, and one child pukes glitter because he/she is so happy to have the Brand-New, 2012, LED-Eye Furby, it should go on. Mom and Dad can buy earplugs, we can agree that Furby deserves to be thrown against a wall because it’s so clingy and we can all keep on living with at little robotic thing cooing in the corner.
