Furby

A Furby is an electronic soft-toy made by Tiger Electronics which went through a brief period of being a "must-have" toy following its launch in the holiday season of 1998. more...

Quickly selling out at stores, many people would wait in line for hours to be the first in the door on a day when a store expected to display a new shipment. Though it retailed for about thirty dollars, the demand for these toys during the 1998 holiday season drove the resale price over one hundred dollars and sometimes as high as several hundred dollars. There were 27 million Furby toys sold for a 12-month period.

In August 2005, Furbys were re-released, with voice-recognition and more complex facial movements.

The plural of Furby is Furbys, and the name Furby apparently came from the prototype which its discoverer David Hampton nicknamed 'Fur-ball'. In appearance, the Furby is a cross between a hamster, a cat, and a bat or owl.

Original Furby

The original Furbys were 6 inches tall. The main reason that many people liked them was their apparent "intelligence" and learning ability as they developed their language skills. It was thought, falsely, that they repeated words said around them (the actual function was the ability to have the furby say certain pre-programmed words or phrases more often by petting it whenever it said these words); this led to several intelligence agencies banning them from their offices. They can also communicate with one another via an infrared port. Furbys start out speaking entirely in Furbish, a language with short words, simple syllables, and various other sounds, but are programmed to speak less and less Furbish and more and more English the more they "grow". A phrase that Furbys say, "Whoa! Me big sleep!", would translate into English as "Whoa! I slept for a long time!"

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