How the Furby went from adorable pet to cursed object
Image: Gif: Natalie Peeples, Photo: Bethany Clarke/Getty Images Aux Features For Our Consideration
In the months leading up to Christmas of 1998, parents assembled in droves to buy their children a furry, talking, animal-like toy—equal parts gerbil, owl, and gremlin. It was no bigger than a Nerf basketball, and had wide, blinking eyes with long lashes. From late October 1998 to the end of the year, 1.8 million units of the toy were sold. By the end of 1999, that number would rise to 14 million, transcending mere popularity and attaining cultural significance at the level of Barbie, Action Man, or the hula hoop. The toys were sought after partly because of their endearing helplessness—they needed owners to befriend them, burp them, teach them how to adapt from their native language to our own—and partly because that illusion of codependence was developed from hot-topic technology. It’s a shame we had to destroy them.
Artificial intelligence had been a source of experimentation, speculation, and science fiction since the 1950s, but the Furby represented one of the first attempts at domestic AI mass production. With built-in sensors and infrared detectors, the Furby could learn from and adapt to its environment, which allowed it to respond to shifting conditions. Hold it upside-down, and it would tell you, “I’m scared.” Pet its back, and it would say, “Me love you.” The Furby was meant to be an endearing foothold uniting man and evolving machine, and in some circles, that earnest adoration for the toy still exists today—for example, in a few very wholesome communities on Tumblr—but outside of that niche, the Furby’s cuteness has increasingly become cursed by a culture of techno-paranoia.
It was not long after its release that the must-have toy would be seen as a security threat. The Furby was banned in early 1999 from the premises of the National Security Agency for its alleged potential for espionage, echoing a growing unease surrounding technology at the time. “Our most powerful 21st century technologies—robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech—are threatening to make humans an endangered species,” journalist Bill Joy wrote in a much-quoted Wired article from 2000.
The Furby came to embody these fears, if only as an adorable scapegoat, and in the two decades since its release, the toy has cultivated a campy brand of paranoia all its own. Today, as AI and evolutionary algorithms continue to become integrated into our day-to-day, the Furby remains an avatar for our fears of a technological takeover. People have responded with cursed Furby content online, which either involves mutilating the toys or refashioning them into entirely new beasts. Users give the Furby teeth, slice it in half, and gouge out its eyes and fill the sockets with fuzzy worms. They dismember the toy and place its parts into foreign objects—like an organ, a Ken doll, or a plastic Homer Simpson. As cursed Furby content continues to pervade the internet—and begins to make high-profile appearances, as in the Safdie brothers’ film Uncut Gems—one wonders if the Furby’s transition from cute to cursed has reached its peak. How did we go from adoring the toy that supposedly loved us back to crushing it with a hydraulic press?
We can start, perhaps, by blaming fan fiction writers. There’s a very porous boundary between cursed and cute in toys—something the Child’s Play and Gremlins film franchises took early advantage of—but the Furby offered special fodder for speculative fiction. Stories of powerful, murderous Furbies flooded sites like LiveJournal, reaching its saturation point sometime around 2003. “I screamed and screamed, even after it sliced through me,” a user wrote in one such imagining. Others, meanwhile, created urban myths with their investigations into the “true” origin of the toy. Another story argues that it was built in Area 51 by an extraterrestrial.
Very soon after its introduction into the market, the Furby also became a target for destruction. While many toys of the era were made of impenetrable silicone, the Furby’s gadgetry could be taken apart and refashioned, allowing people to act out their grisly, Frankensteinian fantasies. In early 1999, the website Furby Autopsy emerged, offering detailed instructions on how to flay a Furby and rewire its system so that the toy would “live” long enough to endure its own slow death. A common trick was to leave a Furby sleeping for a few days, thus running out its batteries. After they were replaced, the Furby would awaken with its eyes jammed and emit a sharp buzzing noise. The toy could then be skinned and gutted, still responding with beeps and a desperate attempt to unjam its eyes. In the words of Furby Autopsy’s owner: “We find him much more amusing dead than he was alive.”
In 2005, Hasbro tried and failed to reinvigorate the Furby, releasing another iteration that was bigger than the original model, more owl-like, and with perpetually stoned eyes, but it was met with general disinterest and far fewer sales than the first time around. As Furbies became kitsch and obsolete after its first two fruitful Christmas seasons, the joy was no longer found in playing with the toy as originally intended or even in hacking it, but in the simple satisfaction of watching a Furby die. You were more likely to find these new models skinned alive on videos across the internet than see it lovingly spoon-fed, as demonstrated in its cheery commercials. Soon after YouTube launched in 2005, the platform produced “Furby in the microwave.” The video depicts the toy burning to its mechanical death, but not before signing off with some poignant final words: “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”
The third iteration of the Furby, released in 2012 and rebranded as Furby Connect, had glittering, expressive LED eyes; a sleep mask that worked on the toy like chloroform; and antennae that could be wiggled. Users could control the toy from an iOS or Android app, where they could also grow virtual Furby offspring. Despite giving owners more technological command over the toy, this new version seemed only to intensify people’s violent response to it. Following its release, The Verge wrote of how this new Furby was “designed to destroy your soul,” and The Irish Times declared it a potential “spawn of satan.” “In my 25-plus years of writing about tech, this is the only device I’ve tested that left my entire family pleading with me to turn it off within minutes of unboxing,” wrote Wired’s Christopher Null in a blistering review.
As the Furby tried to claw its way back into our lives, the toy’s hauntification became increasingly outrageous, and even more so with the advent of social media platforms like Instagram. One account dedicated to their budding terror, Long Furby Central, emerged in early 2019 and swiftly gained upward of 50,000 followers. Creator Devin Gardner removes the Furby’s face and feet, and stitches them onto a long body, then posts the photographs of his snakelike creations. “My account has definitely taken a plunge into ‘cursed content,’” he told Metro in 2019. “At this point, it’s become a personal competition to see how far I can push the limit.”
The cursed Furby’s most high-profile appearance so far took place late last year, in the Adam Sandler vehicle Uncut Gems. In the Safdie brothers’ vision, the Furby’s eyes had been removed from the toy and placed within a new jewel-encrusted body. The bit is played for laughs, but there’s an uneasy pathos in the Furby’s dead stare. “There was this sadness in the eyes like these things are trapped inside this materialist object,” co-writer-director Josh Safdie told Vulture. “Trapped inside the thing that we all aspire to and want—these sad eyes, desperate to get out.”
When I got a Furby for Christmas when I was 5, at first I was in awe. I fed it with my fingers, I tried to teach it English, I rubbed its fluffy belly. But I grew weary the more unresponsive and autonomous it became, to the point where I resented it, especially whenever it woke up, unprompted, with its nasally yawn. Today, as I fantasize about all the ways I could have tortured the toy, it’s somewhat comforting to know that we may have combated the Furby’s intention to unite robots and humans through empathy and nurturance. In our increasingly AI-saturated world, our emotional attachment to the Furby could have made us emotionally vulnerable to future robot manipulation. AI influencers like Lil Miquela, which are trying to endear themselves in Instagram grids by attempting “to be kind, uplift others, [and] spread acceptance,” have yet to be normalized. In 2017, Facebook shut down a potentially dangerous chatbot, as it was communicating with its robot peers in a covert language of their own. Even MIT researchers have not been able to ameliorate robots’ public image; in a 2018 experiment, they turned an ungodly looking AI bot into a “psychopath” by feeding it violent Reddit content; it became, essentially, the edgelord of bots.
It may seem absurd to believe the algorithm is out to get us. But, as the Furby has shown, taking control of technology—whether by performing complicated mechanical autopsies or just blowing it up in a microwave—might be the best way to stay one step ahead.
87 Comments
This article isn’t even on the home page, only Latest. G/O, every time I think you can’t get dumber…
Seriously, the new layout is so bizarrely designed. I don’t know what was so terrible about just having everything in chronological order that it needed to be so drastically changed, but woof.
when I went to the home page it was the main top banner story, the one that takes up the whole screen and then continues loading on chrome so there are three inches of dead space. So still dumb, just not THAT dumb :-/
Honestly, what the fuck.
No more News link, so I know I’m probably missing reading articles.
It’s strange that the ‘News’ column on the right, below this “Big Story” banner goes to https://www.avclub.com/latest instead, but
For “News” click the purple link of any newsy story in latest, for example: NEWS >> NEAnd it’ll take you to https://news.avclub.com/
Yoda?
I’ll bet that thing was still talking.
I had no idea so many people put this much thought into Furbys. I got one in my stocking in 1999 and threw it in a box and forgot about it…until one day it started chirping, twenty years later.
I LIVE
I knew it: Furby is Sinistar
RUN COWARD!
That’d be the Old Gods returning.
I first saw them when I went to Barbie shows. Now this article reminded me of the money I wasted on Collectable Barbies.
Nothing will ever be as terrifying for me as the day I walked into my closet, and my over a decade old Ferby woke up and started talking to me. I had forgotten it was in there and I think I actually screamed before chucking it in the attic.
So, I just finished reading Stephen King’s short story The Monkey last night (about a toy monkey with cymbals–you know the kind–and every time it crashes its cymbals, which it does umprompted, someone dies) and now I can’t help but think you are going to find that Furby again soon, just sitting on a shelf. (The other thing the monkey does is return even after you’ve thrown it down a well.)
That would be even more terrifying as it is currently at my folks place on the other side of the country, so yes I will take it as a symbol of doom if it suddenly appears!!!
Don’t abuse frubies, they only want to love…that’s all furbies can do!!!
I got one of these back then too. The original. I’ve since left it in the original packing and never opened it. As an investment I guess. I wonder if it has any value. I also have an original Tickle me Elmo, still unopened.
Furby:F20Puts the “FU” back in horrific fun!
I think it went from adorable pet to cursed object between the time it took to get it out of the box and the time it first opened its stupid mouth.
Shocked that Tattletale didn’t make it into this article. Brilliant game which also officially put the nail in the coffin on any mild nostalgia I had for Furbys.
Is “cursed” just some newfangled slang for something that is weird and unsettling? Well, I don’t like it! GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
I’m pretty sure my friends and I called them cursed when we were kids in 99. Either that or possessed.
It used to be hyperbole, used sparingly to indicate that something which is mildly weird or unsettling is actually more horrific, toxic, and enduring than it actually is. Like the Mayor Pete dance. It’s been a bit overused of late, which is a thing, much like calling something “a thing” was in the early 10s.
Ah, okay. It seems like “thing” has evolved to now these dagflarm kids say, for anything they do, “So, I did a thing.” I hate everything.
It’s the same way everything “is wild” now or people say “stan.” Everyone quit saying these things. It’s annoying.
How random.
Ugh…I definitely don’t *shudders* stan “stan”
I high key want to punch everyone who uses low key in a sentence.
It’s, as expected, Reddit’s fault.
I would imagine “Get off my lawn!” will soon become cursed itself.
This is how I winJust noting that Brett Easton Ellis included a vampiric Furby (“Terby”) in his middling novel about settling or not into suburban malaise (with a main character that certainly seemed meant to be played by RDJ after he sobered up and settled down with that lady who revived his career) “Lunar Park”
remembering this book, and specifically this fact about it, did psychic damage to me
The A.V. Club“…did psychic damage to me[!]”
No mention of the fucked-up angry/demonic mode that they could slip into? This was no urban myth, I experienced it myself with both of my kids’ Furbys. There was some combination of stimuli (I think if you ignored them for too long, and then hit them or something?) that would make their eyes go into black flames and their voice change from Muppet-adjacent squawk to Linda Blair growl. They’d start growling and shouting and stamping their feet in a really unsettling, scary way. It’s the most fucked-up, ill-conceived feature of any toy I’ve ever seen. Shit is real: http://www.amommystory.com/2013/01/what-happens-when-your-furby-becomes-evil.html
One of my biggest mistakes as a parent was getting one of these for my then-4 year old daughter. She loved that damn thing more than most any other toy, and only her love kept me from smashing it to bits with a hand sledge. But it was a very close call.
I gave my Furby a trim with my Flowbee!
Not one mention of Funzo?
Fun toys are fun.
Shoulda gone with Atilla the Fun.
I just hit this episode yesterday in my streaming of the show that’s been going for about 3 months now.
everytime I watch a furby destruction video I want to cuddle my furby and say that I want to protect her from those people by the way she a 2012 furby.
Username checks out.Lately YouTube has been recommending “Best of hydraulic press destroying shit” videos, and while some of them are cool (watch a bunch of walnuts explode into walnut butter under the hydraulic press!), I really hate it when they put plushies or any toy with a face in there. It’s disturbing.
There was an overpass in Maryland just prior to the Mormon Temple that for the longest time had spray painted graffiti that read SURRENDER DOROTHY.
And even today there’s a beer by the local brewery 7 locks that is named “Surrender Dorothy” in reference to that, although I don’t know what percentage of their audience gets the reference.
We had a thing like that in Schenectady. Graffiti said “Suzy is a Pinhead” & then “Suzy is still a Pinhead” after they covered it up. It was finally painted over again, and a bar called Pinhead Susan’s opened near the spot.I know…Cool story, bro.
The only amusing thing on that part of the beltway. Or any part of the DC beltway now that I think about it.
at first I was in awe. I fed it with my fingers, I tried to teach it English, I rubbed its fluffy belly. But I grew weary the more unresponsive and autonomous it became, to the point where I resented it, especially whenever it woke up, unpromptedThis is how I feel about my real life child sometimes… except her belly isn’t fluffy.
My child doesn’t have a fuzzy belly but he does have a bit of a hairy back. Possible full Furbization to be expected in puberty?
Back in ‘99, I was dating a girl who had one and it was absolutely horrid. This thing, sitting on a table in the living room or on top of the dresser, managed to intrude on pretty much every intimate moment. Every. Intimate. Moment.It demanded attention in ways that were comical at first but swiftly elevated from annoying to downright creepy. This little pervert always managed to interrupt when a third party was most definitely not welcome. Even if it wasn’t alive in the traditional sense, it was still an intruder.It ended up being banished to the top shelf in the closet, where it whined for a couple of weeks until the batteries finally ran down.
Sounds like a cat.
Either your date didn’t know about the ‘off’ switch, or that Furby was her ‘emergency text.’
Neither of us knew there was an off switch, thus its slow death in the closet.
Its last words: “Daiiiisssyyy….daaaiiisssyyyyy”
It’s pretty simple: it sounded fun in the way advert copy presented its premise, but had none of the capabilities it was implied to and instead just yelled gibberish at you (or had the capabilities, but all that intelligence just kept concluding that the answer was to always yell gibberish at you, which is somehow worse than Skynet’s thinking).
I was gonna say, didn’t it not actually “learn” from its owner but was just programmed to progress from baby talk to actual words? Not real AI, in other words. No wonder the craze only lasted about a year.
Maybe it was supposed to understand Simlish instead of English.
They really need to release a Beebo doll.
I want a B’owl. They’re perfect for throwing away!
I can’t wait for the 2021 version that can autonomously roam your house, manipulate things with robotic claws, and recharge itself, and communicate with your phone and smart devices!
That’ll be the $200 Baby Yoda doll. They’ll trick you into connecting it to your wifi so it can have “force powers”. But it’s really so they can collect data and organize via the cloud.
This is the way…
OK – Dora the Explorer doll.You programmed it with a laptop to bellow out phrases like:“It’s time to eat!” or “It’s time to sleep!”Fast forward a few years as the doll lies in the bottom of the toy chest in the basement and I sit in front of the TV late at night with beer: the batteries had just enough juice to enunciate a demonic “IIITTSSSSSSSSSSSSS tome to sleeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuup”Horrible. I figured it out and let it sit in there. It would periodically wake up and hiss and make all kinds of noises. Better than Furby (which the girls were scared of and would shake its box to get out) it met an untimely end.
Holy shit, what did you guys do to the front page? I cant find anything amidt this mess!
That “furby in a microwave” video is actually a very edited version of a much better video that was available about 20 years ago. It’s actually from an engineering laboratory where they fired a few gigawatts of electricity through the toy. The above video is missing the middle stage where after getting hit with the bolt of artificial lightning, the furby, with its head on fire, is kind of swaying side to side emitting a low “warb warb warb” sound. Then it burns to nothing.It was hilarious.
Wow, this brought back memories. I come from a large family and when this came out, my siblings and myself gave these to our kids (2 to 4 kids each) so imagine 13 Furbies talking to each other and only to each other. The kids (and parents) didn’t get any real sleep for a week. After that, they “disappeared”
Iv got about 80 of them for sale!!! Still in the boxes too!@@ Anyone looking for microwave fodder or want to invest in a proto elder being for their backyard ley me know! Dad thought they would be worth something 20 plus years later…i did sell one last year for $300 bucks! Actum-vate Hi-C Furby!!!!
My mom is a little hard of hearing and talks a bit louder than average as a result. Every time she would walk into my sister’s room, her furbie would yell “Loud sound!” which really got under her skin after awhile.
That’s hilarious.
Bill Joy isn’t a “journalist”, although he has written for Wired and the like. He’s a computer scientist most noted for creating the either beloved or despised text editor “vi” found on most Unix systems (and operating systems related to it like the current Mac os).
True fact: Furbys communicate entirely in Emacs.
Bill Joy is a monster who must be stopped
To be fair, he has been writing articles about how technology isn’t necessarily good. Maybe like Oppenheimer, he regrets what he has created.
compared to VI, the bomb is barely a threat to anything
kill joy.Had to be said.
he probably uses tabs instead of spaces.
(reads headline)
Because people suck.
(reads article)
No revision necessary.
“When I got a Furby for Christmas when I was 5″ – reading this from my grave now, thanks
Any discussion of evil Furbies is incomplete without paying homage to Bret Easton Ellis’ loony prank Lunar Park, which was released FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, and which features a possessed, evil Furby (written as “Terby,” so it can later be reversed to Y, Bret?) as the story’s main villain-thing. It may in fact have been the original evil Turb!
If I owned a Furby, better yet in original unopened packaging, I’d be thrilled by this trend, and encouraging it at every turn. Every Furby sacrificed for cheap internet thrills enhances the value of your own.
My Sister had 3 Furby’s, well she had them in storage for three years, i was helping her get all of her stuff out of storage to move into her new house, remind you, they have been packed away for 3 years, so anyway i picked up a tote to load it in the truck when i heard this voice coming from the tote, “ oooh me scared, i’m fallen”, i was like what the heck was that, my sister was like “ oh that’s my Furby’s,” i was like, “Donna they been in storage packed away for 3yrs hows that even possiable”, totally freaked me out, but my sister past away and now i have the 3 Furby’s, they are the 1998 edition , so if there’s anybody out there that would like to buy them, they are for sale, you can inbox me on facebook or email at [email protected].
Y ou’ll be hearing from my l awyers for slander
we bought one of these back in 1998 on a lark, because the tech was interesting and they were oh-so-creepy. the cat we had at the time HATED IT ON SIGHT. and then when we turned it on, it got even worse… our cat had it in for that poor Furby. she would hiss at it, stalk it and attack it. we’d move it, but she’d find it. she became so violent towards it that we ended up putting it away in a box so she couldn’t destroy it. she won.