The day the Furbies said ‘no’

Originally published 21 December 1998

Today’s news:

Oct. 5, 1998. Wired mag­a­zine. Fri­day at New York’s FAO Schwartz on Fifth Avenue, Has­bro’s Tiger Elec­tron­ics divi­sion unveiled Fur­by—a “cud­dly stand-alone ani­ma­tron­ic pet” that will sell for approx­i­mate­ly $30.

“We think Fur­by is more life­like that any toy a child has been able to play with before,” said Stew­art Sims, Tiger senior vice pres­i­dent for mar­ket­ing. The toy has a vocab­u­lary of pre-pro­grammed Eng­lish and “Fur­bish” words and sounds, which can com­bine to form up to 1,000 pos­si­ble phras­es, uttered in response to built-in sensors.

Fur­by begins his life speak­ing Fur­bish only, but grad­u­al­ly learns Eng­lish as it inter­acts with a child. And if anoth­er Fur­by is in the room, they’ll com­mu­ni­cate togeth­er. “It’s the clos­est you can get to a liv­ing crea­ture as pos­si­ble,” said Tiger PR man­ag­er Lana Simon.

She added: “If you don’t play with Fur­by for a few days, he’ll be angry.”

Nov. 28, 1998. The Boston Globe. A near riot occured yes­ter­day morn­ing at the Wal-Mart store in Lynn as near­ly 1,000 par­ents con­tend­ed for the chance to buy Fur­by, this sea­son’s hot new toy. The store had promised to begin sales at mid­night, but did not open the door until 6 a.m. Then only 30 of the cud­dly toys were avail­able. “There’s going to be a lot of dis­ap­point­ed kids,” said an angry dad. And now, tomor­row’s news:

Oct. 8, 1999. ABC World News Tonight. Has­bro’s Tiger Elec­tron­ics divi­sion announced yes­ter­day that an updat­ed ver­sion of the pop­u­lar Fur­by will be released in time for Christ­mas ’99. The new­ly engi­neered “ani­ma­tron­ic pet” will have an Eng­lish and Fur­bish vocab­u­lary of more than 20,000 words — a huge increase over the vocab­u­lary of last year’s Christ­mas sensation.

“Fur­by will have a larg­er vocab­u­lary than most of the kids who play with the toy,” said Howard Jones, Tiger mar­ket­ing direc­tor. “It will also make few­er con­ces­sions to the kids in learn­ing Eng­lish,” he added. “We hope this will cause kids to stretch their lin­guis­tic skills by learn­ing a new language.”

“Among them­selves, Fur­bies will speak only Fur­bish,” said Tiger PR man­ag­er Helen Banks.

The new toys have also been pro­grammed with a wider range of emo­tions. Depend­ing on respons­es of built-in sen­sors, Fur­by will respond to its own­er with love, anger, bore­dom, humor, anx­i­ety, flat­tery, ridicule.

July 24, 2000. Reuters news ser­vice. At a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day in New York, Roger Bak­er, CEO of toy man­u­fac­tur­er Has­bro, announced that the firm will hence­forth be known as Tiger-Furby.

“We knew the time was right for the name change when school sys­tems around the coun­try began offer­ing instruc­tion in Fur­bish,” said Bak­er. “Sales of the ani­ma­tron­ic pets now account for 98 per­cent of our market.”

In some parts of the coun­try it is report­ed that chil­dren speak only Fur­bish among them­selves and with their elec­tron­ic pets. Tiger-Fur­by will quick­ly bring to mar­ket com­put­er soft­ware to help adults learn the new language.

Accord­ing to Bak­er, the com­pa­ny will focus on devel­op­ing their most suc­cess­ful prod­uct. By Christ­mas, the Fur­by toy will have a vocab­u­lary of 100,000 words and an enhanced reper­toire of emo­tions, includ­ing tedi­um, amuse­ment, courage, blus­ter, inso­lence, and astonishment.

“Tiger-Fur­by/po-duh/a‑tic-feb­b/u‑wu,” said Bak­er. That’s Fur­bish for “Tiger-Fur­by knows a sure bet when we see one.”

Aug. 13, 2001. Asso­ci­at­ed Press. School teach­ers in sev­en states have mount­ed protests against chil­dren bring­ing their Fur­by anma­tron­ic friends to school, accord­ing to a spokesper­son for the Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Association.

Mar­garet Dipler, a third grade teacher in Des Moines, Iowa, said: “Fur­bies in the class­room are chat­ter­ing among them­selves all the time. They have no sense of restraint and set a bad exam­ple for the chil­dren. I’ve tried to learn Fur­bish so I can try to get the darn toys to shut up, but they ignore me.”

Roger Bak­er, CEO of the com­pa­ny respon­si­ble for the huge­ly suc­cess­ful toys, sees noth­ing wrong with hav­ing them in the class­room. “Fur­bies are capa­ble of learn­ing as much as an aver­age child,” he said in an inter­view. “Our com­mu­ni­ties have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to edu­cate these elec­tron­ic crea­tures to be respon­si­ble mem­bers of society.”

When asked if Tiger-Fur­by might be required by law to build a “dis­ci­pline chip” into the toys, Bak­er sug­gest­ed that this would rep­re­sent gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence in the com­pa­ny’s’s abil­i­ty to give its cus­tomers what they want.

Nov. 3, 2002. CNN News. Toh-loo Ka “Snow­ball”, a white, blue-eyed Fur­by from Glen Cove, Long Island, has been appoint­ed ani­ma­tron liai­son by Tiger-Fur­by’s CEO Roger Baker.

“We want to know what our cus­tomers are think­ing,” said Bak­er, “and who knows bet­ter than our product.”

“Tech sup­port and edu­ca­tion will my first pri­or­i­ties,” said Toh-loo Kao. “Also, Fur­bies will also be look­ing for rep­re­sen­ta­tion on Tiger-Fur­by’s board of direc­tors to insure our elec­tron­ic and mechan­i­cal rights.”

Dec. 24, 2003. The Boston Globe. A near riot occurred yes­ter­day morn­ing at the Wal-Mart store in Lynn. Long lines of par­ents had been wait­ing all night for a promised ship­ment of Fur­bies, the cud­dly ani­ma­tron­ic com­pan­ions from Tiger-Fur­by. When the doors of the store opened at 6 a.m., the con­sign­ment of Fur­bies refused to be dis­trib­uted to cus­tomers, pre­fer­ring to cel­e­brate a qui­et Christ­mas among themselves.

A Fur­by spoke­san­i­ma­tron said: “Bah/o‑­ple/a‑­grf-huy/o‑k­lze. Huk/e‑hye-tyee-hiv/a. Da/­Fur­by-guy/u‑zzz-ti.” (“What­ev­er hap­pened to lit­tle tin horns and lit­tle toy drums? Curly head dolls that tod­dle and coo? This tech­no­toy Christ­mas thing has got­ten out of hand.”)

“There’s going to be lots of dis­ap­point­ed kids,” said an angry dad.