Furby

Furby is an electronic toy created by Tiger Electronics and introduced in October 1998. This series was produced until 2002. Furby was popular due to its ability to interact with its environment and its owner. Furby is a plush creature with large eyes and ears. It is equipped with various sensors, such as touch sensors, light sensors, and even an infrared port for exchanging data with other Furbys.

Furby was able to show emotions, learn, and react to the owner’s actions. It could produce sounds, move its ears, and open and close its eyes depending on the situation.

Furby came with a limited vocabulary, but over time and through interaction with the owner, it could learn new words and phrases.

If you had multiple Furbys, they could communicate with each other using the infrared port.

Over the years, Furby went through several modifications and updates with new features, designs, and capabilities.

The 1998 Furby became a cultural icon and won the hearts of many children and adults. Its success was largely due to the innovative approach to creating interactive toys. A total of 48 main colors were released, as well as 22 special colorways. Over 1.8 million Furbys were sold in 1998 alone, 14 million in 1999, and approximately 40 million overall. First-generation Furbys were translated into 24 languages.

A freshly activated Furby spoke Furbish, in which it knew 42 unique words. But the longer the Furby was on and active, the more it spoke in the target language (such as English or French).

Development team: Two engineers, Dave Hampton and Caleb Chung, worked on developing the toy. After nine months of development and two licensing attempts, they approached toy inventor Richard C. Levy, who helped sell the Furby rights to Roger Shiffman and Tiger Electronics.

Global release: Furby was initially released in the United States in October 1998 and later became available in other countries.

Its popularity grew rapidly, and it became one of the most sought-after toys of the era.

Furby was officially released and went on sale in the United States on October 2, 1998.

Types of 1998 Furby

Adults

Furbys were released in generations of 6 colorways each. There were 8 generations of adult Furbys in total.

Special Edition

The special series includes 18 special Furby colorways with themed designs tied to various characters or events.

Contest Prize

This series includes 5 Furby colorways. They could not be purchased and could only be won in contests.

Fresh New Look

Originally called Fresh New Look. 20 colorways were released in the new design.

Unreleased Furbys

There were 2 generations of unreleased Furbys whose designs did not go into production for various reasons.

Furby Baby

Furby Babies were produced from 1999 to 2002. There are four generations and one regular special edition. There are also some unreleased Furby Baby prototypes.

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The World of Furby — A-loh May-lah

Furbys come from Furbyland, which they call A-loh May-lah. According to official lore, Furbyland, also known as Furby Island or Hug Island, is the place where Furbys lived before they met humanity. They call it A-loh May-lah in their native language Furbish, which directly translates to “cloud hug.” Furbyland is over hundreds of thousands of years old. One day, Furbys decided to leave and jumped from the cloud of Furbyland down to Earth.

In the Shelby Care and Training Manual, it is suggested that Furbyland is located deep underground and has a green light source. Furbys live in families of about twenty, called a Furby Clan. Clans unite into tribes.

For tens of thousands of years, they lived in A-loh May-lah and communicated with tall, slender, transparent beings called Aeons. Due to an unfortunate climate change, the Aeons went extinct. Furbys cannot reach their full maturity and potential without a being to bond with. They tried bonding with other creatures in A-loh May-lah, including Shelbys (who had lived there for hundreds of thousands of years), but without success. So one day the entire Furby tribe decided to come to Earth, “jumped from the clouds,” and were able to happily bond with humanity.

Furbys hatch from eggs, and their lifespan is 125 years. They are cute but can be rude, and they enjoy eating. They have a long attention span.

They speak their native language — Furbish. But they can learn any other language very easily. Furbys have no defined gender.

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Personality

The 1998 Furby has only one personality — a calm and friendly Furby. It can be slightly changed by treating it differently. Each Furby has a name in Furbish that it can say.

10 Facts About Furby

1. Artificial fur. Furby’s fur is made from synthetic fibers.
2. Release date. The official Furby release was on October 2, 1998.
3. Fighting counterfeits. Original Furbys had purple plastic tags reading “Furby Original.” Hasbro destroyed 20,000 counterfeits in London and shut down fake Furby production facilities.
4. Computing power. According to the MIT Media Lab director in 1999, Furby’s computing power exceeded that of the lunar module that landed on the Moon.
5. Pentagon ban. In 1999, Furbys were banned by the Pentagon, the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, and the NSA over concerns about possible conversation recording.
6. Swedish name. In Sweden, Furbys were sold under the name “Furbee” to avoid confusion with the name of a Swedish locality.
7. Best-selling toy. Over 12 million Furbys were sold worldwide from October 1998 to December 1999. Furby remained the best-selling toy for two consecutive years.
8. Length in a row. If you lined up 12 million Furbys in a row, they would circle the Earth 783 times.
9. Movement combinations. Furby could perform over 300 unique combinations of ear, mouth, and eye movements.
10. Comic book cameo. Furbys appeared as an Easter egg in the 2018 Transformers comic — they crawled out of a T-Rex’s mouth.