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The cute and cursed story of Furby

Channel: Version History · Duration: 70:35 · source

[00:00] Let me pitch you on a toy. [00:01] It doesn't do very much, it just kind of makes noises. [00:07] But it doesn't make noises that you understand and you don't really have any control over [00:10] them and it will at some point wake up in the middle of the night and terrify you and [00:14] everyone you love. [00:18] It's small, it's furry, and I promise you're gonna love it. [00:21] From The Verge and Vox Media, this is Version History, a show about the best and worst [00:26] and most important products in tech history. [00:28] I'm David Pierce, and on this episode, we are, of course, talking about Furby. [00:33] All right, we're back. [00:45] It's Furby time. [00:46] I have three guests to introduce you to today. [00:48] First, here in the studio with me, The Verge's V song. [00:50] Hi V. [00:51] You, I would say, have covered sort of around the Furby space a lot. [00:56] I think you have spent a lot of time covering interesting trends and [01:00] fads in Asia and how they've moved to the US. [01:03] You have weird experiences with Furby that I'm not completely sure I'm ready to [01:06] talk about? [01:07] We'll get into it, we'll get into it. [01:08] But yeah, I actually used to build robots in high school. [01:12] Did you really? [01:12] Yes, I did. [01:13] I didn't do this. [01:13] I was part of a RoboCup junior team. [01:16] But I wasn't interested in making the robots play soccer. [01:18] I was interested in making them dance choreography to singing in the rain. [01:23] So this is really- So you and Furby should get along very well. [01:24] This is my alley. [01:26] It's like my dark past. [01:27] Sean Hollister from The Verge also here joining us over the internet. [01:30] Sean, how are you? [01:31] Love to be here. [01:32] I'm doing great. [01:33] You have covered a lot of toys for us. [01:34] One of the things I wanted to have you hear is because I think a lot of the story [01:37] of Furby is about basically how toys work in the world and the fads and [01:43] the rise and fall and the way that we interact with them as people and [01:47] as adults and as kids. [01:48] And I think you've seen this from a lot of angles. [01:51] Do you have weird Furby experience that we need to know about before we get into [01:54] this? [01:55] I reviewed a Furby with my kids in 2023 and my wife kept budding in to say, [02:02] oh God, it's that thing that I remember from my youth. [02:06] Please get it away from me. [02:07] I mean, that's the episode. [02:08] There it is. [02:09] That's all you need to know. [02:11] Sean's wife has the story for us. [02:13] And our third guest is my friend right here, this little Furby. [02:18] Furby, I would say, is just a tiny little monster. [02:21] If you're listening to the show and not watching it, this one is white. [02:25] It has pink ears and a little like tuft of hair on top and on the back. [02:29] This feels like, A, kind of the last thing you see before you die, and [02:33] B, like a really poorly animated chicken. [02:38] Does that feel right to you? [02:39] Yeah, I really think it's important to emphasize the dead eye stare. [02:43] Yes, big eyes, big eyelashes. [02:46] The just drag queen eyelashes in like the best way possible. [02:50] And you know, his mouth really does look like a chicken. [02:53] We're going to wake him up, see what happens. [02:55] Maybe he'll tell us what he is. [02:56] This Furby takes four double A batteries, [02:58] which feels kind of aggressive from a power standpoint. [03:01] So I've screwed up in the bottom. [03:03] I am putting in four double A batteries. [03:07] And now I'm frankly like slightly terrified about what's about to happen. [03:11] I mean, like, okay. [03:12] Oh, no. [03:15] Oh, that noise. [03:17] He, he, he, he, Coco. [03:22] Its name is Coco. [03:23] Its name is Coco. [03:24] Hi, Coco. [03:25] Okay. [03:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. [03:30] Oh, absolutely not. [03:31] Coco is going to be with us for as much of the show as any of us can possibly tolerate. [03:35] You know what's odd is just how much you can hear the mechanical [03:39] components whirring as it's moving. [03:41] Oh, 100%. [03:42] Yeah, like really wants you to know it's a robot in a way that is kind of unsettling. [03:46] It's not true, it's not true, it's not true. [03:50] It's singing. [03:51] Did we proc that or is it? [03:53] Nope, it's just hanging out. [03:54] No, it just hears us. [03:55] Furby's just here. [03:56] Let's see, if I'm going to just turn Furby upside down, which is the thing I have heard [04:01] Furby's do not enjoy. [04:02] Coco. [04:03] Okay. [04:04] I have a feeling Coco is not going to make it much longer. [04:08] So the reason we picked Furby for this episode is that A, I think in a really interesting [04:14] way, this is an intersection of a lot of hugely important technology with like a completely [04:22] different way of putting this technology in front of people. [04:25] And it's also like, this thing is artificial intelligence, right? [04:30] Like we are in a moment, it is like, and I want to talk about this. [04:33] They talked about this thing in the 90s as artificial intelligence and they understood [04:39] a certain way that maybe we would come to interact with our friends and our devices [04:43] and our computers and like in a very real way, Furby represented a vision for the entire [04:49] future of technology that I think is absolutely fascinating. [04:52] So the story begins with this guy, Dave Hampton, who's an inventor in California and he has [04:57] what I would call the like classical tech guy backstory. [05:00] He's like every interview, he's like, oh, I grew up taking apart radios and it's like, [05:03] yeah, but he started everybody, you know what I mean? [05:06] But anyway, he then goes to the Navy to work on planes and radio equipment. [05:11] He winds up learning a bunch of languages while he's stationed around the world. [05:15] This becomes very important to the Furby and the language that Furby speaks, which we [05:19] will come to. [05:20] He worked on navigation equipment. [05:21] He opened a Thai restaurant in Thailand. [05:24] He wound up working for a bunch of early computer companies. [05:27] Coco's a big Dave Hampton fan, as I'm sure you can hear. [05:31] And he wound up getting really into the Atari 2600 and at one point wrote a port [05:36] of the game Qbert to go to the Atari 2600, which one game of the year was a whole big [05:41] deal. [05:42] This guy is like a sort of Renaissance man of engineering and technology. [05:45] Just really fascinating. [05:47] He winds up on a think tank at Mattel, which even at the time is like... [05:52] Mattel has a think tank? [05:53] So it basically served as like an R&D lab. [05:57] And this was a moment in time where technology was very slowly starting to creep into toys. [06:04] This is a commercial for Teddy Ruxpin from the 90s. [06:16] Oh, I remember that now. [06:20] Hi, my name is Teddy Ruxpin. [06:23] Can you and I be friends? [06:25] So this is showing a kid getting on a bus with Teddy Ruxpin. [06:28] And Teddy Ruxpin, if you've never seen, is basically just an enormous teddy bear with [06:32] a cassette player in his back. [06:34] Is it adorable or is it the creepiest teddy bear you've ever seen in your entire life? [06:37] It's creepy. [06:38] Okay, I have to admit, thinking back, I actually wanted one of these. [06:44] A lot of people did. [06:45] Being a little boy, I was like, should I want this? [06:48] But I wanted it. [06:49] But Sean, there's no shame in it. [06:52] Anyway, the first thing Dave Hampton works on is, do you remember the CNC device? [06:58] This is another old like sort of interactive you talk to it kind of toy. [07:02] But Mattel is like, no, we don't care about the electronic version of this moving on. [07:05] But so he goes out off to found his own company. [07:08] And the I would say this story is either partly company mythology or totally company mythology. [07:15] But the story he tells is that his son needed jaw surgery, and he needed like $100,000 [07:22] to go pay for this jaw surgery. [07:25] He has a good reputation in the industry, thinks it's very exciting. [07:27] And so what he thinks is maybe I can sell a toy, get some big pre-order, and just off [07:32] the royalties, go pay for the surgery. [07:34] So he's like, I need a windfall of cash, and I'm going to do it by building a toy that a [07:38] bunch of people want. [07:39] And there was good reason to think that he could do that back then because the toy [07:43] industry kept having these crazes. [07:45] There was the Cabbage Patch Kids, there was Tickle Me Elmo, there was Teddy Ruxpin, there [07:49] was always this must have hot holiday toy. [07:52] My size Barbie. [07:53] So he could make one. [07:55] And if you could make the one and I guess just a feature of the way the toy industry [07:59] works is they make so many of these purchasing decisions upfront, that he's like, I don't [08:03] care if it's not a hit, if I can convince you that it might be, I can get all the money [08:06] I need out of it before the thing even gets made. [08:09] So this seems to be his game plan. [08:12] And he and a mechanical engineer named Caleb Chung, whose name is going to come up in [08:17] a couple of different contexts here in a little bit, he's an interesting piece of [08:19] the story too. [08:20] They go to the New York City Toy Fair in 1997, and they go to the booth of a company [08:26] called Bandai. [08:27] And in 1997, do either of you have any idea what Bandai might be showing off at its [08:31] booth at the New York City Toy Fair? [08:34] Power Rangers. [08:35] Power Rangers. [08:36] Yes. [08:37] Power Rangers are the reason everybody is going to the Bandai booth. [08:40] But there is another thing that the company is showing off that is a big hit in [08:44] Japan that it is thinking about bringing to the United States. [08:46] It's called Tamagotchi. [08:47] Tamagotchi. [08:48] Oh, Tamagotchi. [08:49] So this is pre-Tamagotchi craze. [08:53] No one in the US knows what Tamagotchi is, but they are, by virtue of being able [08:56] to bring all these people to their booth to see Power Rangers, they're starting to [09:00] show them, hey, we have this other thing. [09:02] It's already a hit abroad. [09:03] We think it's going to be big here. [09:04] So Dave and Caleb see Tamagotchi, and they immediately understand that it's [09:11] something. [09:12] But Dave in particular has this idea of like, okay, Tamagotchi is, you know, it's [09:15] this little digital pet, but it's on a screen and it's pixels and you interact [09:19] with it with buttons. [09:21] And what he says is, okay, I wonder if we could do this same thing, but better [09:26] and more three-dimensional and more real. [09:29] And Caleb said later, the thing he quotes Dave is saying is he says, I just [09:33] want a little guy that will be my friend, which is like a little bit sad [09:37] and also deeply fascinating. [09:40] The parallels between that sentiment and the guy who created Friend, the [09:44] glowing air tag that I had to wear around my neck and angered people all [09:48] across New York recently. [09:50] It's a one-to-one. [09:52] I just want a little guy to be my friend. [09:53] But they end in completely different places. [09:55] Completely different places for various reasons. [10:01] So they go off to try and make this thing and pretty immediately they [10:05] patent the idea and they start to figure out what they're going to make. [10:08] And here, let me really quick just show you a picture of the patent. [10:11] I actually have two images I want to show you of the original patent from Furby. [10:16] Oh, God. [10:17] It is on the one hand, the way I would describe this is like steampunk Furby. [10:22] It's got all these diagrams, right? [10:24] There's actually a lot of incredibly complicated stuff going on in Furby. [10:28] So it's pointing to all the different parts, explaining how they work, and [10:31] it looks creepy and horrifying. [10:33] Because if you just tear the thing all the way down, [10:36] it is just a little tiny alien robot. [10:40] But then there's this other picture in the patent filing that is just Furby. [10:45] Like, it's kind of incredible. [10:47] What you have just said, I want to invert it completely. [10:49] I was looking at a cute little steampunk robot bird, and [10:52] now I am looking at an eldritch horror. [10:55] I don't know what you're talking about. [10:58] So we're looking at basically like a black and [11:00] white drawing of something- Okay, Furby, calm down. [11:04] In the Furby family. [11:05] I think Furby just saw itself and got very excited. [11:07] Dave in particular has a bunch of ideas about what he wants this thing to be. [11:10] He doesn't want it to be a cat or a dog, [11:12] because he, A, doesn't want to replace people's pets. [11:15] A thing he said a bunch was, there are dogs and cats in shelters, and [11:19] I want you to have one of them, not my robot toy. [11:22] Which I actually think is really admirable. [11:23] He's like, I don't want to take the place of an actual thing that you might [11:27] have, I want to build something different and complimentary. [11:29] But one year later, [11:30] Sony does the eyeball and says, no, you should have a robot dog instead. [11:34] And a thing that Dave also said about this was that trying to do a dog or [11:38] cat was a mistake, because everybody understood what a dog or [11:41] cat should be like. [11:42] And so your rough approximation of it would feel really bad, [11:45] because it would feel like you were just giving them a lesser version of [11:49] an experience they understood. [11:50] Which I think is kind of the eyeball experience, right? [11:52] It's like it wanted badly to be a dog, but it wasn't. [11:55] And it just didn't quite hit the same way. [11:56] Whereas like, whatever the hell Furby is, it is different. [12:00] The eyeball hit with some people. [12:01] They were holding funerals at Buddhist temples for the eyeball. [12:05] Oh yes, it was a whole thing. [12:07] Japanese people got really in touch to their eyeballs and [12:10] had relationships with them. [12:12] And when Sony discontinued it and they stopped making the stuff, [12:15] they would hold funerals for their eyeball at Buddhist temples. [12:19] It was a whole thing for a really long time. [12:22] But I think he has a point about, I've tested some of these robots and [12:27] I have a cat, and side by side. [12:29] I mean the cat just wins. [12:31] He's so cute, like he just is a kitty cat. [12:35] So I think I was like really smart of him and [12:38] he should have probably talked to Sony about that. [12:41] Saved him some trouble. [12:42] Yeah, just a little. [12:44] They start working and almost immediately, like in a manner of a few weeks, [12:48] they build their first prototype, which they called Furball. [12:51] Which fun fact is the origin of the name Furby, [12:53] a thing that I probably should have known but [12:54] did not know until prepping for this episode. [12:57] My question to both of you, is Furball a better name than Furby? [13:00] Should they have just called it Furball? [13:01] No. [13:02] No? [13:03] I kind of like Furball. [13:04] Furball is the thing you say to Chewbacca right before he rips your arm. [13:07] Yes, that and also what do cats cough up, Furballs. [13:13] Yeah. [13:14] And that's no good. [13:16] All right, fair enough. [13:17] Fair enough. [13:18] So they agreed with you and get away from the name Furball pretty quickly. [13:21] And they moved to Furby, which I think is a little cutesy-er. [13:25] There's a lot of cutesy in the development of Furby. [13:27] They wanted this thing to be cheap. [13:29] When Furby's came out, they were like 40 bucks, which is remarkable for [13:33] how advanced it was at the time. [13:35] And so what they had to do was work with pretty cheap components. [13:39] And they found a way to make basically a pretty cheap, [13:42] pretty simple motor reversible. [13:45] So that it could actually, the thing could move and operate in multiple [13:48] directions, which was very hard to do at the time and [13:51] is still hard to do with cheap parts. [13:53] So that was one of their big breakthroughs. [13:55] But they get this thing sorted in the matter of a couple of months. [13:58] And then they're like, okay, well, we need somebody to buy this thing from us. [14:02] They go to the company that made Teddy Ruxpin. [14:05] But that company, funnily enough, is into it. [14:08] But they're like, well, we need some time to really test this and [14:11] market test it and see if people want this. [14:13] Maybe we can release it in a year. [14:15] And Dave Hampton's like, no, no, no, I need money today. [14:18] So no, we're out. [14:20] They go also to, because of Tamagotchi, by the way, [14:23] they're also like, this moment is about to happen. [14:26] They were so convinced that Tamagotchi was gonna be a hit, that they were like, [14:29] this virtual friends thing is gonna happen quickly, and [14:31] we need to be there right at the beginning of it, which, good call by them. [14:35] So they show it to other companies, and then a friend of a friend of theirs, [14:38] this guy named Richard Levy, introduces them to Tiger Electronics. [14:42] And Tiger Electronics basically gets the thing fully formed and [14:47] decides that it's gonna do it. [14:50] Sean, do you know anything about Tiger Electronics? [14:51] What is this company's deal? [14:53] Tell me about Tiger. [14:54] Tiger Electronics, they were the company that was producing all of those very, [14:59] very cheap, but desirable little video game systems you could buy at your toy store. [15:06] So every movie would have a tie-in game. [15:09] You'd have your space jam, basketball game, your toy story game. [15:12] All kinds of things like this, just with a couple of buttons for [15:16] left, right, and a jump button. [15:18] I used to have the Paperboy game. [15:20] And all it would do is there'd be this little figure on a screen. [15:23] It would have two animations, two other positions that this black silhouette [15:28] of a Paperboy could do. [15:30] And you'd press a button, throw the paper, and you'd see the little, [15:32] almost like an emoji in terms of how little detail it had. [15:37] Fling this tiny little paper icon across the screen, two frames over to the left. [15:41] That's the entire game. [15:42] Just remembered I had one. [15:44] It was Beauty and the Beast. [15:45] And all Belle did was this, and this, and this. [15:48] And I did the, my god, I had one. [15:50] Wow. [15:51] They also did the Talkboy. [15:53] You remember the Home Alone movies? [15:54] Oh, yeah. [15:55] Tiger was the one that did the voice recorder, you know, cassette tape player [16:00] where Kevin would play his stuff into the voice recorder. [16:04] It would come out with different voices and scare the criminals away. [16:06] Stuff like that. [16:07] Right, so Tiger is a pretty big name in the toy industry at this point. [16:11] It's not like the toy company in the way that the Mattels of the world are, [16:15] but it's a pretty big and pretty reputable name. [16:17] And they basically agree on the spot that they want this thing. [16:21] So they make this deal with Tiger in 1997. [16:24] And Tiger says, awesome, we're in, let's do this. [16:25] We want to show it off at toy fair in three months. [16:29] That's not a long time. [16:30] And we are off to the races. [16:32] One more tiny bit of interesting drama that I uncovered that I would just like [16:36] to put in front of you to and see what you think. [16:39] Caleb and Dave, the two people on the patent for Furby that I showed you, [16:43] it is not debatable that these were the two people who originated this project. [16:49] Over time seem to, I would say studiously avoid giving each other credit for things. [16:55] There's a kind of fascinating passive-aggressive interview strategy [16:59] that they both adopt, and I just want to read you one passage. [17:01] So a fun fact about the research for this episode was that I found a lot of [17:06] Furby history in a 2001 Geocities chat that Dave Hampton did with a Furby community. [17:13] That is the most, I'll link to it in the show notes, [17:15] it is the most unhinged interview transcript you've ever seen in your entire life, [17:20] because it's just a group chat of a million Furby fans and then Dave, it's bananas. [17:26] I think there are people pretending to be there for a reason, it's a whole thing. [17:30] But anyway, so this person asks about a product called Snoring Roaring Norbert, [17:36] which is like if you imagine a Furby, but it's Norbert the Dragon from Harry Potter. [17:43] That's a thing that existed a few years later. [17:45] And somebody's like, is Snoring Roaring Norbert yours? [17:48] And Dave says, it is not. [17:49] This is from the other guy that claims to be the inventor of Furby. [17:52] And then a minute later, he says, which is interesting, [17:54] as he started as a co-inventor. [17:56] Yes, there are fathers of Furby too. [17:58] I read that as like light shade. [18:01] What do you guys think? [18:02] That's clear shade. [18:03] Okay. [18:04] Other guy who claims to have invented Furby. [18:07] I mean, he started as a co-inventor. [18:10] That's, I think that's clear shade. [18:12] Okay. [18:13] Yeah. [18:13] And it's really fascinating that this thing became so big [18:16] that I think they both ended up wanting most or all of the credit [18:19] because that became a big thing to have. [18:21] What do you think, Coco? [18:24] Nothing. [18:24] Coco's not right. [18:26] All right. [18:27] I'm going to leave you with a question, then we're going to take a brief break. [18:29] What kind of animal is Furby? [18:31] Don't answer. [18:32] We're going to take a break. [18:33] We're going to come right back. [18:38] I think Coco gave up on us. [18:39] I mean, it is like 30 years old. [18:42] I found a bunch of like horror stories in the research of people who were like, [18:45] my Furby didn't talk for 20 years. [18:47] And then one day at 4 a.m. [18:48] No. [18:49] You woke up. [18:52] That's literally the last thing you see before you die. [18:55] All right. [18:55] We're back. [18:56] You've had time. [18:58] Sean, you go first. [18:58] What kind of animal is Furby? [19:00] I'm going to say it's a bird because it has a beak. [19:05] Okay. [19:07] That's about it. [19:08] Okay. [19:09] There's no other reason beyond the beak, but I'm going with that [19:11] because that's the first thing I saw when you showed me it's robot innards. [19:16] Okay. [19:17] I love it. [19:18] V? [19:19] I think it's a chimera akin to a platypus. [19:21] It's like I think it's a platypus's cousin because while I agree with Sean [19:26] that it has some bird-like qualities, there's no wings. [19:30] It's a terrific point. [19:31] Okay. [19:31] So Sean, you get the point for this one, but only by a hair. [19:37] There have been many theories about this over the years. [19:40] And I think it kind of no one is wrong, but the only two things that I was able to find [19:46] that the creators have said is that it is mostly an owl, which Sean, you win on bird. [19:53] I would say the sort of basis of the thing is owl, which makes sense to shape a little bit. [19:57] Like you can sort of see it. [20:00] And there's some hamster in there somewhere. [20:03] Listen, I'm not, don't take this up with them. [20:07] Let me look at this. [20:10] Oh, its face is just so wrong. [20:14] Yeah. [20:15] I mean, it's mostly gremlin. [20:17] I didn't even see that movie gremlin, but... [20:20] So do you want to have a fun fact about that, by the way? [20:22] Sure. [20:22] They at one point had to subtly change the design to make it look less like gremlins. [20:29] If its ears were bigger, it would look even more like a gremlin. [20:34] I think it's better if we just shut Coco's eyes and then close... [20:38] Okay, I can't close its mouth, but he seems more peaceful with his eyes closed. [20:44] That's nice. [20:44] He's sleeping. [20:45] He's sleeping. [20:47] Okay, so that is what it is, but it is also very clearly lots of things. [20:52] There's a lot going on. [20:53] And again, they didn't want it to feel exactly like any particular creature. [20:59] But one thing I did think was interesting is that at the beginning, as they were building [21:03] this stuff out, and especially as it got more popular, they started to have ideas about lots [21:07] of other kinds. [21:09] They wanted to do furbies of the sea, air, and land, is the way that Dave put it. [21:15] There was at one point a fish called fishbee that they worked on and were very excited [21:20] about, but never ended up releasing. [21:22] They didn't want to make robots. [21:24] They wanted to make creatures. [21:25] That was a distinction Dave made a few times that I thought was really interesting. [21:29] The one that he said he tried and immediately threw away was a snake. [21:34] Furby's snake was just immediately thrown out as a bad idea, which I think, Sean, I [21:38] think we can agree was a pretty solid decision. [21:40] I mean, I don't think I would want to invite any form of Furby into my house, but snakes [21:45] certainly very, very high on the list of ones that will not. [21:49] Furby just wriggling on your table in front of you does not seem like my idea of a good [21:53] time. [21:54] They called it Dajardoodle. [21:55] It made it appropriately fun. [21:57] That's true. [21:58] So yeah, so they land on this, again, like we saw in those patents, this was the look [22:03] pretty early on. [22:05] And then they start filling the thing with technology. [22:08] Fun fact, they wrote the original source code, which you can just find. [22:13] It's just on the internet and it's actually surprisingly readable, which is pretty cool. [22:17] You can see how they're programming the way that it responds to different stimuli to like [22:21] go to sleep. [22:22] And Dave is the one figuring out how to sort of give this thing personality. [22:27] And he described it one time I saw it's not yes, no, like a computer, but that it also [22:33] has maybe, Furby has maybe, which I thought was a really great way of thinking about it. [22:37] It's not correct technologically, but it is an interesting way of thinking about how to [22:41] program one of these things. [22:43] He spent a lot of time mapping Furby to essentially Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which actually [22:50] contributes a lot to the personality of the thing, right? [22:52] When Furby decided it was hungry, which is obviously like down at the bottom of the pyramid, [22:58] it would just get louder and louder about being hungry because it understood that that is [23:01] like a base instinct. [23:03] Nothing else matters if you're hungry. [23:05] Same with Sleepy. [23:06] He built this incredible sort of waiting system between different emotions and different feelings. [23:11] And then same with all these different inputs. [23:15] So there's a ton of inputs inside of Furby. [23:17] I think a big part of what makes it feel alive is this set of sensors. [23:22] It was sensitive to light so that if you hold it up to a light, it'll actually respond in [23:26] a certain way. [23:27] It would respond to sound. [23:28] It would respond to touch. [23:30] It would respond to movement, like there's a little sort of ball inside that lets you [23:35] know if it's moving from side to side. [23:37] And basically weighing all of this stuff was the work of building Furby because they [23:43] really wanted it to not feel programmed that like, if I do this, it will do this. [23:49] That was actually the enemy of progress here. [23:51] They didn't want to sort of give you a set of instructions for how to get different reactions [23:55] out of Furby. [23:56] They wanted it to be weird and unpredictable and silly and feel more alive in that sense. [24:02] His kid also gave him the idea in the course of development that a Furby should know if [24:06] there's another Furby nearby and that they should actually be able to communicate. [24:11] This became known as the Furby communication protocol, which I like very much. [24:15] He always like to say that he didn't want the Furby to do anything that seemed stupid. [24:21] And not stupid in that sense, but stupid in the like, oh, it should be able to do this. [24:25] Why can't it do it? [24:26] That's the reason Furby doesn't have hands. [24:29] It's the reason it doesn't have legs. [24:31] Because the idea was we don't have the technology to make it so that it can grab something [24:35] or that it can walk. [24:37] And the idea of this thing having arms that just do nothing, they thought made it look [24:41] dumb. [24:42] They're like, this looks like a thing that is broken and somehow under featured. [24:45] So they just stripped everything out that wasn't relevant, which essentially left you [24:49] with ears that move to express emotion, eyes that move to express emotion, and a mouth [24:54] that moves to express communication. [24:55] And that's it. [24:57] And it is just astonishing what you're actually able to do with just those things. [25:00] I really think that this guy could go around to various robotics companies like the robot [25:06] facts that are adding arms and legs and just talk about like, what if we didn't make [25:11] robot facts look stupid, or like the humanoid robots that we saw at CES where, you know, [25:17] the one Alison saw that punched itself in the face and then knocked itself out. [25:22] What if the fundamental law of robotics, forget Asimov, was don't do anything stupid. [25:29] One of the things was just like, of course, if a Furby hears another Furby, why would [25:34] they not be awake? [25:35] Like it would break that immersion and remind you that this thing had flaws and was a [25:40] toy that wasn't programmed to do certain things. [25:42] It was very philosophical. [25:43] It really is. [25:44] It's really fascinating. [25:45] It's really fascinating. [25:46] Like what life is and how living things should act, which is, you know, you look at Furby [25:51] and you wouldn't think such deep thought went into its personality. [25:54] It's really true. [25:55] But it's quite deep, actually. [25:57] Yeah. [25:58] He called Furby an inference machine, which just jumped out to me after spending, you know, [26:02] whatever the last four years reading about AI inference, like he just, he was talking [26:06] about it. [26:07] It's the same stuff. [26:09] He also developed, and this wound up being very important, an entirely new language [26:13] for Furby. [26:14] Furbish. [26:15] The language was called Furbish. [26:18] Furbish is a made up language, but it has lots of real languages in it. [26:24] So there's some Thai in there. [26:25] There's some Japanese. [26:26] There's a little bit of Hebrew. [26:27] There's a little bit of Chinese. [26:28] There's a lot of like funny puns that he did on purpose. [26:32] Some of the Furbish words sound kind of like swears, which Dave said he didn't do [26:37] on purpose, but I don't believe him. [26:39] So the Furby initially had a vocabulary about 200 words, and over the course of your time [26:45] with it, it would actually start to learn English. [26:48] So it would start speaking in Furbish, and then this was one of the ways they wanted [26:51] to feel interactive with you. [26:52] The more you talked to it, the idea was the more it would start to learn English. [26:56] This was, of course, not actually an interactive experience that way, but it was meant to [27:00] feel like it was hearing you and learning from you and talking to you. [27:04] Dave said at one point that he actually did build a voice recognition feature for [27:08] it so that Furby actually could have understood you talking to it and maybe do something [27:13] back, but he didn't think anybody was interested. [27:15] And also they were at such a like precious technology barrier that they ended up just [27:21] not doing it. [27:22] At a different time, this could have been like a vastly different Amazon echo. [27:26] A hundred percent. [27:27] And infinitely more creepy. [27:31] Yes. [27:33] Just a matter. [27:34] Itay, Furby by toilet paper. [27:38] You know, it's just like, uh-uh. [27:40] There's some other world where that was what Furby was. [27:44] Somewhere an Amazon executive just wrote that down and was like, give it time. [27:47] No, don't do it. [27:48] I'm sorry. [27:49] I take it back. [27:50] Don't do that. [27:51] Toy Fair 2027. [27:52] This is coming. [27:53] I made a mistake. [27:54] I made a huge mistake. [27:55] Sean, and I think this was, that was new at the time, right? [27:56] Like I'm thinking about, you know, we named a couple of, Tickle Me Elmo is like [27:59] a little bit of that sort of a, it is a mechanical thing designed to be cute, but I don't feel [28:04] like cute was a thing you would ascribe to many toys of that era. [28:11] I think that there was this fascination by certain people who did think they were super [28:16] cute. [28:17] Like I'm sure Furby sold however many millions because people thought it was cute, not just [28:22] because they wanted a robot in their house, but definitely that late nineties period of [28:26] we're going to make everything talk was, was, was huge to have this robot come out and say, [28:34] we're not going to talk with a prerecorded English speaking voice, but rather we're going [28:39] to do this language where you have to interpret it. [28:42] You can, you can like map your own feelings, your own ideas of what it might be saying [28:46] on top of it. [28:47] That's really fascinating. [28:48] That is something that seems to be more and more important as we continue to run up [28:53] the boundaries of what robots actually can do versus what we, we hope they can do for [28:58] us emotionally. [28:59] Yeah. [29:00] You just reminded me of something else that I found that Dave said that I thought was really [29:01] interesting sort of philosophically about Furby, which is that he never wanted to make a toy [29:07] that got in the way of a kid's imagination. [29:10] And actually to your point, Sean, the thing he didn't like about the toys that would [29:14] sort of speak back to you or direct you or interact with you in that way was they [29:17] felt unambiguous in a way that he didn't like. [29:21] He wanted something that felt open-ended that you could describe your own feelings and meaning [29:25] to that you could interact with lots of different ways. [29:27] He didn't like things that just were like, you do this and it says this, and then you [29:31] do this in reaction and it says this, this sort of paint by numbers kinds of toys. [29:35] He wanted something that felt weirder. [29:37] And he was like, this is just much more immersive and interesting and imaginative in [29:41] that way. [29:42] And I think he was right. [29:43] Companies still feel this way. [29:45] And Lego, Lego is bringing out these Lego smart brick toys here in March, 2026. [29:52] And they're going to come out in Star Wars sets and they don't have actual Star Wars [29:56] voices. [29:57] You're not going to hear Luke, Leia, Darth, be Carrie Fisher and James Earl Jones and [30:03] Mark Hamill. [30:04] You're going to hear them talk in some kind of gibberish. [30:07] Yeah, I think all of that is right. [30:10] And the interesting thing to this is that the reaction to what they were building, you [30:17] would think would be sort of controversial for all the reasons we're talking about, [30:20] right? [30:21] That some people would be ready for it. [30:22] Some people wouldn't. [30:23] Some people would be like, this is so different from what we're used to. [30:25] That didn't happen at all. [30:26] So they get this thing ready and they take it to toy fair in 1998. [30:31] And it just absolutely explodes. [30:35] There's this amazing story. [30:36] Again, this thing has been under real development for like a few months and is in no way [30:40] finished. [30:41] So they basically show up with one prototype. [30:44] It actually reminds me of the sort of famous story about the iPhone launch where they had [30:48] one iPhone that barely worked and it was like a small miracle that it was able to do any [30:51] of the things that they did during the demo. [30:54] This is very much like that. [30:55] And there's this amazing story. [30:57] Wired did a big feature about it at the time, which is a sign of how big the reaction [31:01] was to this. [31:02] But they tell this story basically right before Furby is about to get launched. [31:06] They're meeting with the president of Hasbro, this guy named Alan Hasenfield, and they just [31:12] cannot figure out what's going on because Furby is dead. [31:15] It's just dead as a doornail on the table. [31:17] They can't get it to move. [31:18] They can't get it to talk. [31:19] They can't program the thing to fix anything. [31:21] And then they discovered that actually the problem is the halogen lights in the room [31:26] are messing with Furby's circuitry. [31:30] They're screwing up the electromagnetic field. [31:32] This is how primitive this thing is, is that the lights in the room are just rendering [31:36] a dormant. [31:37] So one of the engineers wraps the Furby's cord in tinfoil, and then that made the demo [31:43] work. [31:44] And that was enough, like Furby wrapped in tinfoil, got the job done, and made Alan [31:51] Hasenfield, he walked out basically saying that's one of the coolest things I've ever [31:53] seen in my life. [31:54] And over and over at Toy Fair, people have this experience. [31:58] Wired runs a huge story. [32:00] Time magazine runs a big story. [32:01] USA Today runs a big story. [32:03] This thing is essentially already being declared the toy of 1998. [32:10] Never mind that it doesn't exist. [32:11] Never mind that they've made precisely one of them. [32:14] This is the next big thing. [32:16] And everybody, and by everybody, I mean a bunch of adults. [32:20] It's important to say kids have not seen or played with this thing yet, but a bunch [32:24] of adults have decided that this is the next big thing. [32:28] And Sean, I did a little bit of research, but basically, as far as I can tell, this [32:31] is kind of how it always works. [32:33] A bunch of grownups decide what kids are going to be playing with 10 or 11 months [32:37] from now. [32:38] And that's how the toy industry works, that you're selling to grownups much more [32:41] than you're selling to kids, at least in the early days. [32:44] I like to think that some of these grownups are kids at heart, and they know [32:48] what they're talking about. [32:50] But so often, the toys come out, and they just aren't, I can't say that for sure. [32:57] So February 1998, they go to work to finish this thing. [33:02] The plan is to release it to manufacturing in July and ship to consumers in October. [33:08] This is an absurdly fast thing, but the idea is hype is huge. [33:11] This is happening. [33:12] We need to get it in front of people. [33:15] Barely worked, I would say is how it turned out. [33:18] They had production delays. [33:20] They had design delays. [33:21] It got so bad that at the end of the year, everybody wanted this on shelves [33:26] for the holiday season of 1998. [33:28] They had pre-sold tons of them, it was a huge deal. [33:31] They were making companies come pick up their own inventory from factories in China. [33:38] And it was so late that these companies had to then fly all the inventory on planes [33:44] back to the US to sell it, because putting on a boat would have taken too long. [33:49] So this process becomes hugely expensive, and actually, in many cases, raises the [33:52] price of furbies for people by a few dollars, because you have to offset the cost of like [33:57] flying 747s around the world to pick up planes full of furbies. [34:02] So just imagine we're in like November of 1998, and you look up in the sky, and there are [34:06] just planes full of furbies flying around. [34:10] This is what was happening. [34:12] Tiger and Hasbro wound up making 1.3 million of them in the first year. [34:19] And even despite that, that's a pretty big number for a new toy. [34:21] They were impossible to get your hands on. [34:24] There are all these wild stories out there about the people who were going to crazy lengths [34:29] to get them. [34:30] Actually, can I play you a clip really fast? [34:32] I would love a clip. [34:33] This is from the CBC in Canada about what's going on. [34:38] Nobody has offered me $1,000, but I have had offers from $150 to $650. [34:43] Hundreds of dollars for a toy that feels, sneezes, and yes, it can be taught to speak [34:51] in English. [34:52] Hello. [34:53] Hello. [34:54] Shwakowski stood in line for hours to nab two furbies at a local toy store, but she isn't [34:59] playing for keeps. [35:01] She's just in it for the money. [35:02] Oh my God. [35:03] Incredible. [35:04] She's just in it for the money. [35:06] $650. [35:07] This is giving Beatty Baby like that whole, I bought it. [35:11] I mean, I feel like that's very common with toys. [35:13] I was a Pokemon card grifter as a child because my dad would often go to Japan, [35:18] come back with Japanese holographic Pokemon cards, and I didn't give a crap. [35:22] So I was in the lunchroom selling Pokemon cards at like $10 a pop, because I thought [35:28] that was good for like lunch money or whatever, I was an entrepreneur. [35:33] So yeah, you know, demand high, supply low, Beanie Baby, it's a strong tradition. [35:39] I have two more holiday season 1998 clips that I just want to play you because this [35:45] turns out to be a rich area. [35:46] So some of the first people to actually get their hands on this are journalists who are [35:50] testing it and then talking to people who have seen it, heard about it, seen the ads, [35:55] but have not actually been able to get their hands on one. [35:58] Here's one from the BBC. [36:01] And finally, you're almost certainly going to be seeing a lot of this little guy soon. [36:05] He's a Furby, one of just a couple in the country, but he's predicted to be in huge [36:09] demand in the run up to Christmas. [36:10] Be quiet. [36:11] Now he's a kind of furry Tamagotchi. [36:15] The electronic pet, he needs loving and care around the clock, but it's thought it [36:19] could be scarcer than the Teletubbies became last year. [36:22] This guy is about to chuck it out the window. [36:23] He's listening to him talk. [36:24] He's a bit of English, but you get a dictionary which tells you what he's saying. [36:27] Now he's saying Lulu at the moment, which means he needs a tickle on the tummy. [36:32] I'm sorry, I just want to put this is like national news program. [36:36] But then, OK, but then this is my favorite one. [36:39] This is a CNN reporter who I think is maybe hates Furby more than I've ever seen anyone [36:46] hate anything on television. [36:48] And I'm playing you the end of a clip that is about the sort of furor in the run up [36:52] to the holidays. [36:53] When water was spilled on a gremlin, it reproduced. [37:02] But when we tried water on Furby, all he did was burp. [37:08] In a test of Furby's endurance, they put him in the freezer. [37:11] We stuck him in the freezer. [37:13] Now, this is contact from being blow dried. [37:17] We finally placed him on 8th Avenue where bicyclists and motors tried to avoid him. [37:22] Nevertheless, I feel a fringid spirit with this. [37:26] She was when he gets hit by a car than a gremlin. [37:30] Furby's just tickled. [37:32] Not to be roadkill. [37:34] If this CNN reporter happens to see this, please reach out to me. [37:41] I want to be best friends. [37:42] I think we have a similar philosophy in testing robots. [37:47] So this is this is my favorite thing about this because everybody has one of two reactions [37:51] to Furby, which is either you love it to bits or you would like it to die. [37:55] And there doesn't seem to be any middle ground. [37:58] And everybody who is annoyed by it is so incredibly annoyed by it that they would [38:04] like to fling it out of a window. [38:07] And then there are people, a story I saw a bunch was that the first round of Furby's [38:11] as the first round of any kind of gadget was like a little bit finicky. [38:15] So some were breaking. [38:16] There were issues. [38:17] But a lot of people would report something wrong. [38:21] They would report back to the company and say something's broken. [38:23] And then they would say, oh, okay, send it back. [38:24] And they would say, no, I don't want to. [38:26] People got so quickly so attached to their Furby's that even if they were broken, [38:31] they wouldn't send them back because they immediately just adopted them as a member [38:35] of their family. [38:37] That's the power of cute. [38:38] I think the most controversial thing about it at first, and maybe forever, was that it [38:42] had no off switch. [38:44] The only thing you could do is take out its batteries. [38:46] You couldn't turn it off. [38:47] You couldn't tell it to be quiet. [38:48] It was this unpredictable little maniac that just lived in your house. [38:52] We asked people to send us emails and send us voicemails about how they felt about [38:55] their Furby's. [38:56] This one comes from Zach, says we got a Furby around 2000. [39:01] We thought it was interesting at first, but found the marketing about being able to teach [39:03] it talk was a complete lie. [39:05] We also couldn't find the power switch, so we threw it one story down a staircase repeatedly [39:08] for an hour or two to try to break the thing to get it shut up, but failed to kill it. [39:12] Furby. [39:13] You couldn't just take in its batteries out. [39:15] Very good. [39:16] But then year two, the Furby sells 14 million Furby's in the year 1999. [39:24] Two funny things that happened in 1999. [39:28] The FAA, which governs airlines, warned people not to bring Furby's onto airplanes [39:36] because they were worried about it disturbing the workings of the planes. [39:40] This is back when they were worried about phones and everything disturbing the interference. [39:46] So they were telling people, it reminds me of the Galaxy Note 7 when they're like, please [39:49] do not bring that thing on the plane. [39:51] Airlines were telling people to take the batteries out entirely. [39:54] Furby's a weapon of mass destruction. [39:56] Yeah, seriously. [39:57] The other one, and this one's even better, the NSA, the National Security Agency, banned [40:01] Furby from a bunch of different locations around the world believing that Furby might [40:06] be recording sensitive conversations. [40:09] There is this sense that there is this living thing in the room with you, and what [40:13] if it's actually hearing what you're saying? [40:15] Technically speaking, this thing is incapable of recording audio. [40:18] There is nothing in it recording, and actually it's a real statement on how good the thing [40:24] is at seeming like it's interacting with you, even when it's not, that it is actually [40:29] able to convince you that it's recording your audio, even though literally, technically, [40:34] it couldn't. [40:35] By the end of 2000, the number is 40 million Furby's. [40:39] So this is like a little over two years. [40:40] They've sold 40 million Furby's. [40:43] All of a sudden, all of these other Furby-like things come out. [40:46] There was a thing called Pucci, which means nothing to me. [40:50] Same sense, Pucci? [40:52] No. [40:53] The Tamagotchi was also a hit, which is semi-related. [40:57] It became a pop culture phenomenon. [40:59] It shows up on talk shows all over the place. [41:01] Rosie O'Donnell winds up being like a famous fan of the Furby's. [41:06] She had it on her show a bunch of different times. [41:08] Here's just one clip. [41:09] So cool. [41:10] That's great. [41:11] We have something for eBay. [41:12] We have the, first of all, for everybody in the audience and 500 Toys for Tots, [41:18] Furby. [41:19] There you go. [41:20] Furby. [41:21] Okay. [41:22] It makes the Furby. [41:23] They're just going to wake it up. [41:24] I love it. [41:25] And the Furby people nicely made a one-of-a-kind Furby that is supposed to be me. [41:36] And the really scary thing is they had the Furby designers come to make sure it was exactly [41:41] like me. [41:42] And they actually looked at that and went, perfect. [41:45] They signed off on that. [41:46] Did they put a wig on it? [41:47] It's very good. [41:48] Yeah, I think they put a wig on it. [41:49] So this thing shows up several times on various Rosie O'Donnell episodes. [41:54] There's also an episode of Friends where I believe it's in Joey and Chandler's apartment. [42:00] There's just two Furby's on top of the microwave at one point. [42:02] They never mention it. [42:03] It's just two Furby's. [42:04] It's delightful. [42:05] But my favorite one is Furby in 1998, again, at like the height of the holiday craze here, [42:12] Regis and Kathy Lee spent like a week with Furby on their show. [42:16] And Regis in particular really goes through like an emotional journey. [42:20] Here's the very beginning of the first day they had it. [42:23] Now you just dial the number. [42:27] This stupid thing is bothering me. [42:29] This is it. [42:30] Picks up the Furby by its hair. [42:31] He's talking. [42:32] He's talking. [42:33] Shut up. [42:34] Okay, so that's day one. [42:36] So then Furby sticks around. [42:38] And a few days later, Furby continues to talk and Kathy Lee says, okay, maybe we'll [42:46] auction off the Furby. [42:48] Somebody in the audience can have it. [42:49] We can make a lot of money. [42:50] What about if we do a little auction? [42:53] I don't think so. [42:54] How about for Cassidy's place? [42:55] We raised a thousand bucks here. [42:56] I don't think so. [42:57] You'd be right now to check. [42:58] Right now. [42:59] I've got attached to my little Furby. [43:00] Regis, you won't even do it for Cassidy's place. [43:03] No, come on. [43:05] It's like two days and Regis goes from I hate this thing to petting it and not wanting [43:11] to give it up for charity. [43:13] That's Furby for you. [43:14] It's good stuff. [43:15] So do you guys remember this phenomenon at all? [43:19] I have to confess, the Furby craze did not really cross my world. [43:23] I was the perfect age for it. [43:26] 1998, I was 10. [43:29] So it was peak Pokemon, peak Furby. [43:33] I wanted one and my dad in his very strict stoic Asian dad voice was just like, no, [43:43] absolutely not. [43:46] My dad was very anti Furby and I had a friend who had a Furby and brought it over and the [43:51] look of disgust on my father's face was just so strong. [43:55] He's just like, you're not a child anymore. [43:56] And I was like, but I'm 10. [43:57] And he's like, you're not a child anymore. [43:59] And so, you know, Furby was something that I was just very like, this is mysterious [44:04] and I can't have it. [44:05] So I wanted it. [44:07] Was your friend who had one, was it like a big deal that your friend had one? [44:10] Oh, she was obnoxious about it. [44:12] She was just like, I'm not a Furby and I got to tickle me Elmo. [44:16] And it's just like, okay, great, I guess your parents love you or whatever. [44:22] No, my dad, I think my dad had a point because he also saw the tickle me Elmo and he was [44:27] just like, Americans are ridiculous. [44:29] It's not wrong. [44:31] Sean, what about you? [44:32] Did Furby cross your path at this time? [44:35] I had just become a teenager and so things like Furby, cute things like that were a [44:41] little bit beneath me at the time. [44:45] But this was also after Teletubbies, which everybody my age were making fun of the previous [44:51] year. [44:52] And so when another thing like that came along, we're like, oh God, another thing like this [44:56] now. [44:57] Yeah. [44:58] You're like, I'm officially too old for this. [44:59] Twice a year away from me. [45:00] I'm done. [45:01] Yeah. [45:02] Fair. [45:03] But then it kind of comes back around. [45:04] So the wildest thing to me about the Furby story was in 2001, it already starts to wane. [45:10] This incredibly hot toy that everybody wants. [45:15] It's a big thing. [45:16] It doesn't die, but it ceases to be a phenomenon in 2001. [45:21] Very quickly, there's a lot, a lot happens in 2001 in America that is very complicated [45:26] and changes the way that people feel about a lot of things. [45:29] And then from there, Furby has just a truly bizarre, fascinating life. [45:36] It gets redesigned pretty aggressively a few years later. [45:39] It gets redesigned pretty aggressively a few years after that. [45:42] It gets redesigned again, pretty aggressively a few years after that. [45:45] And over and over, the thing that happens is it gets more technological. [45:50] It gets more features. [45:51] It becomes more customizable and it becomes less compelling. [45:54] And this is just the story of it. [45:56] I think you, this is where your story gets real weird. [45:59] One of the things that they did that they were sure was going to work was it got [46:03] LCD eyes, which in theory should be even more expressive. [46:05] They can do more stuff, more features. [46:07] Eventually they went with an on off switch, but then they ended up getting rid of that [46:09] which I find very funny. [46:11] But there was just, this was an attempt to keep improving the technology in order to [46:17] keep improving the toy. [46:18] And what it actually did was the opposite. [46:20] So as I've established, I desperately wanted a Furby while I was a child and I was very [46:26] cruelly told no. [46:29] So in my career, 2016, 10 years ago, I was a reviewer at this point in time at [46:36] a different publication and a friend there was like, she did toys and she had a hookup [46:43] and she got two Furby connects, one in teal and one in pink. [46:47] I was given the pink one and she was just like here, I'm testing and I'm going to write [46:51] it up. [46:52] Just tell me how you think about it. [46:54] And I was like, I finally have a Furby. [46:58] And so I was so happy he was at my desk. [47:01] I loved my little guy for about a week. [47:05] And then the eyes were so creepy and it just talked so much. [47:10] And I was just like, oh, my dad was right. [47:13] And my relationship with this Furby ended in a very tragic way in that this was the, [47:19] for anyone who was not in media, this was the era of pivot to video. [47:24] And every, all of us in media were forced to do Facebook live streams. [47:29] And so Christmas comes around and there's a segment with Dollar Shave Club and someone [47:35] who was high up at this media company was like, here's the segment. [47:40] For Dollar Shave Club, we're going to shave these Furby on air. [47:46] Now here's the thing about the Furby connects fur, it was very dense and the Dollar Shave [47:50] Club razors could not actually shave the Furby and I was like, oh, my Furby is saved. [47:57] Thank God. [47:58] But then I had a very unhinged coworker just pull out a butterfly knife and skin it on [48:02] air. [48:04] And so I was just there like, oh, my God, you've skinned my Furby for Christmas. [48:12] And the office had this- I feel like Dollar Shave Club wouldn't [48:14] have even liked that. [48:16] No, it was unhinged. [48:18] I had to watch this coworker for shits and giggles skin my baby, which, you know, it [48:24] was an annoying baby and I just made it sleep all the time, but that was what the hell. [48:30] And you know, I was given a skinned naked pink Furby at the end of it. [48:34] And so I gave it a little photo shoot to make it feel better. [48:37] And also because I was like, maybe this is an art project about the uncanny valley. [48:41] And so there is a picture I have of this Furby. [48:45] I was sent two of these pictures that I have studiously avoided looking at until now. [48:49] Yeah. [48:50] One of them was just like, oh, my God, look what they did to my boy. [48:52] I will say having looked at these pictures now, no one should ever see the inside of [48:56] a Furby. [48:57] No, no, you shouldn't. [48:58] It says such last thing you see before you die, energy to it. [49:02] There were Furby babies that were a medium hit for a while. [49:07] There was a thing called the Furby party rocker. [49:09] There was a thing called the Furby boom. [49:11] One big idea that they had was that actually Furby should play music, which I think is [49:14] a weird choice, but they got very into this idea. [49:17] There was a Furby party speaker at one point, there was a whole thing. [49:21] There was Furby connect, like you mentioned, and at this point they were like, okay, [49:24] how do we tie this thing in with your phone or your iPad and immerse it in a digital world? [49:30] I think this is just completely anathema to the whole thing that made Furby work. [49:34] Sean, you're shaking your head. [49:36] You agree with me. [49:37] Yes, this is just a completely wrongheaded idea. [49:39] I think that things like this, super fun when it's motors moving limbs, and as soon [49:46] as you get more and more technology in it, if you can't make it a real companion, [49:51] you're just going to make it creepier and creepier. [49:53] Yep, and that is by and large the legacy. [49:57] There are also, I should say, there's a really fascinating hacker angle to this. [50:02] Again, there is just a computer inside of this thing with computer parts that you can [50:05] program. [50:06] In 2000, this guy named Peter Gibbons wins a contest to hack Furby by basically rebuilding [50:12] its entire circuitry from scratch and putting just a new motherboard into Furby that could [50:19] do Furby but could do lots of other things. [50:21] He talked about at the time how impressed he was that it was just a reasonably [50:25] powerful computer, and for $65, you could buy his Furby conversion kit, and Hasbro and [50:32] Tiger were like, they were not thrilled that people were doing this, but they were also [50:36] very upfront about the fact that this is your Furby, you bought it, you do what you [50:40] want with it. [50:41] If you want to scan your Furby on Facebook video, technically that is your right. [50:47] So even now, vintage Furby's remain a big thing. [50:51] You can buy them on eBay, they're everywhere. [50:53] There are still a lot of collectors out there. [50:55] As far as I can tell, nothing since then is kind of on the same plane, if that makes [51:01] sense. [51:02] Nothing has achieved this same kind of feeling and retro nostalgia excitement. [51:07] By 2023, just to give you a sense, Hasbro was saying it had sold cumulative 58 million [51:13] Furby's. [51:14] Remember, it sold 40 million in three years, and that indicates it kept selling a [51:20] million a year, let's say, maybe a little less, but it has not been the thing in a [51:27] very long time. [51:28] But they're still around, people still love them. [51:30] The fandom community shouts to the Furby subreddit, which is just a wild and [51:36] remarkable place, and I just want to shout out briefly one quick thing before we get [51:41] off this particular story, which is Long Furby. [51:45] Long Furby. [51:46] Please meet Long Furby. [51:49] This is a phenomenon I cannot explain, and I will not attempt to, but there is a large [51:55] community of people dedicated to making their Furby's into very long, plush, [52:02] caterpillar-y things. [52:04] And they are called Long Furby's. [52:05] Why is it so large? [52:06] Is it just the scale of the photo? [52:08] No, it's a Long Furby, dude. [52:10] You said they didn't make the Furby snake. [52:12] These are all DIY projects. [52:14] This is like, Long Furby is a grassroots phenomenon, and it knows no bounds. [52:21] The depth of human creativity and depravity are two sides of the same coin. [52:26] That's about right. [52:27] It's beautiful. [52:28] Long Furby shouts to you, and that is essentially where we have landed. [52:35] So I want to debate the legacy of this thing a little bit, but I think the [52:39] best way to do that is with the eight version history questions. [52:42] So let's take a break, and then we're going to get to those. [52:44] We'll be right back. [52:48] All right, we're back. [52:49] So while we were in the break, our producer, Andrew Marino, brought in some [52:53] new batteries, because I think we managed to burn through Coco's batteries in like [52:57] two and a half minutes, and boy is Coco alive again. [53:05] OK, Coco. [53:06] I'm getting the distinct sense that not only is this Furby's, it's that [53:09] like powering down sound where everything talks a little slow, it's just not quite [53:16] its full speed. [53:23] I mean, this is like 30 years old. [53:25] I know, I'm impressed this still works. [53:34] OK, that's just wrong. [53:36] She sacrificed her fingertip to the Furby. [53:38] That's just wrong. [53:39] Coco, you did V's finger. [53:41] All right, you're going over here. [53:44] Feeling herself again. [53:46] All right, so on every episode of version history, we like to ask the same eight [53:51] questions to try and get a sense of this thing's true legacy. [53:56] And it starts with the time matrix, the time matrix, super simple concept. [54:00] I don't know why people don't understand it. [54:01] It plots time and idea. [54:04] Was it the right idea or the wrong idea? [54:06] Was it the right time or the wrong time? [54:09] Sean, I want you to go first. [54:10] Which quadrant do you think Furby belongs in on this graph? [54:14] Oh boy, I'm going to say that everything worked out perfectly for Furby and it [54:18] should go in the upper right hand corner because it got to be this huge fad that [54:23] we all remember and great legacy and may have inspired lots of other gadgets to [54:29] also scare and annoy us all the time. [54:32] OK, so I will say this was also my instinct too, was to put it up here in [54:35] right idea, right time. [54:36] But there's a version of this, I think about this more and more where if you [54:40] take the way that Dave Hampton in particular thought about this thing and [54:45] this sort of philosophy that he brought to it, but give him two decades [54:49] more technology, could this thing be remarkably better? [54:55] Or is what we've seen over two decades of better technology that actually [54:59] the technology is not what makes it better? [55:01] I'm so torn on this. [55:02] I, in my personal opinion, I think it was the wrong idea at the right time for [55:08] that I think it hit at a time like where it was going to hit. [55:13] That was the time for it to explode. [55:15] It was the time of toys. [55:17] It was the time of like tickle me Elmo's Furby. [55:21] It was the right time for it. [55:23] This is just the wrong idea forever. [55:28] That's my take. [55:29] Is that because something about it should have been better or just this [55:33] thing never should have existed in this ablate on humanity? [55:36] Correct. [55:38] Okay. [55:38] Understood. [55:39] Um, I'm going to go with Sean that I think, I think I am compelled by [55:45] the idea that it was the right time. [55:47] All right. [55:48] Question number two, was this peak anything? [55:52] I have, I have a few I'd like to offer you. [55:55] Was this peak horrifying monster in your house? [55:59] Yes. [56:00] Peak creepy cute. [56:03] Um, was it peak creepy cute? [56:05] I like, I will give you peak creepy cute for sure. [56:07] Was this peak fake languages? [56:10] Dothraki is peak. [56:11] Ooh. [56:13] I'm afraid it's not peak anything because all of this is coming around again. [56:18] It's all about to get so much more horrifying and so much cuter. [56:21] Do you think there's a chance? [56:23] I'm just going to skip ahead to, you know, number four, will [56:26] the youth ever make it cool again? [56:28] Is there a chance we're due for a honest to God Furby or [56:32] something like it Renaissance here? [56:34] I think something like it. [56:35] Yes. [56:36] Furby. [56:38] I don't know. [56:38] Like, um, I was talking to Andrew before the show and they went to Toy Fair and [56:41] they did Z Furbies there. [56:43] They saw a K-pop demon hunter Furby. [56:45] Oh, wow. [56:46] That's a, that's a 2025 Furby. [56:48] Yeah. [56:49] Fair enough. [56:49] 26 Furby. [56:50] Sean, what do you think? [56:51] I mean, I'm genuinely curious your take on this. [56:53] You, you reviewed the 2023 version of it. [56:56] And I would say you were slightly alarmed by how into it your kid was. [57:00] But do you think, I mean, again, we have this, we have advanced the technology [57:04] that would theoretically make this possible by orders of magnitude in the [57:08] last 28 years, are we due for a Furby Renaissance? [57:13] I think it would require toy companies to drastically change their economics [57:18] somehow, because today your Hasbro's, they are still trying to cheap out on [57:24] every single motor, every single sensor, their 2023 Furby, like it [57:29] recognized five and exactly five voice commands had a whole bunch of pre-recorded [57:35] lines, but there were no real smarts to it to speak of. [57:39] I play with $1,400 transformer robots, which do the thing I wanted as a kid [57:44] where it's this car and it will actually transform all by itself into [57:48] this whole transformer, but they don't have the motion sensors in there to [57:52] let it actually take a step without any risk of falling over real robots have [57:57] that toy robots don't so they can change the economics and actually put like [58:02] genuinely good sensing and AI and things in there and sell it to you for [58:07] $1,000, $2,000 great, but I don't think the appetite's there in the toy [58:12] companies to make the $40, the $100 saying good. [58:16] Yeah, I think that's probably right. [58:18] I mean, and I was thinking too about the increasing price of Lego, like the [58:22] idea of doing something like this that feels compelling and novel and [58:27] exciting and is $35 is very hard to imagine, unfortunately. [58:32] The only other one I had was this peak toy craze. [58:38] Oh, I don't know. [58:40] Maybe it's because it was 30 years ago, shutter. [58:44] I felt like Tickle Me Elmo was more insane. [58:47] That was what I was going to say. [58:48] I think when people think insane toys, I think people immediately go to [58:52] Tickle Me Elmo, which is which is telling. [58:55] Question number three, if you could time travel back and develop this yourself, [58:59] knowing everything we know now, could you make Furby more successful? [59:04] I'm going to posit the answer is actually no. [59:06] I think this thing hit as big as it possibly could have. [59:10] And I think anything we know now about like maybe we could have done some [59:15] marketing that might have hit a little bit better. [59:17] But in terms of actually making the product, I think they got it so [59:22] precisely correct on that first go around that it is part of what worked. [59:28] Like I think if you did, if you made a thing that was less annoying, right? [59:31] If you want something, this is my immediate reaction is, okay, [59:34] figure out the thing that the 10% of people hated the most about it. [59:38] Get rid of it. [59:39] Problem solved. [59:40] You've made it more lovable by everybody. [59:42] I think that kills part of the appeal. [59:44] I think my only question is, would the addition of an off button have made it better? [59:52] I don't think so. [59:53] I think if you're, if someone in your, if your parents are not annoyed by your Furby, [59:57] you're not going to like your Furby as much. [59:59] It's possible. [01:00:00] If a CNN reporter is not trying to get it hit by a car on the 8th Avenue, then you [01:00:04] haven't built something with enough personality. [01:00:06] It is true that not including the off button created all of these pop culture [01:00:11] moments of famous people going shut up to the Furby and that kind of adding [01:00:16] to the charm for the adults, I guess. [01:00:18] So yeah, I would agree. [01:00:20] No, I don't think given the constraints at the time. [01:00:24] Yeah. [01:00:25] Sean, what do you think anything with the technology available [01:00:28] then in the price point, I can't think of much. [01:00:30] The one thing I would say is, wasn't it supposed to be [01:00:34] able to learn English words? [01:00:36] I don't think he could back then. [01:00:37] It's not recording and learning, but, but imagine what it would [01:00:40] do if this craze had not fizzled out, if it could actually like properly. [01:00:43] Wait, this is a good one. [01:00:44] Cause one of the things we talked about this earlier, Dave Hampton built the [01:00:47] voice recognition system and that didn't think anybody would want it and, and, [01:00:51] and ditched it in the product. [01:00:53] Maybe we go back and we tell Dave, no, put this in and, and actually [01:00:57] let people teach this thing words. [01:01:01] And maybe, maybe we're onto something. [01:01:02] Like what if Furby, even, even simple things, what if [01:01:04] Furby could learn your name? [01:01:07] Maybe that becomes really powerful. [01:01:08] Could you imagine how many marriages that would end? [01:01:10] Because a voice recognition Furby would be like, Angela, David slept with whatever [01:01:17] and just Furby destroys a marriage. [01:01:20] That's like, who's Nancy? [01:01:21] And you're like, Furby, be cool. [01:01:23] Who, who's Nancy, ute lala itte? [01:01:26] And then you basically, yes, yes, that's what you could, cause that [01:01:31] would even just amp it up more. [01:01:33] You'd have headlines, Furby ruins marriage. [01:01:35] Like that would be something. [01:01:38] I think we could make Furby more controversial for sure. [01:01:41] Question number five. [01:01:42] What feature of this thing should every current version have? [01:01:45] And, and Sean, I want you to answer this first. [01:01:48] If you could just lift something out of Furby and put it into the rest of the toy [01:01:52] industry or all of the other robots and things you see now, what would it be? [01:01:58] Turn it upside down and make it, uh, and make it plead for its life. [01:02:04] I love that. [01:02:05] So does it, did it die? [01:02:07] I don't know. [01:02:19] It does not like being turned upside down. [01:02:26] Me scared. [01:02:27] There it is. [01:02:27] Me scared. [01:02:28] I'm sorry. [01:02:28] It's okay. [01:02:29] It's okay. [01:02:29] I love you. [01:02:31] Yeah. [01:02:31] Coco's cool. [01:02:32] All right. [01:02:33] That's a great answer. [01:02:34] I love that. [01:02:34] I think every robot should be able to feel existential fear because you do something. [01:02:39] I think that's good. [01:02:40] All right. [01:02:40] Three more questions. [01:02:41] These are the version history hall of fame questions. [01:02:44] Every product has to pass all three of these tests in order to make it into [01:02:47] the version history hall of fame. [01:02:49] Question number one. [01:02:50] Did this product do something truly new? [01:02:54] I'm going to say yes. [01:02:56] Yeah. [01:02:56] Yeah. [01:02:57] At the time, the other, the other voice toys, they didn't have that, that [01:03:03] randomness that leads you to think it might be like a real creature. [01:03:08] Like the Tamagotchi, nah, it didn't feel like it's in the same ballpark at all. [01:03:13] Tidy Rexpin is just playing back a cassette tape, uh, tickle me Elmo. [01:03:19] Pre-recorded sounds. [01:03:20] This is, this is a new level. [01:03:22] V, what do you think? [01:03:24] I guess that's a fair assessment. [01:03:26] Cause I was saying like, I was thinking to myself that like a lot of different [01:03:31] aspects of Furby were things that we had seen before, like in all the toys [01:03:34] that Sean just mentioned, but I think maybe synthesizing all of them together. [01:03:39] And just the surprising deepness of David's philosophy going into that [01:03:48] I think was pretty unique. [01:03:50] I tend to agree. [01:03:50] I think the, the, the way they went about making it work was new. [01:03:58] Even the, the, the sort of the, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts in a new [01:04:02] way, which I think Furby deserves a lot of credit for. [01:04:05] Um, question number two, I have a feeling we're all going to disagree and I'm right [01:04:11] and it's fine. [01:04:11] Um, was Furby either remarkably good or remarkably bad? [01:04:17] It was remarkably Furby. [01:04:20] I don't think it was remarkably good. [01:04:23] I think it was remarkably clever, clever and good. [01:04:26] I don't think necessarily are synonymous. [01:04:29] I also don't think it was remarkably bad just because it, yeah, I don't know. [01:04:35] Okay. [01:04:35] And we actually agree as it turns out, I feel very strongly that it is neither of [01:04:39] these things. [01:04:39] And I think this is actually the reason it doesn't get into the hall of fam. [01:04:41] I think it's story, it's sort of, uh, growth trajectory and the way that it [01:04:47] came out and the way that it captured the public imagination, that's all really [01:04:51] fascinating, but it's totally divorced from the actual quality of the product. [01:04:55] And kind of what we see is that the actual quality of the product burned super hot [01:04:59] and then burned out. [01:05:00] Yeah. [01:05:00] And so I think in reality, this thing is a fascinating, thrilling kind of [01:05:07] mediocre product. [01:05:08] I think the idea of Furby is the most powerful thing about it. [01:05:12] It tops into a lot of things that humans want, connection, interaction, [01:05:17] emotion, so like that part of it, like honestly, the personality and the [01:05:21] concept of it is very strong, but the execution is very that. [01:05:27] Sean, what do you think? [01:05:29] Back then we would have, I think Dave and Caleb made an amazing canvas for [01:05:34] everybody to map their own love, hate, and fear of toys that seem to interact. [01:05:42] You know, robots, you can look at this thing and you can, you have an opinion [01:05:47] on it, you have a very strong opinion on it. [01:05:49] And because everybody can have an opinion on it and because opinions spread so [01:05:54] quickly in the media landscape, they spread so quickly from person to person. [01:05:59] It could achieve that level of fame and recognition that we're still talking [01:06:03] about today, but as a product, like even the 2023 version, which is probably [01:06:10] a much better product, this was a fun one-off review for me and my kids to [01:06:16] see whether it could achieve that level of being talked about and being [01:06:20] interested again, not this is something you need to go out and buy for anybody. [01:06:25] That's a really good distinction. [01:06:26] I agree. [01:06:26] I like that. [01:06:28] All right, so Hall of Fame question number three, and our last one, [01:06:31] did it have a lasting impact? [01:06:33] Like did it, did it capital M matter? [01:06:36] And I think Sean, I want you to answer this question from the [01:06:38] toy perspective first. [01:06:39] I think I don't have a great sense of what Furby did to the toy industry, [01:06:44] but it does seem like if it's going to make a case for being meaningfully [01:06:48] culturally, economically impactful in that sense, it would be in toys, was it? [01:06:52] This may be a bit of a cop out, but I wonder if we're not going to truly [01:06:57] know if Furby capital M matters until we see the designer of the next big AI [01:07:04] toy say, yes, Furby is the reason I did this. [01:07:08] I had a Furby growing up and that's why I made this. [01:07:11] That's a good theory. [01:07:12] I would like to see that thing. [01:07:13] I think part of me feels like the reason I don't want to give this one to [01:07:17] Furby is I don't feel like there has been a ton of momentum trajectory [01:07:22] from that stuff. [01:07:23] Like I did all this research on Dave Hampton and the stuff he was [01:07:27] thinking about and the way that he approached this and the way he [01:07:29] thought about personality and human interaction. [01:07:31] And it's like, boy, I wish more people thought like this now. [01:07:34] It's like, I wish he had, I wish he had started more of a [01:07:38] revolution than I think he actually started. [01:07:39] I honestly think that I don't think that revolution is going to come [01:07:43] from the consumer space. [01:07:44] I think it's going to come in the medical space. [01:07:46] I think you are going to find it with dementia patients, elderly [01:07:50] patients, because they've already done some clinical studies where [01:07:53] they talk to caregivers and doctors. [01:07:56] I was doing a lot of research about this recently where they [01:07:59] find that it actually does improve the health of elderly [01:08:03] people with dementia and that this level of interaction is [01:08:08] enough in those cases and spaces. [01:08:11] So I think we'll see this really take off in that space. [01:08:17] But if you are a sound mind and body, reasonably, if you can [01:08:21] find, I don't know, an AI chatbot to talk to, or at least [01:08:25] I hope you touch grass and talk to your fellow humans, you [01:08:29] don't really need a social robot in that respect. [01:08:32] I think it's one of those cases where sci-fi informs some [01:08:37] tech companies into thinking that's the future we want. [01:08:40] And maybe there is dubious media literacy as to the future [01:08:44] they're warning us away from. [01:08:46] But anytime I've tested one of these things, the novelty is [01:08:50] there for a little bit and then I'm just like, okay, [01:08:52] you're annoying, like go away. [01:08:54] I'm going to go play with my cat because my cat, not to [01:08:57] be a crazy cat lady, it's truly spontaneous. [01:09:01] It's truly inconvenient at times to have it. [01:09:04] But there is like a real sense of give and take and [01:09:06] love and these robots are programmed and it's very hard [01:09:11] for them to spontaneously generate love and connection [01:09:14] in a way that feels organic. [01:09:16] Because at some point, you know, you can just turn this [01:09:18] thing off or like turn it upside down and maybe you [01:09:21] feel empathy because you're like, oh, Coco scared. [01:09:23] I'm sorry. [01:09:25] But at the same time as our dear reader once did, you [01:09:28] could also just throw it down the stairs multiple times [01:09:30] until it dies. [01:09:31] So there's no consequences to that. [01:09:34] One big upside of this particular form factor is it [01:09:36] is very easy to throw out of a window. [01:09:39] We need more technology that is easy to throw out of a [01:09:42] window. [01:09:42] It is distinctly like football shaped. [01:09:45] If you really think about it, you can do a spiral. [01:09:47] Coco's batteries appear to have died again, which [01:09:49] means it's time for us to get out of here. [01:09:51] Coco's having a tough day. [01:09:52] Sean V, thank you both so much for doing this to me. [01:09:54] This was tremendously fun. [01:09:56] Thank you as always for watching and listening. [01:09:58] And as a reminder, the best thing you can do to [01:10:00] support all of this is send us new AA batteries. [01:10:04] So that we can make Coco work again, uh, and also [01:10:06] subscribe to the verge, the verge.com slash subscribe. [01:10:09] That is what enables all of this to happen. [01:10:11] And it means you get ad free podcasts. [01:10:14] This one, the verge cast, decoder, all of it, [01:10:17] verge.com slash describe. [01:10:19] Thank you as always. [01:10:20] See you next time.