The Furby toy was the original children’s electronic pet. They talked in their own language and could be trained to learn English with enough patience. They required feeding, could dance and could also talk to each other. Every 90’s kid’s dream.

Let’s look back at where they all began and what made them the must have toy of the 90’s.

Furby History

The Furby toy was created by Dave Hampton, Caleb Chung and Richard C Levy who sold the design to Tiger Electronics before production. Furby toys were first introduced in 1998 at the American International Toy Fair and took the world by storm, selling 1.8 million in the first 12 months with over 40 million sold in the first three years of trading.

Furbies were the original robot/pet children’s toy with the main concept being that you could ‘teach’ the Furby the English language. Furbies arrived only speaking in ‘Furbish’ and with time were programmed to gradually ‘learn’ English. Furbies could interact with each other via infrared and if sat close to each other, would hold a conversation (in Furbish) with each other.

There was one main flaw of the original Furby which was the difficulty of keeping it ‘asleep’. Furbies sleep when put into a dark room and arise again with light or the sound of a loud noise. This lead to them being kept in wardrobes or cupboards overnight to avoid them rising too early.

In 2005 Hasbro took over the rights for Furbies and since then there has been two major revivals of the Furby, in 2005 and 2012, to keep up with the latest technologies.

Furbish Language

All Furbies start off speaking ‘Furbish’ and gradually over time they were programmed to forget the Furbish language and replace their words and phrases with English ones. A few of the common Furby phrases were:

• Wee-tah-kah-loo-loo – Tell me a joke.
• Wee-tah-kah-wee-loo – Tell me a story.
• Wee-tee-kah-wah-tee – Sing me a song.
• U-nye-loo-lay-doo? – Do you want to play?
• U-nye-ay-tay-doo? – Are you hungry?
• U-nye-boh-doo? – How are you?
• U-nye-way-loh-nee-way – Go to sleep now.
• U-nye-noh-lah – Show me a dance.

Furby Through the Years

There have been several new releases of Furbies over the years. With the main advances being introduced from 2005 when Hasbro took over. The first ‘new’ Furby released was named the ‘Emoto-Tronic Furby’ and was noticeably larger than the classic version and came with upgraded features including an improved voice recognition system and the removal of sensors that made the original Furbies come alive at the sound of noise or the sense of light.

A year later Hasbro introduced a Furby Babies range to attract a younger audience which came in a smaller format yet again and a lower level of features. The next main upgrade came in 2012 after a five-year quiet spell. This update included more features that you could ever imagine and included connection with iOS and Android Apps.

The new Furbies came in a wide variety of different colours and came with enhanced facial features and a larger range of motions. Along side the new physical toy there was the launch of the Furby App which allowed you to connect your Furby to the App to do a variety of actions including feeding them virtual food, play games and teach it new tricks.

Furbies are still available to buy today but not quite as easily as they used to be, and with the App being an integral part of enjoying the toy, the production of the classic Furby seems to have come to an end.

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