Oh I grew up in the glory days of the Furby, I remember the wild rush and line ups back in 1998 when myself and everyone else I knew wanted one for Christmas. That year my Aunt managed to get one for me from a store in Timmons (it was an all grey one) and we got another (the spotted grey and pink one) from a raffle at a Canadian Tire in the Sault...I remember there being hundreds of people there that night because a shipment of something like 25 of the things came in.
Image comes from Angelfire's Furbsite.
This was way better than neopets... this was a real life fuzzy toy (about as solid as a brick under the fuzz) that you could feed, tickle, pet and love.... and they were definitely vocal about wanting all that attention. Getting the stupid things to sleep through the night may have been worse than actual babies....at least until you finally resorted to pulling the batteries out.
What became of my precious Furbies... well as all fads do pass, I eventually got bored of the little guy. I know that the grey one sat in the toy bin at my Nana's for years, along with a Tickle-Me-Elmo that probably needed to be exorcised (as the voice got really strange the older that got). The last time I saw this furby he was looking worse for wear, with the fabric covering his ears pulled off and the rest of his fur looking pretty scragly... I think he may have even been missing an eye lid. (the next set of cousins in my family are a pair of brothers and I think they play too hard with Furby)
So that brings me to today, and the Walmart Website's announcement that Hasbro has brought Furby back!
I have to say.. .these solid colour guys, with their digital eyes and plastic ears just don't seem as cute to me. But who knows, maybe my littlest cousin Caitlin will be begging for one for Christmas this year just like I did way back when.
I'm so happy you posted about this! My BF and I were just trying to remember what NeoPets were called the other night and we were racking our brains.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to add one of these to my b-day wish list :P
Oh neopets.... so many hours wasted/enjoyed? lol
DeleteThanks for stopping by and commenting!
They're coming back because it's the last part of Hasbro's plan to take over the world with cute fuzzy robots. "Party time" is code for "Destruction!"
ReplyDeleteThe elmo needing to be exorcised comment made me snortgiggle. I worked at a daycare once and we had dozens of those. It was like an undead demon army O_O.