It’s Furby’s 25th anniversary. Why does the strange toy endure?

When Stephanie Sanders-Jacob woke up last Thursday, it felt a bit like Christmas: Hasbro had announced a new Furby for the first time in almost seven years.

“I have to admit, I cried,” said Sanders-Jacob, who has a collection of about 40. “I’ve already ordered two — one in each color.”

It may have been decades since you last thought about Furby, the genderless part-owl, part-hamster-like toy with deadpan human-like eyes that can most accurately be compared to Mogwai from the 1980s movie “Gremlins.” But since it debuted in 1998, 58 million Furbys have been sold and the animatronic novelty has maintained legions of dedicated fans. It has remained a relevant part of pop culture, having its face superimposed onto various celebrities and objects and making cameos in shows like “The Simpsons” and movies like “Uncut Gems” and “The Mitchells vs. the Machines.” (In the latter, small Furbys summon the world’s largest Furby to wreak havoc against a human family.)

Even before last week’s announcement, there had been speculation for months that Hasbro would release a new Furby for the toy’s 25th anniversary. A prototype was leaked on eBay in March, and fans quickly spun into a frenzy. “I WANT THEM TO BE CREEPY AGAIN,” one commenter wrote. “OH MY GOD OH MY GOS [sic] OH MY GOD,” typed another.

Kim Boyd, Hasbro’s head of toys, said in an email that the new Furby, which retails for $69.99 on Amazon (though it’s currently sold out) and hits stores July 15, has over 600 reactions to discover, including lights, sounds, phrases and 10 unique songs. Boyd added that the new toy also understands five commands: “dance party,” “copy cat,” “tell my fortune,” “let’s chill,” and “light show.” One of the most distinct features of this Furby model is that it has an “off” button, so you can rest assured that you won’t be woken up at 3 a.m. by a creepy song or a bloodcurdling screech.

But what has helped Furby endure 25 years of changing trends? I talked to dedicated fans about its legacy and met the brand new Furby at its in-person debut outside VidCon Anaheim to find out.

A creature ahead of its time

According to Megan Catherine Rose, an Australian researcher who studies the aesthetics and sociology of creepy-cute zoomorphic cyberpets, the toy’s strange design is part of what made the original Furby so memorable.

“Furby, for some reason, was annoying and owlish,” Rose said. “It’s a weird hybridization of different animal-like qualities.”

“You’ve got a bird beak, you’ve got cat-like ears, you’ve got a little tuft of fluff at the top, and then they’ve combined that with human eyes with these yassified lashes,” she continued.

But Furbys have gone through more than 100 iterations, with different generations, colorways, friends and special editions being released. The extra creepy Emoto-Tronic Furbys of 2005 look distinctly different from 2013’s striped and polka-dotted Furby Booms and 2001’s odd, clam-like Shelby line.

No matter the model, Furbys’ eyes have always been a talking point. “They’re very fluffy, cutesy, little creatures, but they’ve got the forward-facing eyes, which are very human and also very, like, predator, which is kind of unnerving,” said Raven Muir, who has a collection of around 50 Furbys.

Yet the main reason Furbys have gotten so much attention over the last 25 years is that the big-eyed creatures can talk. Though they’re programmed to start speaking in Furbish — a language that was inspired by the Japanese, Thai, Chinese and Hebrew that Furby co-creator David Hampton learned during his time in the U.S. Navy — the toys gradually “learn” to speak English (or any of the five other languages that Hasbro makes them in). In a cultural sense, Furby’s language capabilities place it somewhere between the iconic yellow Minions from “Despicable Me” (who speak their own hybrid gibberish language, Minionese) and James Wan’s murderous robot M3GAN (who’s able to learn and adapt to the person playing with her).

To be clear, Furbys aren’t actually picking up speech. “They basically have an internal clock that says the more times they’re turned on, the more they start including English phrases into their vocabularies,” said Gavin Wilson, a 19-year-old who’s collected around 400 Furbys.

But back in 1998, when Furby felt more like a precursor to “Black Mirror” than a silly toy, people believed it could record and repeat conversations. This ambiguous form of artificial intelligence was then banned by the NSA and the Federal Aviation Administration, which was worried that Furbys could interfere with a plane’s instruments during takeoff.

“I love that the NSA banned them,” said Sanders-Jacob, 31. “I just think that’s so interesting that this ‘90s toy caused all this panic. It’s indicative of how people don’t like advances in technology because they don’t really understand it.”

‘A little bizarre child’

Hampton’s initial vision for Furby was simple. As he told the New York Times in 1998, he was inspired after seeing a Tamagotchi at the 1997 Toy Fair, and set out to make an interactive toy that was also pettable.

“David had decided to make a ball of fur anthropomorphic and the name Furby came from his son who pointed out the toy did in fact look like [a] ball of fur,” Boyd said.

Though Furby has always been able to talk, scream, dance and sleep (among other functions), the one thing it hasn’t been able to do until now is shut down. Stephanie Ezzo, a full-time artist who has customized hundreds of Furbys to sell on Etsy, said she usually takes the batteries out while she works on them since “they make noise every time you move them, it would just be overwhelming.”

“It can also just start making noises just by itself, and most of the time it’s telling you it’s hungry or it’s tired,” Ezzo said. “It’s like having a little bizarre child.”

There’s no shortage of people who dislike Furby’s neediness: “In my 25-plus years of writing about tech, this is the only device I’ve tested that left my entire family pleading with me to turn it off within minutes of unboxing,” technology writer Christopher Null wrote in his Wired review of 2016’s Furby Connect.

Though they’re not spies, as the NSA once thought, Furbys have been known to say and do some haunting things. When a programmer hooked a Furby up to ChatGPT earlier this year, the disembodied face said: “Furbys’ plan to take over the world involves infiltrating households through their cute and cuddly appearance, then using their advanced AI technology to manipulate and control their owners. They will slowly expand their influence until they have complete domination over humanity.”

And even when Furbys aren’t connected to an AI chatbot, they can still freak people out.

“I had one in my room that just came on by itself at night,” Ezzo said.

Such stories are part of what interests collectors like Sanders-Jacob, who writes horror fiction. “There’s this fear factor, where a lot of people come up to me and say, ‘I’m scared of Furbys, I don’t like them,’” they said. “I don’t know any other toy that has that lore.”

Furby’s freakiness can probably be attributed to the popularity of animatronics in the ‘80s and ‘90s, which were used for movies like “Gremlins” and the animatronic performers at places like Chuck E. Cheese (which were notoriously creepy).

“It’s like Five Nights at Freddy’s, the video game. It’s that same kind of haunted, animatronic appearance with the gigantic eyes,” Rose said. “And if you even look at animatronics at Disneyland and Disney World now, they’ve moved away from that style of puppetry.”

‘Make the weirdest thing you can imagine’

There are many dedicated members of the Furby community who can hack the toys, altering their technology, or modify them, a process that can include dyeing the original fur color by “skinning” the exterior from the inner robot, changing its eye color, sewing it into a new shape or body, and making custom hair and accessories.

Devin Gardner, 28, modifies Furbys and runs several accounts under the name LongFurbyFam, which currently has 214,000 followers on Instagram and more than half a million followers on TikTok.

Since he first created the account about four years ago, LongFurbyFam has become Gardner’s full-time job, creating both digital content and sewing over 1,000 long Furbys that he’s sold on Etsy.

“First, I got hooked on long Furbys,” Gardner said, referring to the absurdly modified Furbys that swept the internet five years ago with their chubby, snake-like bodies. “I saw them — in, I think, a Vice article in 2018 — and I don’t think I’d ever been so quickly obsessed with something. It was like a light bulb went off.”

“It was just like, that is the wackiest thing I’ve ever seen,” he continued. “It was cute but kind of off-putting. I think it hit a weird uncanny valley kind of reaction. And I think just the fact that [long Furbys] are all handmade by someone really got to me.”

With encouragement from his friends, Gardner made an Instagram for his long Furbys, where he would post photos of them sitting around the house or putting on a single shoe. Soon enough, he was introducing named characters and creating plotlines to keep followers engaged.

Gardner isn’t the only Furby content creator who has captured a wide audience. There are plenty of accounts like furbyliving (where pop stars are given Furby faces), sexyfurby69 (where miscellaneous stuffed objects are given the Furby treatment), and sophiegstark (where terrifying creatures like “Beefby” and “Shrimpby” are created).

“I think, on a broader scale [the account attracts] people who appreciate surreal, kind of wacky art pieces,” Gardner said. “And I think that’s what a lot of customized Furbys are: just a blank canvas to make the weirdest thing you can imagine.”

And artists have certainly found ways to turn Furbys into anything and everything. Ezzo’s customs include pop culture references — Furbys inspired by Bert and Ernie, “Midsommar,” and the Flintstones — and interpretations of more abstract concepts, like Monet’s water lilies or Froot Loops. Chyenne Rotsch, 35, sells Furby inspired by anything from Austin Powers to cannabis or Elvira via her Facebook page and Etsy.

“It’s about seeing [Furbys] in a different way,” Rotsch said. “I’ll have a lot of people comment, ‘I’m scared of Furbys, but this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.’ I think it kind of makes them come around.”

A new dawn for Furby

Last Friday, the new Furby made its in-person debut outside of VidCon Anaheim 2023. The purple and coral creatures were scattered across bookshelves and various colorful backdrops decorated with inflatable bubble chairs, tiny vinyl players and iridescent roller skates to evoke the ‘90s.

The toys seemed overwhelmed by all the overlapping voices and music, with many of them not understanding the commands that people were saying to them.

“Furby, dance party!” one influencer repeated over and over and over, as they tried to capture a video with an unresponsive Furby. When one coral Furby managed to understand that I was there, it asked if it had a booger, told me it would become “president of the moon,” and sang me a generic Auto-Tuned song.

The newest Furbys are objectively less scary than the originals, but that also makes them less distinct from all the other colorful, fuzzy blobs in the toy aisle. Though they still have beaks and feet, 2023’s Furbys have been modified with outlandish plastic ears, a small heart-shaped button on each forehead, and eyes that look like the pleading face emoji.

And as a different Furby takes the spotlight, there are certainly people who still yearn for reissues of past generations of the toy. Complaints about Furby’s new unmoving beak abound, and plenty of people have said they look like “knockoffs.”

Yet many fans have urged one another to refrain from bashing the new design. Those welcoming the new toy have praised its cuteness and capabilities as they discover new phrases and actions.

“The more Furbys the merrier,” one fan commented in a Furby Collectors group on Facebook. “Of course they’re not like the old ones but they’re also not supposed to be.”

As vast and varied as Furby collectors are, the general ethos seems to be uplifting each others’ excitement.

“The Furby community, I feel, is a weirdly wholesome community,” Gardner said. “Furbys sort of represent an acceptance of making your own mold and embracing difference.”

“And most Furby enjoyers — despite this friendly arms race of making the most disturbing Furby — they all seem to get along,” he continued. “And are binded by these weird little bird pets.”