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Argh!
When looking for something else entirely concerning furby operation, I came upon yet another one of those "OMGZOMGZOMG! Furby is a horror!" things! Gah!
This is pretty much a culmination of the big anti-furby groupthink, and it is particularly asinine drivel.
I've had it to here with it, and since this ranting review is quite extensive, with comments following, it's getting mangled.
* * *
By Sam Biddle sambiddle
8/24/12 12:00pm
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes*
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: The Furby materialized on American shelves in 1998, after a brief warp-trip from some ethereal hell-domain.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Wrong. Furbies never went to, or originated from an etherial hell domain. They stayed right here on earth getting played with, collected, sometimes broken and trashed, with new models coming out in 1999, 2005&6, then 2012 and onward. Where they originally hail from? Toy companies. Tiger Electronics and Hasbro.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: It drove parents insane.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Yes, I'll give you that much. Kids constantly demanding for a toy will drive parents insane. Furbies that never shut up will also drive parents insane, so this is one of very few valid points in this review.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Their children wanted one, insanely badly. They sold out, insanely quickly.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Yes, that really goes with what you just said.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Now, the Furby is back, and it is insanity incarnate.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No it isn't. It might drive you insane, but that's your problem, not the toy itself.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: General Omar N. Bradley commanded American ground forces in Germany during World War II, and he witnessed some of mankind's most debased savagery.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Which has nothing whatsoever to do with furbies, and comparing them to the hellish experiences of war is absolutely ludicrous, and I'm putting it nicely.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Bradley once said: "If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner."
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well, dry up, wuss, he wasn't talking about furbies. You ought to be more concerned over the NSA.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Sure, he was probably talking about the inexorable progress of nuclear proliferation and mechanized warfare. But if he could see the 2012 rebirth of the Furby, he would nod solemnly, gasp, and collapse in a fit of cardiac arrest.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, for the love. Don't try making some hysterical overstatement by bringing the name of some world war veteran into this. You're actually trivializing his life and experiences by doing so. come on, Nobody who's stared very real fears and death in the face is going to be fazed by a furby. Neither one of us knows what he'd do if he could be time-traveled to the future and see today's gismos. He might even think furbies are funny. Or he might find them exceedingly annoying. Or maybe he wouldn't give a rat's patuty. We just don't know.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: The new Furby
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Technically not new any more. The model had been around since late 2012, but there are furbies from that year and previous generations that are in perfect never-been-played-with condition as if they are brand new.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: is grotesque.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No. Slender Man is grotesque. In my opinion, so is Tweety Bird. 2012 looks like what a furby of that model is supposed to look like. The black 2012 furby I have is pretty darn cute IMO.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: It is a terror.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, get a backbone. Ebola, stone fish, box jelly fish, venomous spiders and snakes, and countless parasites are terrors. So are murderers and anyone who fangirls/fanboys over them.
Furbies are not.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: It is a mile marker on the road to tech dystopia.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Dystopia? Really? Could you possibly get any more manic with your hyperbole? again, worry about the NSA. Furbies don't spy on people, nor do they pass off bad slanted agenda propaganda as news and information.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Kids will love it.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: That's the whole idea. Duh. Yes, they will unless and until folks like you keep succeeding to brainwash them with "Furby is evil!" messages.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: What Is It?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: An electronic toy. There's your answer in a nutshell.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: A neon animatronic gremlin toy designed to be handled regularly by children.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes* First, adults can handle them too. At least, those of us who aren't annoyed by them, and have enough of a spine not to fall for this "Furby is creepy!" chain letter mindset so many people think it's totally cool to tout.
Second, again with the freaking gremlins.
Furbies are not gremlins.
For one thing, Furbish wasn't even conceived when that suckish Gremlins book and movie came out. This was a movie that had one of the supporting characters be the girl in that urban legend that never actually happened, about the father who got caught in the chimney trying to play Santa. And, that old fart who wind-bagged about how humans were destroying the earth and blah blah blah and were not ready for the baby version of gremlins, I can't even remember how that 'm' word is spelled and never liked it anyway, so never use it. Environmentalist propaganda plus urban legend perpetuation. Nope, not cool. If it comes down to which is more insidious, furbies or Hollywood, I'll say Hollywood every time.
And if I see another "Don't feed furbies after midnight" I'll be the one turning evil/insane.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: If you're familiar with the Furby of 1990s infamy, it's pretty much the same deal—
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: The only reason there is any infamy at all is because of dolts like you who think it's cool to make as if something cute is something creepy, just because elementary school kids went crazy for it and some adults even took an interest.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: only everything has been thrown through the Large Hadron Collider, accelerated to
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Wrong. Furbies weren't cooked up in an experimental facility.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: an unconscionable degree of loud, bright, and wiggly.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Unconscionable as opposed to what? A live dog can be a heck of a lot louder, the sun is much brighter, and a furby's wiggliness is IMO charming. The furby comes as close to feeling like a live creature as I've ever observed in any toy. The only thing bright on my black 2012 furby are his eyes when he is awake.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: It has LED eyes. A toy for kids has eyes filled with liquid crystal diodes and an unfathomable number of transistors.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So freaking what? toys for infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers are made with extremely bright and vivid colors too. Your average smart device is loaded with light-up whathaveyou in order for you to text, watch videos, play games and do whatever else it is you do on it.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Who Is It For?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: People of all ages, doofus. Anyone who wants one.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Children. Lonely children. Neglected children. The children of criminals. Evil babies. The senile. CIA black site prisoners. Skeletons. Hated cats. Madmen. Other robots. The hounds of hell.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And for children who have normal upbringings, and adults who are a little young at heart. Never confuse being young at heart with senility…
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Why It Matters
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: It actually doesn't unless you're a wimpy, unglued schlep taken in by groupthink.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: The Furby, thoroughly nightmarish as it is,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: NOT.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: is where it's all headed for little kids.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Headed to where? - The heck? Furbies are not a means to some kind of end. They are a cute, funny little toy, and you'd realize that if you would just use your imagination right about them.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: There's not much reason to doubt that at some point, not so far away, robots will be ubiquitous toys for tots. Just as the tablet erodes the appeal of reading paper,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Scowl* So that's your problem, you're a Luddite. *Rolling eyes* You also, like every last one of those exceedingly annoying, short-sighted people who whinge "Wahhh, nobody wants to read paper books any more!" Gah! This attitude IRRITATES me - to - no - end! People with visual impairments either can't, or find it difficult to read the dang paper, and and may not even be able to write printed letters without some help Which makes this technology pretty dang welcome since it lets them read a printed page or screen via magnifier or screen-reading software. My Mom received a just-because gift from my brother - an electronic magnifer that helps her to read the printed page as well as what's on her tablet's screen.
So if you're going to keep whining about how tech is replacing paper, SHUT IT!
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: children follow the allure of the electron. The sound effect-enabled He-Man sword from my boyhood made a stick look like a boring ol' dumb stick.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And there's nothing the matter with that. It's how people treat this technology and how they use it to treat other people that is right or wrong.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: And dancing, blinking, screeching hell-gadgets like the Furby make a lifeless Pound Puppy seem like pathetically poor stimulation.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Furbies are not "hell gadgets" and the very word "pound puppy" is actually insidious because it is very subtle propaganda pushing for kids to get real puppies from the pound rather than from another home that has puppies for sale. That's all part of the Peta agenda to eventually end pet ownership, you should be worrying more about that than kids enjoying furby interaction.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Kids don't know much, but they do know when their central nervous systems get the playtime equivalent of a kegstand. The Furby is like an electronic frat party stuffed into a faux-fur chassis.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, for gosh sake, a frat party? You actually compared a furby to - a frat party? Oh my gosh, you have really gone right off the rails, pal!
Frat party VS. furby.
Booz chugging?
Frat party - yep.
Furby - no.
Drug use?
Frat party - yep.
Furby - no.
Dirty talk?
Frat party - yep.
Furby - no, unless it's on the part of a kid who already has a dirty mind.
Sex/porn?
Frat party - yes, likely, probably.
Furby - no!
Worst of all, hazing?
Frat party - yes.
Furby - NO!
Elitism, the cause of frats in the first place
Frat party - yes.
Furby - NO!
The burning question remains, can you possibly get any more ridiculous in your hysteria?
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: The mushy minds of an entire generation will love this thing, and everything like it, until we're all just playing with holograms and battling our siblings with lethal lasers in front of grandma.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well, that's better than blowing up buildings and planes for real. Surely even you should manage to grasp that concept. Though how you went from playing with talking toys to playing laser war, I don't understand. Maybe it's just that my mind isn't anywhere near as violent a place as yours is, or, something like that. Again, nothing wrong with holograms. Oh, but you're a Luddite. So how in heck did you get this tripe online, then?
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Furby 2040 is inevitable,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh? Ya think? Well, it might be if it follows Barbie's act and manages to never go away, but who can see that far into the future? Not me. Maybe something else totally different will be the rage that year. Who knows?
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: and Furby 2012 is a significant step in this dynasty's evolution.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Dynasty? What do you call Batman and Star Wars stuff never going away? Are those dynasties too? Furbies have no more of a dynasty than they do.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Design
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: It's just fine.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: I'm not a kid now,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: It's hard to imagine you ever having been one.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: but I was in 1998,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Wow, so you must be really old for your age.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: and even then I never found the Furby's appearance anything less than horrible and vaguely menacing.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Was that truly your own reaction or were you convinced by some other sissy to be scared of furbies? Or maybe you were one of those who actually started this whole idiocy.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Its hair is an unkempt, fluorescent tangle of wispy purple and pink—
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I don't know what color my furby was, I don't remember. It had wonderful fur, and that was the one thing I really liked about it. I gave it to a friend who really seemed to like it. Furbies at my house don't have matted hair, I brush it smooth. As for colors, I'm more partial to black/white, silver/gray, blue and green, but hey, there's a color preference for everyone.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: what you'd find clogging an cyborg prostitute's shower drain.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Scowl* There, you see? The problem isn't furby, it's *YOU* pervo!
Eww!
I've seen more than I ever cared to of dumb drivel from people who seem to think it's really the in, cool thing to show off how scary they think furbies are, but this dreck is the worst I've come across yet.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: The ears and tail are sort of cute, and the eyes, albiet terrifying in their constant swirling and darting, are impressive for LED toy eyes.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I'm confused. Are you impressed, or are you scared?
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Using It
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Is fun, but for the drawback that they don't shut up quickly enough when you want them to sometimes.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: You don't really "use" the Furby so much as you willingly subject yourself to it.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No, you have that backward. You subject it to you, and then it reacts accordingly by the way the program works.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: The Furby makes almost constant noise in its own native language, Furbish. Chortles, whistles, grunts, whines, moans, screeches, incoherent speaking in biblical tongues.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: They don't speak in biblical tongues, for one thing, there really is no such thing, speaking in tongues actually means people speaking in different tongues, that is, their own native language, not the tongues gibberish coming from some really offbeat sects…
Furbies cry, squeal, purr, sometimes whine, but with the exception of a couple party rockers, they don't actually screech. The indication of an attitude change is more of a squeal. The screeches from the two party rockers that make it are rare.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Occasionally it'll drop in a charming English fragment like "Me hungry!" or "I funny," but these are the exception.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Actually I have a 1998 furby that speaks mostly English. My 2013 furby says various different things in english and furbish depending on which personality she is in. I have a furby baby 1999 that speaks mostly English, and a furby baby 2005 that does as well. My 2012 furby, the kind you're ripping on here, also speaks different English phrases depending on which personality he's in.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Furby claims it will learn more English the more you speak to it,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Not learn, add.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: but over two weeks of attentive Furby-sitting, this simply didn't happen.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You must've either had a slow furby or maybe you just did too much of the wrong stuff to it.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: The Furby's erratic mania culminates in its schizophrenic personality changes. It shouts, "I'M CHANGING," squeezes its eyes shut, and then reopens them. Now it's changed. During our testing, it remained in some sort of demonic phase, with slit eyes, a raspy voice, and lots of cackles. Once its eyes changed into cows, and then cherries, and it appeared intoxicated. Bath salt Furby lasted for a while longer, before suddenly, inexplicably reverting to docile.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Cherries? Cows? What the? - Heck? Weird, but no weirder than the average anime, and still far from evil.
My 2012 furby has been with me since late November/early December of 2014, and has stayed pretty much in the default baby-like personality with all the purring, giggling and childish singing. He has slipped into two different personalities one each about twice, for a brief period. I was able to get him back to the default one in a reasonable amount of time. He got the evil one you describe above once. With the help of another couple of furbies to tickle the heck out of him, I got him back to normal, and he hasn't slipped into that one since without me deliberately causing it. The models from 2013 and 14, the "Boom" furbies, also have this changing personality feature, but the 2016 model, the Furby Connect, does not.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: It seems like constant abuse and neglect takes a toll. To muffle its incessant shrieking—there is no volume knob or on/off switch—it was locked up in a sealed container marked "Human Organs." By the end of the testing, Furby seemed permanently deranged.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Yeah right. But understandable. If I was a furby, I'd go off too if treated that way.
Sounds like you did a lousy job furby-sitting, probably tried to make it turn nuts for kicks, and then you wussed out and got scared of it.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: No amount of cuddling, petting, feeding, or murmuring of "I love you, Furby," made any changes. Its eyes were vacant, even for LEDs—a great vacuum in the hole where its soul should have been.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Melodramatic much? You broke it.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: It was behaving like a little brat. Now, it is once again locked in the Organs bag, shoved under a desk.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I'd offer it a new home, but the thought of giving you any of my cash, even for that - ugh.
BTW the 2016 model, called the Connect, has a sleep mask that clicks into place when you put it over the furby's eyes. It will make the furby go to sleep and stay that way until you remove the mask and wiggle its antenna or pull its tail. Note - the mask only works with that particular model.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Like
It's funny and charming when it first comes to life. Once every month or so, for a few minutes at a time, it could provide some amusement. Leaving it on someone's desk or doorstep could make a fine prank, because then they'd have to deal with it—suckers.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Bleah. Not one for pranking except on april fools'. But that last paragraph was the other rare thing you said that made sense.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: It also provides a decent simulation of the scarring effects longterm psychological and physical abuse can have on the psyche.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: That's not what it's for. *Scowl*
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: At a medical school, it could teach valuable lessons.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: no, that's wrong. Because if you haven't learned the very basic lesson that being nice is better than being abusive by the time you're college age, then you sure as heck shouldn't be in medical school. It's up to the human race to teach that lesson, not furby.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: But it has no place at a child's sleepover.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You are absolutely wrong, again. The only reason furbies should maybe not be at a sleepover is because it's impossible to get the kids to sleep already without one. I know, having happy memories of many sleepovers as a child. Furby at a sleepover would be noisy, not evil.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: No Like
If you're not five years old, and dumb, exposure to the Furby is about as bad as smallpox spores.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: ! - Oh my gosh, somehow you've managed to tap into a boundless pit of ridiculous stupidity!
Small pox killed!
Furby does not kill!
Small pox was a disease.
Furby is a toy.
Small pox caused acute pain and discomfort.
Furby might cause mere annoyance, all depending on the person dealing with it.
This article is the stupidest thing I've read in quite a long time.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: The gimmick quickly wears off, and it's then a constant, gnawing source of aggravation.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So take the batteries out until you want to check it out again months/years later. Or just sell it.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: It's like a device designed specifically to annoy.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: The same can be said of cell phones and boomboxes.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: In that sense, it's sort of brilliant, in the same way a crossbow is a brilliant way to shoot an arrow through someone's neck.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So, the one true problem possibility with furby is the one thing you find brilliant. *Rolling eyes uncontrollably*
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Furby actually makes you want to hurt it somehow—if only it had feelings—so that you can punish it for existing.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Dude, you wouldn't have that problem if you just removed the batteries. Duh!
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: You begin to feel like a wrathful deity.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Whoa. Megalo much?
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Or at least a lousy parent.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: nope, not me.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: The Furby was adopted and orphaned by a series of otherwise good-hearted people over the testing period. Yet, unlike a real child, the Furby never grows up. It just bothers you more, makes you feel worse, and you want to destroy it, but you just can't bring yourself to do it because you can't find a hammer at the office and smashing a Furby at work is kinda weird and might make people talk.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Methinks you need anger management, and this is rooted in something way deeper than just hating furbies.
I mean, look at my solution to the problem. Furby won't shut up, so I have no qualms about putting it in a dark place so it goes to sleep, or else removing the batteries if I don't intend to play with it for a long time. No fuss, no muss, problem solved, easy peasy. Does that make me feel like a bad parent? Of course not. Furby doesn't feel any of it when the batteries are removed, and he doesn't bang on the cupboard to be let out after sitting in there for 3 hours or 3 months.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Test Notes
One friend was thrilled to hear the new Furby had arrived—she wanted but never got one as a kid in 1998—so she volunteered for five days of robot-sitting and reported back the following:
🧛♀️Chick: Day 1: Furby wakes up and is playful and nice but won't shut up. People at work instantly hate me so I put him in a drawer. Furby burped and sang in my purse on the train and generally embarrassed me as much as I imagine a real baby would.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Yeah, well, that's where you should've used common sense and tried your furby around the house first before deciding to go anywhere with him.
🧛♀️Chick: Day 2: Furby sleeps through the night and all day the next day. I wake him up at 10 to feed him and he is PI$$ED. His eyes turn into flames whenever I touch him. So, as punishment, I feed him until his eyes go all swirly and he "barfs" repeatedly.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, you drongo! That's how you make him turn nasty in the first place!
🧛♀️Chick: I make him go to sleep.
Day 3: Furby undergoes a "change" after I pull his tail rapidly about 40 times.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Another stupid move. If you'd done a little research, you'd know not to do that if you want a nice furby. *Facepalm* Idiots.
🧛♀️Chick: His eyes turn into cows and he says "I CHANNNGGINNNNGGGGG" followed by wild vibrations and seizure-inducing eye flashes. When that's done Furby has a new voice. He says, "What's up dude". At this point I hate Furby, and I throw him on the floor. He eventually sings himself to sleep.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You've done nothing but wrong. Play like a roughneck brat and you'll get one or both of the following - a furby with attitude, or a broken toy.
🧛♀️Chick: Day 4: I ignore Furby all day.
Day 5: I put Furby in a cooler and bring him back.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And probably ruined him completely. Gah, stupid! Whatever negativeness from furby is your own nimrod fault!
🧛♀️Chick: F— Furby.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Scowl* Furby doesn't talk that way, not even at his most offish attitude. Cut the cussing.
🧛♀️Chick: I hate him.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Because you're awesome like that.
🧛♀️Chick: The instructions that we got warned that there is no on/off switch and we should have read that and never turned it on.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No, you should've read reviews, looked up furby videos on Youtube, found out as much about the product as you could before buying it, and then you shouldn't have got one, because you're not cut out for this kind of toy.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Should You Buy This
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Depends on what kind of person you are. If you like it and you're sure you will continue to like it, and you can afford it, yes. If not, then no.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: No. Your children will love this more than any toy they've ever owned. But they'd also love smoking sugar cubes out of a crack pipe.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Scowl* Hey imbecile, unlike crack, sugar, even in cube form is not illegal nor is it a drug. Get off the food-cop kick. I already disliked you for your utterly typical sissy furby-freak-out, you've just compounded that with this whole stupid sugar high myth thing.
You know what else kids like to do? Chem experiments.There are chemistry sets specifically for kids to do fun stuff like putting various elements and compounds together to make cool chemical reactions. Trying to smoke sugar? Not so much. It won't make you high or make a cool kind of fireworks looking thing.
Any adult with half a brain wouldn't even own a crack pipe let alone make it accessible to a child.
So your attempt at whit just bombed, miserably.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Spend the $80 on tickets to a baseball game,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Utter waste of money for one BORING few lousy hours. I hate baseball. Serious yawn-fest. A furby will last for years of fun if you aren't too rough with it and it isn't a faulty product to begin with, and as long as batteries don't leak acid and kill it.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: or a puzzle,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: seriously? Something that's anywhere from slightly interesting for a little bit of time to frustrating to boring, and once the puzzle's done, then what? Take it apart and put it together again? Bleh. Puzzles are fine for people who enjoy them, there are even online versions now, and it's neat that my Mom loves them, and she and Dad and I will sometimes do crossword puzzles together, but it's not just something I'd want to spend too much on unless it was for an enthusiast and it was a complicated puzzle that person was going to be working at for a while. No guarantee that every kid would appreciate such a thing. I remember my own childhood, then as now, I'd take a talking toy over a puzzle every time. Since I'm a musician, I get enough stimulation of solving puzzles through practicing.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: or college tuition.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And if your kid decides not to go to college after all? He/she's not going to appreciate you planning for that when s/he's only 8 years old anyway. I'm not saying you should give your kid everything s/he wants every time s/he wants something, but sheesh, don't let your wussy personality get in the way of a little fun with some toy your kid would really like and that you can afford.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Or just give them the cash and see what happens.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Hah, finally you said something that made sense. Maybe there's some hope for you after all.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: New Furby (2012)
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I suppose you'd really freak over the furbies that were released since then. The party rockers, the boom and boom crystal series, the furblings (new name for furby babies), Furbacca (amalgamation of furby and wookiee), Furby Connect, etc. Furby boom has the personality change thing too, but if you know how to treat it to make it stay in one personality, you shouldn't have anything to complain about, unless furbies simply annoy you with their chatter. I'll give you the annoyance factor since furbies but for the 2005/2006 models have no on/off button. But this "Furbies are creepy, furbies are devil spawn from hell!" chain letter meme needs to die in a fire.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: • Eyes: 2, LED
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: At least they don't have eyes all around their head. Now IMO *that* would look creepy.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: • Intelligence: Low
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well what can you expect from a toy? It's not a calculator, you know. But for a toy, you must admit it has a lot of artificial intelligence. Oh, right, that's why you're such a fraidy-cat of it in the first place.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: • Language: Furbish, rudimentary English
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Yep.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: • Batteries: 2 AA
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No, it's 4 AA batteries same as other standard adult furbies.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: • Price: $60, available September 16th
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I got mine for less, and it is even a difficult color to get.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: • Giz Rank: 1.0 stars, only because the GizRank scale doesn't go as low as zero or "AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH."
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes* Oh, shut it.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Introducing Gizrank
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Woop-dee-doo. Who cares?
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: Hey guess what:
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Your 2012 furby review sucks.
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: We're rating stuff now! AREN'T YOU EXCITED??
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No. *pfft*
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: I am.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Coming from someone who thinks sugar can get smoked out of a crack pipe and baseball is a fun way to spend money to entertain a kid, that hardly comes as a surprise. *Rolling eyes*
🙎♂️Sam Biddle: I'm so excited…
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Gah, talk about stating the annoyingly obvious.
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Sam Biddle’s DiscussionsAll replies
🔥ZacGreen Zac Green
Zac Green/Sam Biddle
8/24/12 12:09pm
KILL IT WITH FIRE!
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes* Put a boot in it.
🙎♂️sambiddle Sam Biddle
Sam Biddle/Zac Green
8/24/12 12:15pm
We tried, but the ashes just multiplied into a hundred Furbies.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Pfft* Another creepy pasta story in brief. In other words, it's more bull undeserving of laughter or applause.
🔲mitchhavershell Verb-a-noun
Verb-a-noun/Sam Biddle
8/24/12 1:09pm
I never understood why these things spoke "Furbish." Instead of having it speak gibberish and letting the kid teach it English, why not have it speak Spanish or Chinese or something and have it teach the kid instead?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: A nice idea, but suppose the people making the furbies didn't know Spanish or Chinese?
I don't get the Furbish thing either, same goes for Klingon, Elvish, etc. not that the furbies speaking it bugs me, it's more the fans who insist in typing in furbish or other made-up lingo. The nice thing about Furbish is that it's easy enough to ignore. I can easily tune out a furby speaking Furbish, but English tends to get my attention. Great when I'm interacting with the furby, but not so much when I put it down to go do something else and it says something in English that distracts me.
🙎♂️sambiddle Sam Biddle
Sam Biddle/Verb-a-noun 8/24/12 1:49pm
That's actually a very clever idea!
👩🏼🎓jbritt11 jbritt11
jbritt11/Sam Biddle
8/24/12 10:43pm
The fact that you played "I Wish You Would" by Kanye West for Furby makes me love this site even more. I can't stop laughing!
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Gagging* Bleck!
👏🏽ararapompia ararapompia
ararapompia/Sam Biddle
8/25/12 6:59am
Yeah, brilliant! Then we can have lots of people growing up who knows how to say "me hungry" and "uh oh" in Chinese!
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Hehe! Congrats. You actually managed to make me laugh.
gwmarquies gwmarquies
🤺gwmarquies/Sam Biddle
8/25/12 1:14pm
Believe it or not, it gets worse Sam. Apparently, Furby 2.0 will ship with an iOS companion app.
"You can also download a free app to help you translate Furbish, as well as virtually feed your Furby and other interactive features."
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Frown* Luddites. Fooey.
🙎♂️sambiddle Sam Biddle
Sam Biddle/gwmarquies
8/27/12 8:52am
Yeah we didn't get access to that in time, but I can't imagine it would have done anything but make everything worse.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Only if you're a tech-hating Luddite.
🙎♂️sambiddle Sam Biddle
Sam Biddle/ararapompia 8/27/12 8:53am
That's more than I'm able to say.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You should've shut up a long time ago.
🙎♂️sambiddle Sam Biddle
Sam Biddle/jbritt11
8/27/12 8:53am
I tried to teach it to say THOU SHALL NOT BE TRILL but it just kept saying "me hungry" in response.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: What a nonsense sentence. How does one "be trill?" A trill is a musical term, it's not something you can be. Enough with the King James 10 Commandment mockouts already anyway! I'm really sick of people doing that!
And how many times does this need to be said?:
You cannot "teach" furbies English. That's just a myth. Furbies come programmed with a certain number of English and Furbish words and phrases. They are programmed to start off with the Furbish, and gradually increase the use of the English data.
Gah!
Over and out.
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