The weirdly cute Furby
That mid-90s afternoon when I discovered Furbies existed changed everything forever. I was probably lying on the couch, watching TV, eating cookies and milk when I saw those bright eyes blink for the first time. The Furby moved its ears while saying something only the kids on television understood, and it reacted to playtime as if it understood everything around it, even though it acted like a baby discovering the world. I didn’t know whether I wanted to take care of it or run away from it, and that was exactly why I couldn’t peel my eyes from the screen.
That colorful, furry creature on TV wasn’t particularly pretty; its appearance sat right there in the uncanny valley, like most creatures that inhabited ’80s movies, which made everything so intriguing and real for any ’90s kid who, like me, just wanted a Mogwai to put in their backpack and take for a walk. Its face was made of two spheres that blinked at the end of every sentence and a third sphere that opened and closed without warning while the Furby spoke, a coat of fur that seemed to have a life of its own. It was ugly in a way only a child understands: the kind of ugly that makes you want to hug it.
This appearance of the original Furby, crystallized in the millennial mind, is so iconic that it still haunts internet forums. Communities that perpetuate the simplicity of that face, three spheres stuck to one another, articulated in a way that looked more like a factory accident than a designer’s decision, but that, precisely because of it, gave the Furby an expression no modern toy can replicate. It always seemed like it was one second away from doing something you didn’t expect.
There are also communities that make custom Furbies, turning them into unimaginable, anthropomorphized creatures that mix the scary with the cute and give the Furby enigmatic personalities, sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing. It’s as if everyone knew its secret was never the countless sensors beneath that fur, but its strangeness.
Unfortunately, Furbies from more recent generations abandoned that side to become cute, smiling creatures with fairy-like ears. It was probably a recommendation from Hasbro’s research and marketing team, who thought it would be a good idea to bring the Furby closer to the My Little Pony universe, which is probably the company’s flagship brand. It’s almost a domestication of the monster. They stripped it of its personality and that aura that gave you the feeling you didn’t quite know what you had in your hands.
But today there are Labubus, these plush creatures that became a craze in 2024 precisely for being cute and wrong, pretty in a way that unsettles you. Labubus prove that the market still knows that children (and adults) want to be looked at by something they don’t fully understand. And then I realize: maybe my heart never longed for a Furby itself. It longed for a world with those creatures that made me feel that mixture of fear and wanting to hug. Even though I never had a Furby to haunt my sleep and be banned from coming with me to school, I had that couch, those cookies, those eyes blinking on the screen. And, somehow, that was enough to change everything.
Oo-nye boh doo?
