Furby

A Furby (plural Furbys or Furbies, according to Tiger. Co.) is an electronic toy, more specifically, a robot, made by Tiger Electronics which went through a period of being a \"must-have\" toy following its launch in the holiday season of 1998, with continual sales until 2000. more...

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Furby sold 1.8 million units in 1998 and 14 million units in 1999, and altogether in its three years of original production, Furby sold over 40 million units, and its speaking capabilities were translated into 24 languages. Furbys were the first successful attempt to produce and sell a domestically-aimed robot. A newly purchased Furby starts out speaking entirely Furbish, the unique language that all Furbys use, but are programmed to speak less Furbish as they learn more English. The more English they learn, the more they \"grow\", thus placing them under the autonomous robot category.

In 2005, new Furbys were released, with voice-recognition and more complex facial movements, among many other changes and improvements.

Birth of the Furby

The name Furby apparently comes from the prototype which one of its creators Orvy McCahill nicknamed 'Fur-ball'. The first furby prototype looked like a lion. In appearance, the Furby resembles a furry owl with large ears. Dave Hampton and Caleb Chung created the Furby in merely nine months (in addition to an additional nine months spent designing the toy). That was the amount of time between Tiger Electronics showing an interest in his interactive creatures, during which Roger Schiffman bought the rights to it, and the time they hit store shelves. Furby's first public appearance was at the International Toy Fair in 1998. Everyone went insane for the Furbies, and kids loved them all over the country.

Furbys originally retailed for about US$35, and upon release Furbys flew off the shelves in toyshops. Catapulting demand for these toys during the 1998 holiday season drove the resale price over US$100 and sometimes as high as several hundred dollars. Furbys sold for over US$300 in newspapers and in auctions. Nicknames were given to them, and sellers assigned rarity values to them. Some people continue to call their Furbys by the terms 'wedding Furby', 'tuxedo Furby', 'snowball Furby', 'biker Furby', among others. All, of course, were dubbed rare by sellers, because they were so hard to find at the time. In a sure display of the demand for even one Furby, some sellers at the time scammed people out of a lot of money, without even having first given them a Furby. Parental battles, arguments, and fights increased rapidly as supplies dwindled, and when retail supplies ran out, parents turned to the Internet, where Furbys could be purchased for two, three, or more multiples of their retail price. This action led to many parents ending up on eBay. During one 12-month period, a total of 27 million Furby toys were sold.

Read more at Wikipedia.org