Furby was the massively popular 1998 toy, notable for its limited but engaging interactive behaviors like looking at users and speaking nonsense. Its success is attributed to significant technical achievement and an unconventional approach to programming personality.
The article frames Furby's design as representing a unique philosophy on human-computer interaction that could inform modern AI development. It promotes a podcast episode that will explore Furby's origins, rise to fame, and cultural impact.
The main topics covered are Furby's popularity and characteristics, its technical and design significance, and the promotional details for a related podcast episode.
The hottest toy of 1998 was sort of adorable, and sort of annoying. It couldn’t do much — couldn’t do anything, really — but it could look at you, it could say some nonsense phrases, and it seemed uncannily aware of the world around it. That’s all Furby needed to pretty much take over the world.
The cute and cursed story of Furby
On Version History: the cute, furry toy that wouldn’t stop talking and made millions of friends anyway.
On Version History: the cute, furry toy that wouldn’t stop talking and made millions of friends anyway.
The story of Furby is filled with technical achievement. The fact that the furry little guy worked at all, ever, was a bit of a surprise to a lot of people involved. But Furby also represents a different way of thinking about our relationships with technology, a different idea about human-computer interaction, and maybe even a path worth following for AI companies everywhere.
On this episode of Version History, we tell the story of Furby, from its roots in an off-grid house in California all the way to the top of the toy heap. David Pierce, Victoria Song, and Sean Hollister look back at the earliest ideas behind the toy, try and figure out how it became the next big thing before most people had ever touched one, and the unusual approach to programming and personality that made it work. It might be hard to remember now, but people loved their Furby friends. We have some ideas about what that might mean for the future.
This is the first episode of the third season of Version History, which means we’ll have five more episodes for you the next five Sundays. Here’s how to get every episode, and all our other fun stuff, as soon as it drops:
- The Version History podcast feed
- The new Version History YouTube channel
- Our new TikTok and Instagram accounts
If you’re a Verge subscriber, you can also get access to Version History (and all our other podcasts) with no ads. All you have to do is visit your account settings.
If you want to know more about the history of Furby, and the remarkable tech inside that weird little gremlin, here are some links to get you started:
- The original Furby patent
- From Wired in 1998: Moody Furballs And The Developers Who Love Them
- From Time in 1998: How The Furby Flies
- David Hampton’s Computer History Museum oral history
- A 2014 interview with Caleb Chung
- From The New York Times in 1998 Far From the Pleading Crowd: Furby’s Dad
- From IEEE Spectrum: Coded for Cuteness: How the Furby Conquered Hearts and Minds
- Furby 2023 review: my kids love Furby — send help
- LONG FURBY
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