What can a 1998 Furby do?

The year of 1998 began with everyone in the toy industry contemplating as to what would be in store for them come December and Christmas at the end of the year. All of them across the industry were making their own plans on how to get the best out of the Christmas toy sales. Unknown to all of them three people David Hampton and Caleb Chung along with Richard Levy who joined them in the Furby project had better ideas.

They launched the Furby, a robotic talkative toy like none other seen before. Launched just before Christmas it stole the show at every toy store it was up for sale. Introduced at an incredibly low retail price of US $ 35/= it changed hands in the black market at prices above US $ 100/= plus some known to have been sold even for US $ 500/= to desperate parents who just had to get one for their unrelenting kids.

How to Take Care of Your Furby

What made the Furby so special was that it could talk and kick up a conversation with the kid or whoever would sit and talk to them. First it was gibberish in a language special to Furbies which the innovators named it as “Furbish”. The preprogrammed Furby was eventually able to rearrange the words installed in it and speak out clear words in English. It was able to bring some sort of sense into a conversation when guided through slowly and clearly by speaking to it.

A Furby brought so much of fun to everyone that it was too good to be true and was a must have toy for every kid, especially the nine year old girls and above. Furby displayed a sense of intelligence that no other toy could match. Furby became a companion of sorts and because it could be cuddled and petted it really swept little girls off their feet.

This caught the frenzied imagination of Christmas shoppers especially the kids who clamored for it and by the end of December 1.8 million Furbies were sold leaving other toy manufacturers looking up at the ceiling. They had been stumped with a toy that was never seen on the horizon. Furby did not stop there, 40 million were sold in the first three years which was just fantastic and brought a whole new dimension to toy making across the world.