Furby

 History of furbies

Furby Fandom

Furby Bootlegs

Long Furby                                   👧Videos For You!

Odbody Furby

On January 13, 1999, it was reported the National Security Agency of the United States banned Furbies from entering NSA's property due to concerns that they may be used to record and repeat classified information, advising those that see any on NSA property to "contact their Staff Security Officer for guidance." Can Furbies swear?

LaCoy says many words that come out of the wildly popular Furby dolls are not clearly enunciated. But a spokeswoman for the manufacturer, Tiger Electronics, a Hasbro subsidiary, rejects the accusation, saying the Furbys are programmed so they cannot curse or mimic curses.

According to a 1998 profile in the New York Times, Hampton spent his childhood in Michigan messing around with electronics. He started by fixing broken radios for neighbors; at 13, he got a job in a television repair shop; and not too long after that, he built a ham radio. He graduated from high school in 1970 and enlisted immediately in the Navy specifically so he could study electronics. He spent eight years in the service, specializing in aviation electronics, traveling a ton, and picking up a variety of languages including Japanese, Thai, Chinese, and Hebrew as he went. After he got out, he landed several jobs in Silicon Valley, a couple of which were in toy development; indeed, he did a stint with Mattel, where he met Caleb Chung. Eventually, he broke off and created a design and consulting company of his own.

Chung, meanwhile, didn’t have a formal education in electronics; he said in a 2014 interview with filmmaker Gregory Green that he graduated high school, but also that his family was low income and subsequently moved around a lot when he was a kid. But as a result of us upbringing, he also said he “didn’t grow up with boundaries in my thinking” — which helped him cultivate terrific skills in thinking outside the box.

It's easy to see how these two guys might come together to create something cool — and in the late '90s, that's exactly what they did.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Furby was in part inspired by an earlier ‘90s-era electronic pet: The Tamagotchi. In early 1997, Hampton and Chung saw the Tamagotchi in action for the first time at the annual Toy Fair trade show in New York — and while there was no denying how cool the idea was, one big issue Hampton spotted with the Tamagotchi according to the New York Times profile was the fact that you couldn’t pet it.

So he and Chung set out to design an electronic companion you could pet. The working name for the toy was was “Furball.” It spoke in a mishmash of the languages Hampton had picked up while he was in the Navy.

Want to see the very first Furby? Check out the video of Chung’s interview with Gregory Green. At the 3:10 mark, he brings out the first one ever built, along with the design book with all the schematics and notes that went into actually creating the thing: Acording To Bustle.