The complete and surprising history of Furby

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 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:

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: