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| Tie Dye color way |
Old toys, new toys, and weird toys, but ESPECIALLY banned toys. And I collect them all.
Lawn darts, suspicious flying broomsticks, glowing alien fingers, dolls that fly directly into fire, dolls that eat hair, you name it and it's pissed off a parent, I got it.
Other than banned toys, I also collect bootleg toys, especially Teddy Ruxpin wannabes. Once again, the shittier, the better. There's nothing better than spending an evening listening to rock cassettes and recorded Seinfeld clips through the mouth of "Teddy Tale-Spin". Or at least that's what I believed... but now, I'm not so sure.
It all started one balmy spring morning. I was having my morning coffee, and waiting on a package to be delivered. Suddenly, I hear FedEx delivery hastily toss my package on my porch, and then speed off. WTF? No need to abuse my boxes.
I put down my coffee to see what all the fuss was about. As I expected, nothing to be running from, just my now dented package. They better not have fucked the resale value. Not that I commonly sell off my prizes anyway, but still.
I took it to the kitchen table and immediately get to opening it.
This one was... a little stranger than usual.
It kind of looked like a cross between the Fresh Tie Dye and Midnight Wolf color change furbys, with the crazy hair and frosty y2k color palette, but it also had little hands like a loris and round ears. It had black eyelids with white lashes, and the tush tag read "TW" instead of "WT", but the most striking thing about it was it's blood red eyes.
Nothing about this official, idk why they even bothered with the tag. I turned it upside down to look for the battery compartment, and it sprang to life.
"OO-nye boh dee wah?! Kah oo-tye nah-bah, Boo-dah! Boo-dah wah!"
Yep, and it's talkative! I think it's what I think it is... Herbie!!! It didn't come in it's box, but it does have a note.
"I COME TO LIFE WHEN I TALK TO YOU AND I KNOW WHEN YOU RESPOND TO ME TOO. MY FACIAL EXPRESSIONS, HEAD MOVEMENT AND ARM GESTURES MAKES ME REALLY SEEM TO BE ALIVE. I MAKE LEARNING ENTERTAINING, EASY AND FUN BY PLAYING GAMES TO TEACH ABOUT THE ALPHABET, NUMBERS, TIME, SHAPES, COLORS, BODY PARTS AND SO MUCH MORE."
I'm guessing that was all the marketing nonsense that would have been written on the packaging?
On the other side was a handwritten note.
"Thank you for your purchase!I had to get rid of this thing, before it was too late. I hope you'll understand. I just couldn't take the gibbering anymore. Maybe, you will succeed where I failed, and DESTROY THIS THING.Destroy thing before 'it' comes after you too. Don't even entertain it's babbling, that's what 'it' wants.Please..."
Well that was certainly weird. Must be some new kind of viral marketing campaign. Though it's a bit much to imply I should destroy the item I've just bought. Meanwhile, the Herbie has been babbling to himself while I read.
"Whatcha' talking about buddy?"
"Kah boo-dah, dah may-may."
"Ha ha, cute."
Before I get too far ahead, let me tell you about Herbie. Herbie as you can probably tell, was a Furby bootleg made by the company OCCO ELECTRONIC.
They were sold in Japan more than any other country, and therefore have a modified vocabulary compared to an American Furby. Its kind of like a dialect. It's not unintelligible, but it does take a learned ear to understand what they are saying. Another thing is that they both slowly "learn" human language over time, incorporating more of it into their babbling. In addition to this, they also "age" and remember their names, thanks to having an EEPROM chip.
OCCO ELECTRONIC faced legal action in 1999 leading to the mass seizure of Herbie toys in Aichi, Japan. 20,000 fake Furbys of many kinds (not just Herbie) were shredded, making them VERY RARE. Which is the main reason I know about it.
It's a statement piece, kind of like a Labubu or something. Similar to the Labubu, it was also kind of ugly. So it was designated to live on top of my wardrobe.
Since it looked like the toy was in perfect working order, I left it alone for the rest of the day. Later, the thing started speaking in the middle of the night without anything touching it.
Usually that's no issue. Contrary to common perception, Furbys aren't possessed.
They have sensors that perceive light and motion, and will "wake up" if a car's headlights light up your room. They can tell if you walk past them even if they are shut in a closet, because of your footsteps. It's only natural that the replicas share those features.
What made this different was what it said.
"Nathan sleeping? Kah ah-ah woh lah, heehee hee. Oh-kay dee?
I never told it my name.
Nobody has been around to call me by name, and I certainly don't go around talking to myself in the 3rd person. Maybe its previous owner was also named Nathan? It'd be a hell of a coincidence if that's true, but it's not impossible.
"Nathan doh-bah-boh," It squealed, "Dah doo-ay wah!"
I hadn't even moved.
Since now we were both wide awake, I figured I would play with it for a while. I pet it on the head, then I tried to "feed" it the cap of my pen.
"Wah! YUCK! Puh tooey!!" Then it started screeching for about 4 seconds. "Kah boo koo-doh..."
Great. It sounded like something internal was scraping on something. The impact from the FedEx driver throwing it on my porch must have knocked something loose. How has FedEx not gone out of business yet?
I'll write them a strongly worded email in the morning.
As for Herbie, he was still yapping his head off. It didn't even sound like Furbish OR Furdish. It sounded more like it was speaking in tongues.
I turned him over, but then remembered that I need a screwdriver to see anything back there, and for a brief moment it's blood red eyes reflected just a little too much light back to be acrylic. The eyes seemed almost hyper realistically alive. But that's not possible.
I wrapped it in a blanket to muffle it's sounds, and tried to go back to sleep... but sleep evaded me. It wasn't possible.
⁂⁂⁂
The next morning I felt shitty. I slept like a dead body. First thing I did (after taking a shower and writing that email), was to hunt down a scan of the Herbie instruction book. Something was clearly wrong with it, and I was determined to see what it was.
Referring to the instructions I turned it over to access the battery compartment.
"Kah oo-tye nah-bah!"
What I saw shocked me. There were no batteries. Of course there were no batteries! You can't mail it with the batteries inside!
But how was it speaking to me? Herbie's ears twitch even as I stare into the empty battery plate.
That's not possible. It's just not possible.
"Mama dee? Bah-boh wah! Dee-mah, mama dee?"
I got so scared that I threw it into the back of my closet, but maybe I was just being irrational. Maybe there was some left over power somehow? All the while, it kept gurgling nonsense from underneath my pile of clothes.
"Hey! kah boo ay-ay oo-nye. Mama dee wah!"
"La dee da♪ La dee da da~♫"
"Hey! kah boo ay-ay oo-nye. Hey! Mama dee wah!"
Herbie rambled ALL DAY.
"Kah boo ay-ay oo-nye."
"La dee da♪ La dee da da~♫"
"Ay-loh kah-loo-loo..."
"It's dark!"
"Mama ay-ay oo-nye wah! Oo-tah-toh-toh kah boo koo-doh"
I felt my sanity slipping. I can't let it win! Never! Never! Herbie wasn't the only Furby-like toy that I own, so I'm at least a little familiar with the Furby dialect. When it says "mama" it's speaking English. Who the hell is his mama? Toys don't have mothers, do they?
Something was horribly wrong...
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