Endless Thread - Freaky Furby Friday

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

Alert: Furbys have invaded "Endless Dread!" They're having a bit of a moment. In this episode, producers Jacob Garcia and Quincy Walters dig into the creepy and paranormal corners of Furby internet �� from haunted Furbys, and cursed ones to one that hunts... ghosts. And an unexpected guest that Dr. Frankenstein himself would shriek at!

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WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Amory, do you have a Furby history? Uh, no. I know I said that. You got a history with Furbies? No? I'm projecting, I'm projecting like one of my cousins history. No.

I got a couple X's... I got at least one X's a Furby. Yeah. But I thought this episode, at least in part, came from... You were yelling about Furby's like three months ago, and then somehow this episode happened. So all I'm saying is you're to blame for everything that's happened so far in this episode and everything that is going to happen after this,

although you've had quite a bit of health. Yeah, except that. Almost all the help. Yes, all the help. Now, if you remember Furbies, the toy that came out 25 years ago, you probably remember they were a little creepy looking already. Like big, beady eyes, weird beak-looking thing for a mouth,

like a gerbil crossed with a gremlin that would either love you or maybe murder you. And they talked, which has resulted in a pretty weird quarter century history for a toy. And a few months ago, two of our producers, really three of our producers, jumped on this. And it started with Quincy Walters and Grace Tatter, who went into the studios at WBUR. So we're talking about Furbies today. And I once had a creepy encounter with a Furby. So it was 2019. and I was really close with my aunt Jeannie,

and she had died that February. I'm sorry. Thank you. And she lived in Palms or outside of Palm Springs, California. So I went to her house with my parents and my sister to clean out her house a few months after. Grace's aunt used to run a nightclub in San Francisco, which is very cool.

And her home was also very cool. It was like a shrine to this very cool life she lived. And at this particular time, Grace is in a certain part of her aunt's house all alone. Uh-oh. I don't like where this is going. But I was the only one in the room. And in my memory, I, like, hear a sound. I almost thought, like, maybe it was, like, a cat or something.

I was, like, I... What did it's... Can you recreate the sound? Like, I feel like it was something that, like, it's like, it was saying, like, hi, like, Furby. something like that. But it didn't make any sense. So I thought it must be like an animal or something. Which also didn't make any sense

because there weren't any animals in the house that I knew of. But the house had been, you know, empty for like a month. It could be. It could be. Yeah. And so then I like walk over to this pile of stuff. And there was a Furby. And it was still in the box.

And Grace's Oncini didn't collect toys. Yet here was this toy in her house, still in the box, presumably had been for years, probably no batteries in it, and it was talking. Great says that the experience was so bizarre, so creepy, that she feels like she misremembers it. It sounds so crazy that it made a sound of its own accord that I'm like questioning myself because that, like, what would the explanation for that? possibly be. Well, Grace, what if I told you it wasn't creepy that the Furby made noise on its own, that it kind of happens regularly. Really? Yeah. No, you're not just making me feel better? No, no. So, as we've been saying, Furbies came out 25 years ago in 1998. Just in time for the holidays, they were made by the company Tiger Electronics, and creepy as they might have been to some,

A lot of people loved them. Kids eyeing shelves, parents filling wish lists, each year trying to snag the number one toy. This Christmas, it's Furby. You likely won't spot one on store shelves, though. There's just too many people trying to find one. The following year, 1999, 14 million Furbies were sold. They were almost like Beanie babies or something, massive craze. Nobody has offered me $1,000, but I have had offers from $150 to $650.

Hundreds of dollars for a toy that feels, sneezes, and yes, it can be taught to speak English. And this craze is still going. Earlier this year, we got an email from a listener who dabbles in Furby's and the paranormal. And she just won a coveted, bejeweled Furby in an auction. She told us they've sold for as high as a hundred. thousand dollars. That is insane. It is insane.

That's four years of college. Four years of college, ladies and gentlemen, for one very ridiculous toy. Yes. But this listener has a bejewled Furby of her own, Ben. And she got it for comparatively a steal for just under $7,000. Oh, just seven grand. Just an amount of money that would make a significant change in my life.

Well, it probably made a significant change in hers. She wanted this bejeweled Furby. And it's, you know, perhaps a scary amount. But this got us really looking into Furby's a little more. You can't just write these off. The Furby fandom is real. There are Furby forums. There's a Furby that helps a paranormal investigator.

And there's someone whose full-time job is making Freaky Furbies. And what we noticed was a bit of a streak of the paranormal of the creepy. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Severson and you're listening to Endless Dread. Coming to you from the creepy shadowy studios of WBUR Boston's NPR station. Actually, the studios are quite nice. Today we are going to take a look at Furby's propensity for creepiness. We're celebrating 25 years of the Furby. is celebrating the right word? Sure, because when the Furby came out, it was the toy for the new millennium.

Then did you know that Guinness World Records considers the Furby the first AI toy? Wow, I did not know that, and somehow that makes them more creepy. Also, someone recently connected one of the old Furbies to chat GPT, and yes, the result is horrifying. Was there a secret plot from Furbies to take over the world? Furby's plan to take over the world involved infiltrating households through their cute and cubly appearance, then using their advanced AI technology to manipulate and control their owners. They will slowly expand their influence until they have complete domination over humanity. You know, I was thinking, what good is a creepy episode without creepy organ music, right?

Yeah, true. And this, Ben, is an organ made out of Herbies. You might also want to stay tuned for the music A Ghost Hunting Furby plays when it detects spirits And we're going to meet someone who takes regular old Furbies And rips them up to make even creepier ones And then sells them on Etsy Let's go on this weird adventure

Once upon a time There was a woman who lived in a swampy college town in Florida Emery, there are just way too many spooky things happening in that one sentence. Oh, wait. You just wait. It gets better, Ben. So there's this woman in Florida, and her house is swarming with Furbies. Well, I have Furby keychains from McDonald's from the 2000s, and so I keep them on my key ring, any bag that I have, I give them out to people, I keep them in my car. This is Vanne Norwood, also known as the listener who emailed us. I like to stay surrounded, basically. And then I have like a Furby in my living room set up.

up in a nice little bird cage. It's really cute. But then in my bedroom, I have like a ladder type of shelf, and then I also have them along my TV stand. So I'm just like being watched by them at all times. I have a big girl job, but on the side, I'm a psychic medium and animal communicator. We really do have the best listeners. We do. Yes. And Vanna won a 1999 bejeweled Furby in an auction just this year. She says in the first, Furby community, this particular one is the Holy Grail. It was from the estate of jeweler Sidney Mobell. He called it the jeweled art Furby.

And Vanna says there are nine jeweled art Furbys. I think in June I was browsing on Reddit on R. Furby and someone posted, they're like, guys, the bejeweled Furby is up for auction. And I went to look at it and it was at Bonham's auction house. So then I was like, I need it. Going into the auction, Vanna says she just had this feeling that she was going to win it. Well, I tried to cast a spell of sorts so that I would get the Furby. So I wasn't that surprised, but it still felt like a dream.

I was like, no way because, like, I had already cried and, like, bought some other Furbies to ease the pain. I just did some breath work, you know. I breathed in and I breathed out, and I was, like, just putting out blocks. I was like, anyone else who wants it, no. And this was a little treat for herself for getting back into Furby fandom. We wanted to know where this intense Furby love comes from. Like, was Vanna into them as a kid? Was there a first Furby experience that had an impact?

My therapist actually asked me the exact same thing. But, yeah, in 1998, was when I got my first Furby. And I remember I lived at a smaller town, and we didn't really have like a mall or anything like that. And my mom had to drive to the next town over to get the Furby for me. And like it was this whole thing. Like I had it before my friends. And I think that that's where like the endearment towards it started.

Yeah. But I didn't have that many as a kid. I only just had the one. Now she has a ton. And she says her rejuvenated interest didn't come out of nowhere. Furbies are having a comeback. Oh yes. We're in a Furby Renaissance.

They actually just dropped a new model. I think it's the first one in 10 years. And so it's kind of exciting because it's like capturing a new generation. But it's funny because there's been like discourse within the Furby fandom. You know, some people hate it. Some people love it. You know, obviously technology has progressed. So it has a bunch of features.

Like it has like a meditation mode where Furby will like guide you through breathing exercises. and so that's pretty cool. But the things that people don't like about it are that the mouth doesn't move. The purists say it strays too far from the creepy original. But she's a die-hard Furby fan. She loves it either way. In addition to Vanna being a Furby die-hard,

she also has another interest. Yes, you guys, Vanna is an actual, true-to-God ghost hunter. Which for some reason makes total sense that we would have listeners who are ghost hunters. Vena and Furby fans. It's all coming together. And Furby fans. You know, just we're freaky, the endless thread crowd.

We're freaky Furby ghost hunting people. And of course, with Furby's being haunted and all, Vanna wanted to blend her interests. Well, you know, some people say that Furbys are haunted because they're like this thing. They're like, oh, if you take the batteries out, they'll still talk. So there's kind of like that little bit of lore. But then for me personally, I had my dad make me a rim pod Furby, which is what like paranormal investigators use. It's just something that puts out an electromagnetic field.

And then when anything disrupts it and alert goes off, I can take it to haunted locations. And then if anything gets next to it, its eyes glows red. Vana has TikToks of this. You're hearing that right. Vana's ghost detecting, Furby plays Mambo number five when it detects something. So what we learned from Vanna is that there's the lore of haunted Furbys.

But then there are what are called cursed Furbies, which are something else entirely. Yeah, the cursed Furbies, I don't really know how it started, maybe with Long Furby, but people just started making very, like, dark-sided creations. Like, there's one that are just, like, shrimp or, like, a skin Furby. just yeah people are turning into like the elder tours type of things and yeah I don't know what it is yes Furby fandom has mutated beyond collecting and into Franken Furbies that's how weird things have gotten all right we already did this Mambo number five bit what is this Ben I think there's an entity here boo what in God's name is this this monstrosity

Sounds like producer Quincy, but that's not quite right. It's a cursed Furby. Or a cursed Quincy, who are going to call Frankie, here to bring us through the second half of the episode and introduce yet another Furby lover on the Endless Thread team. That's right, boils and ghouls. The name's Frankie. I was once a treasured pet for the kid who owned me.

Jasper was his name. And then he abandoned me, threw me in the trash. But I was found by some guy who took me, ripped me up, and made me whole with the other body parts of Furbies. And now I've been given a new life to be at the seat of any table discussing forgotten Furbies. You're just like a dirty fur ball and 90s primitive AI with a chip on your shoulder. Don't forget, I'm haunted, baby. But whatever. Now, where's the script for this?

Give me that. Okay, here we go. There's a fellow here named Jacob Garcia. Oh, it's a fellow. He's doing a newsroom fellowship. Anyway, while Jacob is warming up for his podcast debut, we're going to take a quick break. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

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Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. You all wanted to learn about cursed Furbys. So who better to take the reins than me, Frankie? Welcome to the show, I guess, Frankie. You're welcome to welcome me.

I am so very confused. and along for the ride. Let's now turn our attention to a truly wicked Furby tale of creation that Dr. Frankenstein himself would shriek at. Take it away, Jacob. Are your Furby's cursed? You know, quite literally cursed? Is there a supernatural curse placed on them?

I would say no, but I would certainly like it to come off that way. That's Devon Gardner, the sick and twisted mind behind some pretty terrifying Furby creations. If you look at these Frank and Furby creations of Devons, they are creepy as hell. And Long Furby is a sort of catch-all name for them? Oh God, why does it have tentacles? I think, you know, at the end of the day, I want to create something that is shocking and a little creepy. Honestly, Devin wasn't even into Furby's as a kid,

but after he was laid off from his job in 2019, he saw a photo of a Long Furby online. He got obsessed and decided to make his own. So the official Furby Wiki says the first ever Long Furby was created by Tumblr user Furby Fuzz, also known as Allo? Oh my God. What is happening?

She got the idea after wondering, quote, what if a Furby was longer, end quote. Five months later on May 14th, 2018, long Furbies were born. They look pretty much exactly how you might imagine a long Furby would look, like a bunch of Furby bodies stacked below one face, and then the feet are all the way at the bottom. With no sewing abilities, I, like, bought a Furby. I bought fabric and, like, thread. And I made just this terrible iteration of a long Furby.

But I was, I knew it sucked, but I was so proud of it. Devin started posting pictures of his Furby creations online with silly inspirational quotes. And it took off. Now he runs an Etsy account where people can adopt. his Furbies and also has almost a million followers across different social medias, all under the umbrella, Long Furby Fam. My child, essentially, and it sort of surrounds around the misadventures of a group of handmade, like Furby puppets and creatures.

I've spent so much time with this little cast that they don't come off as creepy to me anymore. They're more just like, I don't know, house guests at this point. You know that sounds so creepy, right? It does. But the way I create them at this point is almost, like, there's almost a surgical precision and disconnect. His Furby creations fall under the term odd body Furby. Under the term odd, what is this? What are these categorizations?

And who needs them? I'm so confused. Long, odd-body furbies. The Furby verse is endless and terrifying. The Ferb-Verbverse. The Ferbverse. The Ferbverse. Odd-body Furby is just a term coined by the community

for a Furby that's been modified in any way from its original form. For me, and I think to most, there was always something a little eerie about Furbys. And really to their core, there's just. something unusual about them. They are an amalgamation of features from a bunch of different animals, essentially. And that's what makes me perfect. Quincey, your commitment is just I love it. I love it. Back to Devon. You know, I get to wake up every day and make the weirdest thing I can think of. So some of his Furbies are just simple hand puppets with a mouth that opens and closes,

but they get stranger from there. I think, like, the most regular bizarre or cursed one, as some might say, is a round pink loaf, as I call of them, that regularly sports pink tentacles that I puppet from my fingers, and also has a, I guess the only thing to call it is an orifice underneath, which, you know, things may enter or leave, be it tiny babies or worms or slime or sometimes even food. He's got a bunch of disturbing Furby friends, but when I asked him about his nastiest, freakyest creation, one Furby to rule them all came to mind. I'm a little worried for myself that before you even finish the question,

I knew exactly which one to bring up. He made it in 2021 for an art show in L.A. He told me he was given full creative freedom to explore whatever he wanted. Yeah, the vision was Furby, larva, but also like a dental surgery gone wrong. So he made a foot and a half long maggot-shaped Furby. So it was kind of cylindrical but had sort of a bug shape to it. Had the beak and two eyes on the front. But its body had like a gum texture, like the inside of your mouth gum.

It's also coated in a slime-like modeling substance, so it looks perpetually wet. So far away from, for, Burbies, that it's like... Are those... So weird. Are those real teeth? It has a tongue... It has a tongue coming out of the side, but then there are these teeth embedded that just

look like straight up real teeth plucked from someone's mouth. Yeah, they really do. And what's like the stringy stuff? Ugh, this is disgusting. I'm upset. I'm upset. I'm upset looking at this. From there, I...

stuck a bunch of teeth in it, just sticking out, and put sutures, like, all around it. So it had these, like, stringy bits, like, going in and out of the different sections as if it were, like, stitched together haphazardly. Sadly, no humans were pillaged in the creation of it, but the teeth did look very realistic. to the point that some people, I think, were concerned that they were human. Okay, so what on earth is Devin getting at with all of this? Yeah, why is he expanding the Furbverse into truly terrifying reaches? For one, it's been a great marketing tactic for him. He makes a living from generating clicks on his videos, which helps him sell his freakified Furbies on Etsy.

He sold almost 2,000 Furbies, with each one costing $120 to $150. Yeah, the Furbyverse is that lucrative. But Furbies are also a form of expression for Devin. Oh, Furbies are a blank canvas that I can turn into a creepy monster with relative ease. I'm having a few ideas of my own. This isn't ending up on the Sistine Chapman. but to other people, you know, it might have made their day or inspired them to create something. I mean, this kind of speaks to why we're even talking about Furbys.

Furbys came out 25 years ago and it was one of these strange things where in a way it was like a corporate misstep. The toy weirded people out, which didn't seem to be the intent of the toy maker. And yet that strangeness, that weirdness really inspired regular people. to take up the Furby flag. And like so many other cases of culture hacking and, you know, fan fiction in the furry verse and I don't know, Dumbledore's weird vacation, things like that.

Regular people just kind of ran with Furbies to create things nobody imagined, further iterations. And the terrifying, expanding fan fiction Furbyverse to Long Furby and on and on. Helped, of course, as always, by the internet. It's almost as if monsters aren't born. They're made. Just like you, Frankie.

Like me, ID-K what you're talking about, Amory, but I was born bad. That was your takeaway, weak. What I got from this episode is F-U-R-B-Y is B-A-C-K, baby. I feel like this whole. The whole episode is punishment for me suggesting a Furby episode. Because you're like, you want a Furby episode. We'll give you a Furby episode. We'll give you the Furbiest episode there ever was.

I guess you could say it's come back to haunt you. Yes. Yes. Okay. So speaking of a Furby haunting, what happened with Grace in her aunt's house, the Furby that was in her aunt's house? We either sold or donated or, you know, took home, like, some things from the house, but, like, everything had to go. Certainly none of us took the Furby, the haunted Furby.

I think maybe we did sense that it was haunted. I did not donate it to any archives, but, and I don't think I would have thrown it away because that would have been sad. So it must have just gotten sold in an estate sale. So, listener beware. There's an unaccounted for creepy Furby out there. I already had one moa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-h this episode. I don't get to. Come on, we should all laugh together.

Me, Amory, and Frankie and Jacob. Ready? Woo-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. You all are aware that you humans don't stand a chance against us. Furbies were already in your home and hearts. But weren't you found in a dump-stop? Oh. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.

Today's episode was produced by Quincy Walters, Jacob Garcia, with a little help from me, Ben Brock Johnson. My co-host is Amory Severson. Our managing producer is Samata Joshi. Spook-tastic sound design this week, assembled in a lab by the mad scientist and production manager Paul Vicus. The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, Emily Jenkowski, and Matt Reed. Endless Thread is a show about the show about the best of the lab.

the blurred lines between online communities and a long Furby. If there's an untold history and unsolved mystery or a weird story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up. Endless thread at WBUR.org. See you next week, Boils and Gools and Furbies.