HASBRO Furby Purple, Interactive Toy that Responds to Voice, for Boys and Girls, Ages 6+, with 15 Fashion Accessories, Animatronic Electronic Plush Toy for Children, F6743, Official Product, New Model
During the ongoing 'Prime Gratitude Festival' pre-sale on Amazon, Hasbro Japan's electronic pet, 'Furby Purple (F6743),' is available for 1,784 yen. Considering its manufacturer's suggested retail price of 9,900 yen at its domestic launch in July 2024, this is a massive price cut of approximately 82%.
Furby, for those who remember, is an owl-like talking pet that was first released in the U.S. in 1998 and became a huge sensation in Japan in 1999. It reportedly sold a cumulative total of approximately 40 million units worldwide within three years of its launch. The model currently on sale is the new generation, which was revived overseas in 2023 for Furby's 25th anniversary and launched domestically in 2024.
The latest version of Furby is quite the performer, speaking Japanese and its unique 'Furbish' language, as well as moving its body to dance and lighting up its ears. You can switch between five play modes by calling out 'Hey Furby!' and using phrases like 'Let's dance.' It includes over 600 phrases and songs and responds to being petted on the head or hugged. Furbies can even chat with each other.
By the way, for PC enthusiasts, there's also the option of radically 'modding' Furby. The source code for the original Furby, written in assembly language at the time, is available on GitHub. For the 'Furby Connect' released in 2016, there's even an open-source project that analyzes its Bluetooth communication to control its actions from a PC.
Original Furby source code (from GitHub)
Unfortunately, however, the 2023 generation Furby does not support internet connectivity or communication with external devices via Bluetooth, and its source code is not publicly available. While there's still room for custom modifications by combining it with components like ESP32 or Raspberry Pi, this would require knowledge of circuit board wiring and electronics.
Nevertheless, even just playing with it as a regular talking electronic pet seems like a lot of fun. With Furby, which cost around 10,000 yen at launch, now under 2,000 yen, it's not just a great toy for kids, but also likely to be bought by adults for nostalgia. It might also be interesting to take on a slightly more niche autumn project: transforming Furby into your very own AI pet, perhaps with the help of Codex or Claude Code.
