Hey, guys. Long time reading, first time posting. I’m pretty sure most creepy toys have been covered in this thread, the monkey with the cymbals with those pointed teeth and Tickle Me Elmos that sound demonic when the battery goes down and Little Miss No Name with her giant red eyes that was probably the product of 80’s toy company execs snorting too much white powder and the early iterations of Mr. Potato Head where they only gave you the accessories and if you put it together with an orange instead of a real potato it looked like it was bleeding.

These are all classics.

But nobody has mentioned the horrifying creatures that came completely out of left field in the late 90’s. Kind of like a messed up gerbil or an owl thing. The Furby.

So there’s a lot of things weird about Furbies and I’m sure you’re familiar with most of them. They were designed with forward-facing eyes which, in nature, only develop on predatory animals. In addition, hundreds of stories about Furbies that ran without batteries and nobody knew why. Some disappeared from drawers after kids got bored of the creature or it glitches too much and parents argued with each other over who’d got rid of it.

I worked in a toy shop during the massive Furby explosion in 1998 and these things were just flying off the shelves. As part of my training on the thing, we were given a bunch of pamphlets and promotion stuff like stickers and keychains. We also each got our own individual Furby. I picked a blue one out of the giant unmarked cardboard box they came in. They were all kind of piled in there. Not in, like, individual boxes or anything and I thought that was a bit weird.

It was kind of cute, I guess. Looked a little different to the other Furbies, but I don’t really know how to explain it. Maybe the eyes were a bit less intense? Its fur was definitely super soft.

So I’m a young adult and I get bored real easy. There’s not much to do where I live in the middle of nowhere. In fact, the toy store was pretty much the only building in town next to a run-down Presbyterian church announcing the end times each week, three bars, and a Walmart. Most of everything else was shuttered and business moved over to places like Los Angeles because there was more opportunity.

There was a lab not too far, though. One that dealt with forensics on behalf of the police and stuff like that. And so I wrote them a letter. It went something about my dog being unwell and then I pulled out some of the soft fur on the Furby and shoved it in an envelope and sent it off.

I thought it was funny and that it would come back inconclusive or they’d tell me it was, like, synthetic plastic and tell me not to bother them.

It didn’t come back inclusive.

Three weeks later, I got a letter in the post from the lab and it told me that not only was it real fur, but they weren’t able to identify the species. It was just inconclusive. Part of my hoped they’d send me a letter saying, “Congratulations, you get to name your own species! Here’s a cash prize!” but there was nothing of the sort.

After that, I hid my Furby away in the drawer. I just didn’t want to look at it. Like hundreds of other people, I went to check the drawer one day and the Furby had gone. Eventually I quit, moved jobs, and moved towns.

There’s other stuff about them, too. The first Furby line had very modulated voices that children could talk to and respond to, but they were automated. In fact, a quick Google shows you the exact specs of the voice chips they put in the Furbies, which were pretty basic.

In August 2013, there was a re-release, the Furby Boom. These was an upgraded Furby, and later you could use it with your smartphone to do other shit with it, but what struck me was a story from Nebraska I read.

Basically, a mother picked up a Furby Boom because her daughter used to have it until she passed away from lymphoma when she was twelve. Maybe she thought it would remind her of the fun times her daughter had with Furby? Apparently this little girl was always playing with it and talking to her.

But that wasn’t what made the headline. What made the headline was something a little creepy.

The Furby sounded just like her daughter.

Now obviously because it’s speaking in Furbish, which is just random “oohs” and “ahhs,” it’s hard to say if she did. Maybe the mother was just traumatised or something; who knows?

In the end, she ended up killing herself in her car. Plugged the garden hose pipe into the car and…

….

….

I think that’s 800 words. So hopefully this comment will get through the spam filter.

So I never had a Furby or never had any problems with one. I made all that up. Apart from living in a small town and quitting my job in the toy store. I’m still here in this rinky-dink town in after all these years. Still working in a toy store.

My name’s Sarah.

I’m here for one reason and one reason only. My brother said he’d come visit me two weeks ago. I feel jealous of him, honestly. He has a decent job and a lot of money. When my parents passed, he sold our childhood home. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him for that. But I still love him deep down.

I’ve called the police, but the trail has gone cold. They found his car but absolutely nothing else. No blood or anything, just a passenger door hanging wide open.

He was quiet and kinda kept to himself when we were growing up. But he always had a thing for paranormal forums and would spent hours browsing them. I hear this is the most popular one on the Internet. so I thought I could start here.

And maybe one of you knows something? If you do, it would mean the world if you’d tell me. I’m desperate. I just want to hear something.

Anything.

Has anyone heard from Jared lately?